Esperanto lesson 3 ( adjectives, articles, plurals )

Adjective

A word or phrase naming an attribute, added to or grammatically related to a noun to modify or describe it. - Oxford Dictionary

An example of an adjective is shiny. This is because it's describing what an object looks like.

In Esperanto all adjectives end with the letter a. An example of this is bela or the word for big which is granda.

You can also convert nouns into adjectives by switching out the suffix from o to a. For example the word Domo means house but if you take off the o and add the letter a to the end it means domestic.

Where to place adjectives

In Esperanto you can place the adjectives before or after the noun it doesn't matter. For example granda kato and kato granda mean the exact same thing.

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Plurals

To make something plural all you have to do is add the litter j after the o and a in nouns AND adjectives attached to the noun. In Esperanto you want your nouns to agree with your adjectives.

For example:

Rapida aŭto

↓

Rapidaj aŭtoj

Tablo granda

↓

Tabloj grandaj

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Articles

Articles are words that show how specific a noun is.

For example English has two articles definite and indefinite.

English example:

A/an = indefinite article

The = definite article

For example a cat. It's not saying a specific cat just a cat. The cat is telling you that it's specific to that cat.

Articles used in Esperanto

There's only one article in Esperanto which is definite (similar to the). This article is la. For example the cat is "La kato.". If you need a indefinite article do not put La before a word simply just say the word like a cat iu just kato.

Examples:

La = definite article

<blank> = indefinite article