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56-431: Writing under the pseudonym "Dr. Esperanto", Zamenhof originally referred to the language as the international language ; the use of Esperanto did not arise until 1889 when people began to use his pseudonym as the name of the language itself. Zamenhof reproduced a significant portion of the content of Unua Libro in the 1905 Fundamento de Esperanto , which he established as the sole obligatory authority over Esperanto in

112-408: A bare root may indicate a preposition or interjection , removing the grammatical suffix from another part of speech can be used to derive a preposition or interjection. Thus the verbal root far- (do, make) has been unofficially used without a part-of-speech suffix as a preposition "by", marking the agent of a passive participle or an action noun in place of the standard de . All verbal inflection

168-406: A dozen other adverbs are bare roots, such as nun "now", tro "too, too much", not counting the adverbs among the correlatives . (See special Esperanto adverbs .) The part-of-speech endings may double up. Apart from the -aŭ suffix, where adding a second part-of-speech ending is nearly universal, this happens only occasionally. For example, vivu! "viva!" (the volitive of vivi 'to live') has

224-555: A foreword, a grammar section, a collection of exercises, and a dictionary. With the exception of the foreword, almost everything in the Fundamento comes directly from Zamenhof's earlier works, primarily Unua Libro . Esperanto, however, underwent a minor change in 1888 in Aldono al la Dua Libro , in which Zamenhof changed the ending of the temporal correlatives ( when , then , always , sometimes , never ) from -ian to -iam , so

280-442: A living one, and not only in last extremities, and with the key at hand. In the next three parts, he addresses each difficulty specifically and explains why he believes Esperanto is fit to overcome them. In part I, he explains the simplicity and flexibility of Esperanto grammar , particularly due to its regularity and use of affixes . In part II, he demonstrates the ease of using Esperanto for international communication due to

336-460: A method that can always be used. For example, in the sentence the word tiu would be understood as referring to someone other than the person speaking (like English pronouns this or that but also referring to people), and so cannot be used in place of ĝi , li or ŝi. See gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto for other approaches. The demonstrative and relative pronouns form part of

392-468: A nominal form vivuo (a cry of 'viva!') and a doubly verbal form vivui (to cry 'viva!'). Nouns end with the suffix -o . To make a word plural, the suffix -j is added to the -o . Without this suffix, a countable noun is understood to be singular. Direct objects take an accusative case suffix -n, which goes after any plural suffix; the resulting pluralized accusative sequence -ojn rhymes with English c oin . Names may be pluralized when there

448-492: A nominal or verbal root, the English equivalent is a prepositional phrase : parole (by speech, orally); vide (by sight, visually); reĝe (like a king, royally). The meanings of part-of-speech affixes depend on the inherent part of speech of the root they are applied to. For example, brosi (to brush) is based on a nominal root (and therefore listed in modern dictionaries under the entry bros o ), whereas kombi (to comb)

504-557: A publisher in Warsaw , Chaim Kelter. On July 26 [ O.S. July 14] 1887, Kelter published the book in Russian as International Language ( Russian : Международный язык ). Before the end of the year, Kelter published the Polish , French , and German editions of the book, as well. In 1888, Zamenhof had Julian Steinhaus translate the book into English, and the translation

560-517: A simple and clear vocabulary. To demonstrate this, he translates the Our Father and Genesis 1:1–9 and presents a fictional letter and a few poems in Esperanto—"El Heine'", a translation, and "Mia penso" and " Ho, mia kor' ", both original. In part III, he presents an idea called the "universal vote", which is a campaign to allot 10 million signatures of people making the following pledge: "I,

616-637: A supplement to Dua Libro , to establish the definitive form of the language, a document he promised in part III of Unua Libro . By all measures, Zamenhof's "universal vote" campaign failed. By 1889, he had only reached 1000 signatures, a mere 0.01% of his goal of 10 million. Nevertheless, the Esperanto movement continued onward. Among the early supporters were educated Russian and Polish Jews , Leo Tolstoy and his followers, Eastern European freemasons , and speakers of Volapük who had lost hope in their language. Fundamento de Esperanto Fundamento de Esperanto ( English : Foundation of Esperanto )

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672-436: A vocabulary of 400 to 500 root words. The original vocabulary of Esperanto had around 900 root words, but was quickly expanded. Esperanto has an agglutinative morphology , no grammatical gender , and simple verbal and nominal inflections . Verbal suffixes indicate whether a verb is in the infinitive, a participle form (active or passive in three tenses), or one of three moods (indicative, conditional, or volitive; of which

728-402: A word is a noun , adjective , adverb , and infinitive verb , respectively. Many new words can be derived simply by changing these suffixes. Derivations from the word vidi (to see) are vida (visual), vide (visually), and vido (vision). Each root word has an inherent part of speech : nominal, adjectival, verbal, or adverbial. These must be memorized explicitly and affect the use of

784-560: Is a 1905 book by L. L. Zamenhof , in which the author explains the basic grammar rules and vocabulary that constitute the basis of the constructed language Esperanto . On August 9, 1905, it was made the only obligatory authority over the language by the Declaration of Boulogne at the first World Esperanto Congress . Much of the content of the book is a reproduction of content from Zamenhof's earlier works, particularly Unua Libro . Fundamento de Esperanto consists of four parts:

840-473: Is based on a verbal root (and therefore listed under komb i ). Change the suffix to -o, and the similar meanings of brosi and kombi diverge: broso is a brush, the name of an instrument, whereas kombo is a combing, the name of an action. That is, changing verbal kombi (to comb) to a noun simply creates the name for the action; for the name of the tool, the suffix -ilo is used, which derives words for instruments from verbal roots: kombilo (a comb). On

896-470: Is in the accusative, de majo (of May) is still a prepositional phrase , and so the noun majo remains in the nominative case. A frequent use of the accusative is in place of al (to) to indicate the direction or goal of motion ( allative construction ). It is especially common when there would otherwise be a double preposition: The accusative/allative may stand in for other prepositions also, especially when they have vague meanings that do not add much to

952-450: Is invariable. It is similar to English "the". La is used: The article may also be used for inalienable possession of body parts and kin terms , where English would use a possessive adjective : The article la , like the demonstrative adjective tiu (this, that), occurs at the beginning of the noun phrase . There is no grammatically required indefinite article : homo means either "human being" or "a human being", depending on

1008-552: Is more than one person of that name being referenced: Adjectives agree with nouns. That is, they are generally plural if the noun that they modify is plural, and accusative if the noun is accusative. Compare bona tago; bonaj tagoj; bonan tagon; bonajn tagojn (good day/days). (The sequence -ajn rhymes with English f ine . ) This requirement allows for the word orders adjective–noun and noun–adjective , even when two noun phrases are adjacent in subject–object–verb or verb–subject–object clauses: Agreement clarifies

1064-426: Is perhaps de , which corresponds to English of, from, off, and (done) by : However, English of corresponds to several Esperanto prepositions also: de, el (out of, made of), and da (quantity of, unity of form and contents): The last of these, da , is semantically Slavic and is difficult for Western Europeans, to the extent that even many Esperanto dictionaries and grammars define it incorrectly. Because

1120-460: Is primarily due to the traditional ubiquity of li or ŝi for people and of ĝi for non-human animals and inanimate objects. ^ A proposed specifically feminine plural pronoun iŝi was proposed by Kálmán Kalocsay and Gaston Waringhien to better translate languages with gendered plural pronouns. Personal pronouns take the accusative suffix -n as nouns do: min (me), lin (him), ŝin (her). Possessive adjectives are formed with

1176-420: Is raining), estas muso en la domo (there is a mouse in the house). Most verbs are inherently transitive or intransitive . As with the inherent part of speech of a root, this is not apparent from the shape of the verb and must simply be memorized. Transitivity is changed with the affixes -ig- (the transitivizer/ causative ) and -iĝ- (the intransitivizer/ middle voice ) after the root; for example: ( Boli

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1232-490: Is regular. There are three tenses of the indicative mood . The other moods are the conditional and volitive (treated as the jussive by some). There is also the infinitive . No aspectual distinctions are required by the grammar, but derivational expressions of Aktionsart are common. Verbs do not change form according to their subject . I am, we are, and he is are simply mi estas, ni estas, and li estas, respectively. Impersonal subjects are not used: pluvas (it

1288-466: Is used when the gender of the referent is unknown or to be ignored. While the speakers that use the pronoun are a minority as of 2020, it is widely understood by active users of Esperanto. Its opponents often object that any new pronoun is an unacceptable change to the basic rules and paradigms formulated in the Fundamento . Zamenhof himself proposed using ĝi in such situations; the common opposition to referring to people with gender-neutral ĝi today

1344-447: The Declaration of Boulogne , ratified by the first World Esperanto Congress later that year. After many years of developing the language , Zamenhof completed Unua Libro by the spring of 1885 and spent the next two years looking for a publisher. In 1887, shortly after he married his wife Klara, his new father-in-law Aleksandr Silbernik advised him to use money from Klara's dowry to find a publisher. Following his advice, Zamenhof found

1400-626: The Foundation of Esperanto , in such a manner as he finds most correct, as is done in every other language. However, for the unity of the language for all Esperantists it is recommended to imitate as much as possible the style that is found in the works of the creator of Esperanto, who has worked the most for and in Esperanto and knows best its spirit. Equal to the Fundamento are the Oficialaj Aldonoj ( Official Additions ). To date, there have been nine Official Additions. The foreword of

1456-466: The Fundamento states: Some time from now, when many of the new words have completely stabilized, some authoritative institution shall put them into an official dictionary, as 'Additions to the Fundamento' . That authoritative institution is the Akademio de Esperanto . Esperanto grammar Esperanto is the most widely used constructed language intended for international communication ; it

1512-622: The T–V distinction was important, but he discouraged its use. He added it in the Dua Libro in 1888 clarifying that "this word is only found in the dictionary; in the language itself it is hardly ever used", and excluded it from the list of pronouns in the Fundamento . To this day, it is standard to use only vi regardless of number or formality. ^ An unofficial gender-neutral third person singular pronoun ri has become relatively popular since about 2010, mostly among younger speakers. It

1568-445: The correlative system , and are described in that article. The pronouns are the forms ending in -o (simple pronouns) and -u (adjectival pronouns); these take plural -j and accusative -n as nouns and adjectives do. The possessive pronouns, however, are the forms ending in -es ; they are indeclinable for number and case. Compare the nominative phases lia domo (his house) and ties domo (that one's house, those ones' house) with

1624-476: The indicative has three tenses ), and are derived for several aspects , but do not agree with the grammatical person or number of their subjects . Nouns and adjectives have two cases , nominative / oblique and accusative / allative , and two numbers , singular and plural ; the adjectival form of personal pronouns behaves like a genitive case . Adjectives generally agree with nouns in case and number. In addition to indicating direct objects ,

1680-403: The nominative : por Johano (for John). The only exception is when there are two or more prepositions and one is replaced by the accusative. Prepositions should be used with a definite meaning. When no one preposition is clearly correct, the indefinite preposition je should be used: Alternatively, the accusative may be used without a preposition: Note that although la trian (the third)

1736-495: The syntax in other ways as well. Adjectives take the plural suffix when they modify more than one noun, even when those nouns are singular: A predicative adjective does not take the accusative case suffix even when the noun that it modifies does: There are three types of pronouns in Esperanto: personal (vi "you"), demonstrative (tio "that", iu "someone"), and relative / interrogative (kio "what"). According to

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1792-417: The Esperanto language binding on all Esperantists, which no one has the right to change, is the little work Foundation of Esperanto . If anyone deviates from the rules and models given in the said work, he can never justify himself with the words "thus desires or advises the author of Esperanto". Each Esperantist has the right to express any idea, which cannot be conveniently expressed by the material found in

1848-513: The Esperanto of the Fundamento is slightly different than that of Unua Libro . The grammar and dictionary sections of the Fundamento are in five national languages: French , English , German , Russian , and Polish . Fundamento de Esperanto was made the official source of Esperanto in the fourth article of the Declaration of Boulogne at the first World Esperanto Congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer , France : The only basis of

1904-484: The Second Book ), he officially altered the spelling of the suffixes of the temporal correlatives ( when , then , always , sometimes , never ) from -ian to -iam , which rendered the Esperanto of Unua Libro slightly outdated. The book consists of three parts, an introduction, a grammar section, and a dictionary. Zamenhof begins by renouncing all rights to the language, putting it in the public domain . In

1960-423: The accusative/allative case is used with nouns, adjectives and adverbs for showing the destination of a motion, or to replace certain prepositions ; the nominative/oblique is used in all other situations. The case system allows for a flexible word order that reflects information flow and other pragmatic concerns, as in Russian , Greek , and Latin . Esperanto uses a 28-letter Latin alphabet that contains

2016-419: The adjectival suffix -a: mia (my), ĝia (its), nia (our). These agree with their noun like any other adjective : ni salutis liajn amikojn (we greeted his friends). Esperanto does not have separate forms for the possessive pronouns ; this sense is generally (though not always) indicated with the definite article: la mia (mine). The reflexive pronoun is used in non-subject phrases only to refer back to

2072-574: The clause. Adverbs, with or without the case suffix, are frequently used instead of prepositional phrases: Both por and pro can correspond to English 'for'. However, por indicates for a goal (the more usual sense of English 'for') while pro indicates for a cause and more often may be translated 'because of': To vote por your friend means to cast a ballot with their name on it, whereas to vote pro your friend would mean to vote because of something that happened to them or something they said or did. The preposition most distinct from English usage

2128-554: The context, and similarly the plural homoj means "human beings" or "some human beings". The words iu and unu (or their plurals iuj and unuj ) may be used somewhat like indefinite articles, but they're closer in meaning to "some" and "a certain" than to English "a". This use of unu corresponds to English "a" when the "a" indicates a specific individual. For example, it is used to introduce new participants ( Unu viro ekvenis al mi kaj diris ... 'A man came up to me and said ...'). The suffixes ‑o , ‑a , ‑e , and ‑i indicate that

2184-612: The dictionary section, he presents a dictionary with 917 roots of vocabulary. Zamenhof received a wide range of reactions to Unua Libro , from mocking criticism to avid interest. In the hundreds of letters he received, he saw enough support to prompt him to publish Dua Libro in January 1888 and La Esperantisto in 1889, in order to provide more Esperanto reading material for those with interest. In 1889, he also published Russian–Esperanto and German–Esperanto dictionaries to increase Esperanto vocabulary, as well as Aldono al la Dua Libro ,

2240-472: The fifth rule of the Fundamento de Esperanto : 5. The personal pronouns are: mi , "I"; vi , "thou", "you"; li , "he"; ŝi , "she"; ĝi , "it"; si , "self"; ni , "we"; ili , "they"; oni , "one", "people", (French "on"). The Esperanto personal pronoun system is similar to that of English, but with the addition of a reflexive pronoun . ^ Zamenhof introduced a singular second-person pronoun ci , to be used in translations from languages where

2296-458: The gender of an individual is unknown or for when the speaker simply doesn't wish to clarify the gender. However, this proposal is only common when referring to children: When speaking of adults or people in general, in popular usage it is much more common for the demonstrative adjective and pronoun tiu ("that thing or person that is already known to the listener") to be used in such situations. This mirrors languages such as Japanese, but it's not

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2352-415: The introduction, Zamenhof lays out his case for the need for an international auxiliary language (IAL). He states that previous attempts, such as Volapük , have failed because they have not overcome the three main difficulties an IAL must overcome in order to succeed. Those difficulties are: 1. To render the study of the language so easy as to make its acquisition mere play to the learner. 2. To enable

2408-407: The learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a means of international communication. 3. To find some means of overcoming the natural indifference of mankind, and disposing them, in the quickest manner possible, and en masse, to learn and use the proposed language as

2464-507: The next year and promises to consider criticism before publishing a special booklet that will give definitive form to the language the following year (which was to be Aldono al la Dua Libro ). Additionally, he lays out guidelines for a language academy to guide the evolution of the language in the future (which was to be the Akademio de Esperanto ). In the grammar section, he explains the Esperanto alphabet and sixteen grammar rules. In

2520-436: The nominal -o: belo (beauty). Nevertheless, redundantly affixed forms such as beleco are acceptable and widely used. A limited number of basic adverbs do not end with -e, but with an undefined part-of-speech ending -aŭ . Not all words ending in -aŭ are adverbs, and most of the adverbs that end in -aŭ have other functions, such as hodiaŭ "today" [noun or adverb] or ankoraŭ "yet, still" [conjunction or adverb]. About

2576-414: The nominal root reĝo (a king); parola (spoken). The various verbal endings mean to be [__] when added to an adjectival root: beli (to be beautiful); and with a nominal root they mean "to act as" the noun, "to use" the noun, etc., depending on the semantics of the root: reĝi (to reign). There are relatively few adverbial roots, so most words ending in -e are derived: bele (beautifully). Often with

2632-469: The other hand, changing the nominal root broso (a brush) to a verb gives the action associated with that noun, brosi (to brush). For the name of the action, the suffix -ado will change a derived verb back to a noun: brosado (a brushing). Similarly, an abstraction of a nominal root (changing it to an adjective and then back to a noun) requires the suffix -eco, as in infaneco (childhood), but an abstraction of an adjectival or verbal root merely requires

2688-426: The part-of-speech suffixes. With an adjectival or verbal root, the nominal suffix ‑o indicates an abstraction: parolo (an act of speech, one's word) from the verbal root paroli (to speak); belo (beauty) from the adjectival root bela (beautiful); whereas with a noun, the nominal suffix simply indicates the noun. Nominal or verbal roots may likewise be modified with the adjectival suffix ‑a : reĝa (royal), from

2744-455: The plural lia j domo j (his houses) and ties domo j (that one's houses, those ones' houses), and with the accusative genitive lia n domo n and ties domo n . Although Esperanto word order is fairly free, prepositions must come at the beginning of a noun phrase . Whereas in languages such as German, prepositions may require that a noun be in various cases ( accusative , dative , and so on), in Esperanto all prepositions govern

2800-410: The six additional letters ĉ , ĝ , ĥ , ĵ , ŝ and ŭ , but does not use the letters q , w , x or y . The extra diacritics are the circumflex and the breve . Occasionally, an acute accent (or an apostrophe) is used to indicate irregular stress in a proper name. Zamenhof suggested Italian as a model for Esperanto pronunciation . Esperanto has a single definite article , la , which

2856-575: The standard English translation. Henry Phillips Jr., a secretary of the American Philosophical Society and early supporter of Esperanto, also produced a translation in 1889, titled An Attempt towards an International Language , but Geoghegan's translation remains the preferred standard. Unua Libro was also translated into Hebrew , Yiddish , Swedish , and Lithuanian in 1889 and then into Danish , Bulgarian , Italian , Spanish , and Czech in 1890. The name Unua Libro

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2912-601: The subject, usually only in the third and indefinite persons: The indefinite pronoun is used when making general statements, and is often used where English would have a passive verb, With impersonal verbs , no pronoun is used: Here the rain is falling by itself, and that idea is conveyed by the verb, so no subject pronoun is needed. When not referring to humans, ĝi is mostly used with items that have physical bodies, with tiu or tio used otherwise. Zamenhof proposed that ĝi could also be used as an epicene (gender-neutral) third-person singular pronoun, meaning for use when

2968-447: The undersigned, promise to learn the international language, proposed by Dr. Esperanto, if it shall be shown that ten million similar promises have been publicly given." He argues that this will prevent anyone from wasting time on learning the language since, once 10 million signatures have been gathered, there will be a significant population obliged to learn the language, rendering the language useful. He also welcomes critical feedback for

3024-496: Was applied retroactively to the book in relation to the title of Zamenhof's 1888 book Dua Libro ( Second Book ). In 1905, Zamenhof reproduced much of the content of Unua Libro in Fundamento de Esperanto , which he established as the only obligatory authority over Esperanto in the Declaration of Boulogne at the first World Esperanto Congress later that year. However, in his 1888 Aldono al la Dua Libro ( Supplement to

3080-404: Was designed with highly regular grammatical rules, and is therefore considered easy to learn. Each part of speech has a characteristic ending: nouns end with ‑o ; adjectives with ‑a ; present‑tense indicative verbs with ‑as , and so on. An extensive system of prefixes and suffixes may be freely combined with roots to generate vocabulary, so that it is possible to communicate effectively with

3136-424: Was published under the title Dr. Esperanto's International Tongue . However, when Richard Geoghegan pointed out that Steinhaus's translation was very poor, Zamenhof destroyed his remaining copies and requested that Geoghegan produce a fresh translation. Geoghegan's translation of the book, titled Dr. Esperanto's International Language , was published on January 17 [ O.S. January 5] 1889 and became

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