Hello and welcome!

This is lesson two

Nouns, adjectives, plurals, and articles

In this lesson I'm going to teach you about

nouns, adjectives, plurals, and articles

Before teaching you each of these in Esperanto

I'm going to explain how they're used in English

and I'll give you a few examples

Then I'll teach you how it's used in Esperanto

And then give you a few Esperanto examples

Let's begin with nouns

What is a noun?

It's a word that represents a person, place, thing, or idea

An example of this is George Washington

George Washington is a noun because he's a person

The word "beach" is a noun because it's a place

The word "happiness" is also a noun

because it's an idea

The word "ham" is a noun because it's a thing

But what about "ham sandwich"?

Which word is the noun?

In this case, the word "sandwich" is the noun

and the word "ham"

Is just describing what kind of sandwich it is

The word "ham" by itself would be a noun

but in this case, "sandwich" is the noun

Because if you're talking about a ham sandwich,

you're talking about a sandwich, not ham

Nouns in Esperanto are really easy

In English, you can't tell if a word is a noun

just by looking at it

But you can in Esperanto!

All nouns end in the letter -o

This makes it really easy to recognize in Esperanto

and easy to remember!

One example is "tree"

In Esperanto this uses the root word "arb-"

Plus the -o ending. So a tree is "arbo"

Another example is "dog"

In Esperanto this uses the "hund-" root

plus -o, so it's "hundo"

The next example is "beach"

In Esperanto this uses the root word "plaĝ-"

plus the -o ending. So it's plaĝo

The next part is about adjectives. What is an adjective?

An adjective is any kind of describing word

It expresses quality or characteristic

And adjectives always describe and modify nouns

My first example of an adjective is the word "shiny"

It's an adjective because describes something shiny

Another adjective is "wet"

and another adjective is "cold"

What about "funny fish"?

Which word is a noun? Which word is an adjective?

With "funny fish" the adjective is funny

and the noun is fish

because the thing we're talking about is a fish

and "funny" is describing what kind of fish it is

So how do adjectives work in Esperanto?

In English you can't tell if a word is an adjective

just by looking at it

but in Esperanto you can!

In Esperanto, all adjectives have the ending -a

This makes it easy to recognize and easy to remember

One example of this is "beautiful"

"Beautiful" is and adjective

because it can describe something that's beautiful

In Esperanto we use the root word "bel-"

plus the "-a" ending

so this is "bela"

Another example of an adjective is "big"

In Esperanto we use the root word "grand-"

plus the "-a" ending

so we say "granda"

One more example is "fast"

For this we use the root word "rapid-"

plus the "-a" ending

so it's "rapida"

In Esperanto we can also convert nouns into adjectives

and vice versa

Take the root word "dom-"

With this you can make "domo" (house)

(which is a noun)

or you can make the word "doma"

which means "domestic" (adjective)

Another example of this is the root word "sal-"

With this root you can make "salo" (salt)

or you can make "sala" (salty)

You might be wondering

how you use adjectives in combination with nouns

In English,

the adjective comes before the noun it's describing

but Esperanto is a lot more flexible!

In Esperanto,

adjectives can be before or after the noun they modify

Both of these placements of the adjective

are 100% grammatically correct

An example of this is "sweet apple"

You can say "dolĉa pomo" or "pomo dolĉa"

either of these is correct

To say big cat,

you can say "granda kato" or "kato granda".

The next section is plurals

What are plurals?

Plural just means more than one

In English, plurals usually end in -s or -es

But there are, of course, some exceptions to this rule

Here's a few examples of plurals

The plural of "pencil" is "pencils"

The plural for "brush" is "brushes"

The plural for "table" is "tables"

Here are a few irregular examples

the plural for "person" is "people"

the plural for "goose" is "geese"

and the plural for "mouse" is "mice"

These don't follow the standard -s / -es rule in English

But Esperanto is much simpler and much easier

To make something plural in Esperanto, just add -j

this can be done with nouns and adjectives

But, if an adjective is describing a plural noun

it must also be plural

so nouns and adjectives have to match in their number

Let's take the example, "chair"

In Esperanto this is "seĝo"

to make "chairs" we just add -j

so we say "seĝoj"

As I said before, adjectives can also be made plural

"Fast car" is "rapida aŭto" in Esperanto

But if we want to say "fast cars"

we have to say "rapidaj aŭtoj"

Notice that -j is on "rapida" and "aŭto"

Because we're talking about multiple cars

and all of these cars are fast

so we say "rapidaj aŭtoj"

For the next example, note that "kaj" means "and"

so what about "granda hundo kaj kato"?

Notice that there's no -j ending on "granda"

but there are multiple nouns in the sentence

so what is "granda" describing?

It's describing the dog

This translates to "big dog and cat"

It's not saying that the cat is big

It's only saying that the dog is big

So what about "grandaj hundo kaj kato"?

In this case, the -j ending is on "granda"

so we know it's describing multiple things

In this case, "grandaj hundo kaj kato"

translates to "big dog and big cat"

because "granda" is describing "dog" and "cat"

The last section for this lesson is articles.

What is an article?

An article is a little word showing how specific a noun is

In English there are two types of articles

"definite" and "indefinite"

The definite article in English is "the"

The indefinite articles in English are "a" or "an"

As an example, "a pen"

It doesn't say which pen. It only says a pen in general.

But when we use the definite article "the"

and we say "the pen"

You know we're talking about a specific pen

Articles are extremely easy in Esperanto

because there's only 1 article to remember

This is the definite article "la", which never changes

we actually don't use an indefinite article in Esperanto

The first example with an article is "the leaf"

In Esperanto this is "la folio"

What about "the leaves"?

The definite article never changes

but you do need to make "leaves" plural

so we say "la folioj"

Remember, I said Esperanto has no indefinite article

So how do we translate "a leaf"?

We just say "folio"

"Folio" can translate to "leaf" or "a leaf"

and that all depends on the context