/r/conlangs Chat Network Relay Game - Learn a Lang Natlang Relay 6

#9Esperanto by Kimura
EsperantoEnglish

Amo estas kiel birdo en malordo. Neniu povas malkontentigi kvieta koro. Se tempo pasos por ĉiaj solvaĵoj, ĝi ne estos estinta bona.
Amo estas kiel infano de Bohemio, ĝi neniam obeas la regulo. Se ĝi povas ami, mi amos, kaj se mi povas vere ami, mi ŝatos se ĝi estos mia asistanto.

Love is like a bird in disorder. Nobody can disappoint a quiet heart. If time were to pass for all solutions, it would not already be good.
Love is like an infant from Bohemia, it never obeys the law. If it could love, I would love, and if I could truly love, I would like if it were my helper.

  • O-vortoj (nouns):
    • amo: love
    • asistanto: assistant, helper
    • birdo: bird
    • Bohemio: Bohemia
    • infano: infant
    • koro: heart
    • ordo: order
    • regulo: law, rule
    • solvaĵo: solution
    • tempo: time
  • A-vortoj (adjectives):
    • bona: good
    • kvieta: quiet, calm
    • vera: true
  • Verboj (verbs) (shown in infinitive):
    • ami: to love
    • esti: to be
    • kontentigi: to satisfy -> malkontentigi: to disappoint
    • obei: to obey
    • pasi: to pass
    • povi: to be able to
    • ŝati: to like
  • Konjunkcioj (conjunctions):
    • de: from, of
    • en: in
    • la: the
    • kaj: and
    • por: for
    • se: if
  • Alia vortoj (other words):
    • ĉia: all
    • kiel: like, similar
    • ne: no, not
    • neniam: never
    • neniu: nobody, no one
  • Nouns end in -o. Adjectives end in -a. In many cases, a noun can be "adjectivified" and vice versa by swapping the ending.
  • Adverbs end in -e, and usually follow the verbs they act on. While they are the same base word as the adjective (rapida/rapide -> rapid/rapidly), adverbs do not take plural or accusative suffixes.
  • Plurals are formed by adding -j to the end. If a noun is plural, so is its adjective(s).
  • Direct objects (accusative, what is acted upon) end in -n. Adjective(s) applying to the direct object must also have an -n applied. If plural, the -n goes after the -j (so "pomojn" is "apples" as a direct object). For the love of Zamenhof, DON'T USE -N WITH THE VERB "ESTI". The thing after "to be" is referring to the same object as the subject, so it's not accusative.
  • The prefix "mal-" can be applied to basically anything (noun, adjective, verb, etc) to turn it into the opposite meaning. "mal-" by itself does NOT mean "bad" (that'd be "malbona" specifically), and sometimes it's hard to know the exact "opposite" meaning of something, but it's usually not that hard to guess.
  • Basic pronouns:
    • mi: I
    • vi: you
    • li: he
    • ŝi: she
    • ĝi: it
    • ni: we
    • ili: they
  • The special pronoun "mem" is used in combination with a basic pronoun to put emphasis on self - for example "li mem", "he himself"
  • Possessive pronouns are formed by adding -a like an adjective ("mia" is "my", "via" is "your", etc). Accusative and plural endings also apply, both to basic and possessive pronouns.
  • Verb endings:
    • -as: present tense
    • -is: past tense
    • -os: future tense
    • -us: conditional
    • -u: command
    • -i: infinitive (also used to chain verbs together, like "povas lerni" is "can learn")
  • Participles are a kind of complex verb that gives context to the "state" of a verb, and tends to take the form "esti [verb_root][participle]". The tense of "esti" shows whether it's past/present/future, and is independent of the participle tense itself, so you can have "estas manĝonta" (are about to eat), "estos manĝinta" (will be about to finish eating), "estis manĝanta" (was about to be eating), and so on.
    • -inta: action recently completed
    • -anta: action still in progress
    • -onta: action soon to begin

Word order is flexible (endings determine the role of a word in the sentence), but most Esperantists use SVO order.