Language/Esperanto/Grammar/Verbs
The verb in a sentence indicates what's happening.
For example, The man walks. What is the man doing? He is walking. The verb "walk" indicates what is the action of the sentence.
A verb has a distinct property. It indicates when something is happening (I walk, I walked, I will walk).
A verb that does not indicate when something happens is called the infinitive verb, and in English is preceded by "to" (to walk, to swim, to fly, to eat).
An infinitive verb in Esperanto always ends in i. When you remove the i, you have the stem of the verb, and using that stem you can later form all the tenses.
English | Esperanto |
---|---|
to sing | kanti |
to fall | fali |
to sleep | dormi |
to walk | promeni |
to sit | sidi |
to stand | stari |
to go | iri |
to be | esti |
to have | havi |
to play | ludi |
to read | legi |
to study | studi |
to think | pensi |
to like | sxati |
Now we can put the verb in a certain tense, meaning that we can add a little ending to the stem that will indicate when the action is taking place.
When something is happening in the present, it is called the present tense (I walk, you sleep, we eat).
In Esperanto, the present tense is formed by adding "as" to the stem of the verb, regardless of who is the subject of the action.
For example:
English | Esperanto |
---|---|
to sing | kanti |
I sing | mi kantas |
we sing | ni kantas |
you sing | vi kantas |
he sings | li kantas |
she sing | sxi kantas |
they sing | ili kantas |
the children sing | la infanoj kantas |
the city is beautiful | la urbo estas bela |
the cities are beautiful | la urboj estas belaj |
the street is long | la strato estas longa |
the streets are long | la stratoj estas longaj |
Videos[edit | edit source]
Esperanto 101: Basic Verbs - YouTube[edit | edit source]
Other Lessons[edit | edit source]
- Past Tense
- To Be at the Present Tense
- Prepositions
- ADVERBS
- WORD BUILDING
- PREFIXES
- PREPOSITIONS
- THE ACCUSATIVE
- SUFFIXES
- Adverb