Language/Esperanto/Grammar/Verbs

Verbs in Esperanto

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

Related Lessons

• Past Tense
• To Be at the Present Tense
• Prepositions
• ADVERBS
• WORD BUILDING
• PREFIXES
• PREPOSITIONS
• THE ACCUSATIVE
• SUFFIXES
• Adverb