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.
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
Now we can put the verb in a certain tense, meaning that we can add a little ending to the stem that will indicate in 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, irregardless of who is the subject of the action.
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