The most obvious advantage Esperanto has over the languages we learn in school (or the one we learned at home, for that matter) is its grammar, which is (a) simple and (b) regular. When I say that is on the end of a word means "whatever action this word describes, it's already happened", you know that this will always be true. In English, by contrast, you may learn that ed on the end of a word means "whatever action this word describes, it's already happened" -- but that's not always true. If the word is "go", for instance, you can't say "goed"; you have to say "went" instead. If the word is "swim", you can't say "swimed" (which would be pronounced wrong), or even the form "swimmed" with two 'm's (which would be pronounced right); you have to say "swam".
I said the most obvious advantage, but it's possibly not the greatest. The greatest advantage of Esperanto, for me, is the way you can, with a few relatively simple rules, make new words out of old ones. There are a couple of ways of doing this: by combining old words to make new ones, and by adding affixes to old words to make new ones. Let's take a look at the second method.
Take the root pluv', which we've already seen ("drops of water coming out of the sky", or, we might say in English, "rain"). Okay, you now know how to say "it's raining" or "it rained" or "it's going to rain". But that oncoming storm cloud looks awfully big and dark, and you just know that you're in for what some people call a gully-washer. How can you say, for instance, "downpour" or "it's going to rain cats and dogs" in Esperanto?
There's a suffix called eg which basically means "a whole lot more so". A suffix, in Esperanto, is a word which you tack onto the end of another word (before the ending, though -- endings are things like the as, is and os that we've already learned) to change -- in this case, to intensify or augment -- its meaning. So instead of saying pluvos (it's going to rain), you might, in this particular case, want to say pluvegos (it's going to come down in buckets). (1)
On the other hand, it may be that when that big black cloud arrives, it will turn out to be a big false alarm -- only a few drops will fall. What will you say then? Luckily, Esperanto has another suffix, et, which basically means "a whole lot less so". So, sticking out your hand and feeling the occasional tiny drop touch it, you can say: pluvetas.
Here are some variations on last lesson's questions. How would you say (one word each, remember) ...
"The sun will be blazing down"?
"There was a blast of thunder"?
"Lightning is flickering"?
"There was a slight breeze"?
"It's going to hail baseballs"?
"It was drizzling"?
"It's a full, harvest moon"?
"A few flakes of snow were falling"?