Read aloud the following sentences. If you don't understand the first two, go back and review previous lessons.
La ideo, al kies efektivigo mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon, aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco kaj neniam min forlasadis.
Mi naskiĝis en Bjelostoko.
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
Here's a quick and dirty attempt to show an English speaker how to pronounce this last sentence:
en byeh-loh-STOH-koh lah loh-jahn-TAH-roh kohn-SEES-tahs el kvahr dee-VEHR-sahy eh-leh-MEHN-toy: ROO-soy, POH-loy, gehr-MAH-noy kahy heh-BREH-oy.
This lesson's sentence, as you have guessed, is:
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
We already know four of Esperanto's eleven endings. -is shows that the word is an action that has already happened. -o shows that the word is the name of something. -a shows that the word describes something. -n shows that the word is the object of an action (direct object).
Now here are two more.
-as, which you see on the end of konsistas, is very closely related to -is. But where -is shows that something has already happened, -as shows that it's happening right now. -as says nothing about when the action began, or when it will end (maybe it's been going on since the beginning of the universe, and will keep going on until judgment day), only that it's happening at this moment. Grammarians call this the present tense.
-j, which you can see on the end of each of rusoj, poloj, germanoj, hebreoj, is simply the mark of the plural. If you don't know the word, it simply means more than one of whatever I'm attached to. So, for instance, we know that infano means child; then infanoj means more than one child, or, if you prefer (and I'm sure you do), children.
Four points to remember about this ending:
(1) The Esperanto letter j, as we've discussed, is always pronounced like the English letter y. So -oj is always pronounced like the oy in boy, never like the odg in Blodgett.
(2) The English equivalent of -j, showing the plural, is usually written -s. It can, however, be pronounced in two ways, like the s in books or like the s in dogs (which sounds like a z). The Esperanto -j is always pronounced the same. Furthermore, there are often some other changes that have to be made; for instance, if you want to give the plural of story in English, you have the change the final y to an i, then add an e, before you attach the -s: stories. And in many cases, you have to add a different ending (child -> children), add no ending but change the spelling of the word internally (man -> men), or not even do that but just keep the word the same (sheep -> sheep). We won't even talk about words like cattle, which exist only in the plural, and for which you have to add something to make them singular (showing only one): a head of cattle. In Esperanto, all names of things show there plural by adding the -j. There are no exceptions.
(3) One big difference between English and Esperanto is that in Esperanto, when you add the -j to the name of something (noun), you always add it to any accompanying descriptive words (adjectives) as well. So, for instance, mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon = I dedicated my whole life might become, if we are talking, for instance, about a Pharaoh having his pyramid built, mi dediĉis tutajn vivojn = I dedicated entire lives.
(4) Finally, when you add the -j to the direct object (no examples in this lesson, I'm afraid), while you put it after the -o (or -a, if the word is an adjective), you always put it before the direct-object -n. Why? Best reason in the world: it sounds better that way.
Once again, read the sentence aloud. Does it make a little more sense now than at the beginning?
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
Eight new word roots in this lesson: a record! Four of them should be really easy. These are:
rus' = Russian, a member of the ethnic group that natively speaks the Russian language. (Note that not everybody who lives in Russia is Russian ― just ask the Chechens.)
pol' = Polish, a member of the ethnic group that natively speaks the Polish language.
german' = German, a member of the ethnic group that natively speaks the complex of dialects that we generally refer to as German (and lives in Germany ― Austrians, for instance, might not prefer to be included under the rubric german', though they speak German natively).
hebre' = Jewish, a member of the ethnic group that practices the Jewish religion.
(Or doesn't, as the case may be. How can you tell if an individual person falls into one of these categories? The only real answer is: ask them.)
Additional note: Zamenhof regularly used the root hebre' for the Jewish ethnic group, to which he belonged, but today the more common root is jud'; hebre' is largely reserved for the language Hebrew.
element' should also be easy; it means, of course, element, one of the basic units (not necessarily identical) of which something is made up. Which brings us to ...
konsist', also like our English word consist; this has to do with describing the parts of which something is made up (consists).
And divers' also has its English cognate: divers(e), meaning widely different. Another translation is various, which can be misleading later on (there's an Esperanto root vari', which refers to changes in appearance or consistence, as does the English to vary; but varia, of course, retains this meaning, and does not mean the same as various, which for some reason has nothing to do with changing and hence varying).
Finally we come to loĝ'. This is usually translated as to live, but perhaps a better translation (though not very colloquial) is to reside; it refers to inhabiting a certain location (see the English words lodge and lodgings), not to having a beating heart and pumping lungs (for which Esperanto has the separate root viv').
This should really help with the sentence. Read it aloud yet again and see how well you understand it.
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
This lesson's two particles, el and kvar, should also be very simple.
kvar = 4 (English four).
el = of, from. It generally refers to motion out of some place (not simply away from some place). It's also used to show the place or places from where something was taken, as here: el kvar diversaj elementoj, out of, taken from four different elements.
This should almost cover everything. Read aloud again:
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
Still confused by the word loĝantaro? You may have guessed that it has a suffix on the end. Well, actually it has two.
-ant- is closely related to -as, which we learned earlier. It basically says: the action shown in that part of the word that comes before -ant- is going on right now. In effect, loĝanto is someone who is residing (somewhere). A word to which this ending is attached, incidentally, is called a participle by grammarians. There are several different participles, and they will call this one the present (because it refers to something happening right now) active (because it shows what something is doing, not what is being done to that something) participle. You can almost always translate that -ant- into English as -ing, but you should probably not take that rule too seriously. First, there are words in English, taken from Latin, which tend to use the old Latin ending instead of the English one, and this is such a case: loĝanto is perhaps best translated as resident, though the adjective form, loĝanta, can be translated as residing (or resident, if you prefer). Second, while -ant- is usually -ing, -ing is not always -ant-, since the English ending -ing plays not one but three different roles in the language.
Well, enough about -ant-; you should be able to at least use it. What about that final -ar-? That's what's called the collective suffix; it takes a bunch of whatever is described by the part that comes before and turns them into a group. This is related to the -j ending, but is not the same; the -j simply means more than one, but doesn't imply any relationship between those individuals, whereas the suffix -ar- says: These are somehow related, and although there are more than one of them, they make up a single unit. A good English example of this distinction would be trees vs. forest; trees in Esperanto, for those interested, are arboj, but forest is arbaro.
So, finally, loĝas means lives, resides; loĝanto is someone who is living (somewhere), a resident; and loĝantaro means a group or collection of residents (of a particular place), a population.
Once more, with feeling:
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
Next lesson: two more correlatives (or, actually, eight ...).