Back in lesson 4 you learned ĉu, a particle used to turn a statement into a question asking for an answer of "yes" or "no" (or, potentially, "maybe"; in Esperanto, that's eble, in case you're interested). At that time I pointed out that there were two kinds of questions: the yes-no question and the one that called on the respondent to provide specific information. For instance, you can ask:
"Ĉu forte ventas?"
and get an answer of "jes" or "ne". But what if you just want to ask how the wind is blowing, a question to which the respondent must answer with, perhaps, an -e word? The answer is the little word kiel ("how") which is used to ask such questions. (1)
"Kiel ventas?"
"Forte!"
There are eight (some might say: nine) other words similar to kiel -- the "who, what, when, where, how and why" of Esperanto. We will get to those later. Right now, you might want to take the words you know and make up some questions using kiel. Be sure to make use particularly of the three affixes that you've already learned: mal, eg and et.
Kiel belongs to a subsystem of Esperanto known as the correlatives (we'll encounter two other subsystems, the counting numbers and the pronouns, later). All the words in this subystem have the same structure. Each one has a zero-one-two-or-three letter prefix that tells you what kind of word it is (a question word, a pointing word, etc.), the letter i in the middle, and an ending that shows what type of material it's relating to (manner or method of something, location, time, etc.). Specifically, the beginning k shows that this is a question word; the ending el shows that we're talking about manner or method. kiel = "in what way", "how".
If you replace the beginning k with a t, you are no longer asking a question but pointing to, or emphasizing, an answer:
"Kiel ventas? Ĉu forte?" ("How is the wind blowing? Strongly?")
"Jes, tiel." ("Yes, so, in that way.")
If you drop off the beginning entirely, you are getting an indefinite answer to your question ("I don't know"):
"Kiel ventas?"
"Forte, malforte ... iel." ("Strongly, weakly ... in some way, somehow.")
On a still day, you might wish to use the prefix nen, which means ... not at all:
"Kiel ventas?"
"Neniel!" ("Not at all, it's not!")
Finally, there is a prefix ĉi, which is used as a "universal". (2)
"Kiel ventas?"
"Forte ..." (as a particularly strong gust makes the windows rattle), "... malforte ..." (as the wind dies down for a moment), "... ĉiel!" ("... in every way!")
Remember those beginnings; they are used in the same way all the way through the correlative system.
Has this gone too slowly for you? Probably. We've spent seven lessons concentrating on the simplest form of sentence in Esperanto: the one that simply shows that something is happening. What have we learned in that time?
(1) We've learned four "grammatical endings" (as, is, os, e). There are eleven such endings in Esperanto, so we're more than a third of the way through the list.
(2) We've learned three affixes (mal, eg, et), as well as a couple of other particles that sometimes serve as affixes; by this time, we should have some understanding of the way the Esperanto word-formation system works. There are between thirty and forty other affixes to learn, and we will pick them up in later lessons.
(3) We now understand (let us hope) the various beginnings of the correlative system, as well as one of the endings. We have eight (or maybe nine) endings left to go.
Next lesson, let's expand our horizons and look at sentences in which someone is doing something, or something is happening to someone.
(2) Another small particle, often used with words like tiel, looks just like this prefix: ĉi It's used to show nearness to the speaker: ĉi tiel, "in this way" (pointing to ground right at feet). Two things about this particle (which you should feel free to use from now on): (1) It is never used as a prefix in the correlative system; (2) use it only when you definitely want to show nearness, not when you're trying to translate an expression like "in this way, in that way", where there's really no desire to indicate nearness, just to distinguish between two different approaches (in Esperanto this would be tiel, tiel).
You have now learned, one hopes, that in a glorious thunderstorm you can cry out, in Esperanto:
Brile fulmis, laŭte tondros!
This should be enough for you, if you live in the Midwest. In some other parts of the country, however, we occasionally have thunderstorms that are a little bit inglorious. (1) How to describe them? In English and many other languages, to do so you'll have to learn a whole new set of words. In Esperanto, it's quite possible to make do with the ones you already know. You can do this in the traditional way, by applying an affix.
Affix is a general technical term for prefix or suffix. You've already learned a couple of suffixes, which go on the end of the word's root, right before the ending: eg and et. A prefix, which is what we'll be using here, is even easier to use: you simply tack it onto the beginning of the word, before everything else.
There is a prefix in Esperanto which is used to turn a word into its antonym. (2) This is mal. How to use it? Take the word (we learned it in the last lesson)
forte = strongly
By applying mal we get the word
malforte = weakly; without the ability to cause changes
You can now say, for an inglorious thunderstorm:
Malbrile fulmis, mallaŭte tondros!
For information (but you don't need to use them now) there are a couple of other prefixes that can be used to similar effect; the distinctions are usually minor. Actually, these are not prefixes but other words used as prefixes. One of them, you've already encountered: ne
neforte = not strongly.
This simply means that there is an absence of strength, not the direct opposite. For some words, the distinction is unimportant; in that case, use whichever word you want. For others, it may be important; there's a spectrum from "X" through "absence of X" to "opposite of X".
The other "prefix" (which is actually a preposition used as a prefix) is sen, which generally means "without". This is usually used with words that mean things, to show their absence. For instance, take the root kuraĝ'.
kuraĝe = bravely
nekuraĝe = in the absence of courage
senkuraĝe = without courage
malkuraĝe = cravenly (3)
Important note: using one affix doesn't prevent you from using others. You can use mal, ne or sen on the beginning of a word, and eg or et in the same word. (Since eg and et have opposite meanings however, you probably don't want to use them together, unless you're aiming at incongruity ...)
(1) Pay attention to this English word, whose structure has some bearing on the rest of this lesson.
(2) An antonym is a word that means the opposite (more or less exact) of some other word.
(3) The first word that comes to mind here is "cowardly", but unfortunately "cowardly" is one of those words -- not particularly rare, but certainly not common -- in English in which the adjective form ends in -ly, and so can't be converted to an adverb by adding another -ly. We're forced to either use a prepositional phrase (e.g. "in a cowardly way") or find some other word, as I've done here.
The suffixes eg and et are quite useful for showing intensity (or lack thereof) of something, anything. But sometimes you want to be more specific about how something is happening, or perhaps when, or where. For this purpose, the gods have invented the adverb.
An adverb is a word that describes the circumstances in which something happens. In English, many (though not all) adverbs end in -ly, and most (though not all) words ending in -ly are adverbs. In Esperanto, many (though not all) adverbs end in e, and all words (at least those that have more than one vowel) ending in e are adverbs.
Consider the following Esperanto root:
fort' = having the power to cause changes; strong. (1)
Suppose that you want to indicate that the rain is falling heavily. Well, perhaps pluvegas will be satisfactory, but you might also want to be able to say
Forte pluvas.
Or you might want to describe the color, physical or psychological, of the rain. Consider
griz' = having any color whose three components in the RGB system are equal; gray.
Grize pluvas.
A couple of other immediately useful colors are
blank' = having the color whose three components in the RGB system are as great as possible; white.
nigr' = having the color whose three components in the RGB system are zero; black.
And let's add two more roots that relate to the weather here:
tempest' = rain and wind together; storm.
nebul' = many tiny droplets of water floating in the air at ground level and obscuring vision; fog.
We can say, descriptively:
Blanke neĝas
Grize nebulis
Nigre tempestos
Now for one of the neatest and niftiest things about Esperanto:
Every root can play any role in a sentence, depending on what ending you give it, as long as that makes sense.
Take the expression grize pluvas, which we used above. What this means, is that it (whatever "it" may be) is raining, and in a gray fashion. But, by simply reversing the endings, you can recreate this sentence to describe the same phenomenon in quite a different way:
Pluve grizas = "It" is gray (more precisely, is acting or behaving gray-ly, giving an impression of grayishness) in a rainy fashion.
Similarly, you might want to say:
Neĝe blankas
Nebule grizis
Tempeste nigros
Question about these two-word sentences: Which word comes first? Do you always have to put the adverb before the verb, as I've done here? Answer: because adverbs fulfill similar roles with very different words and have only one form, they should preferably go immediately before the word the describe. In sentences such as the above, however, where there's no possibility of confusion, feel free to reverse the word-order if you want (Pluvas forte is perfectly legitimate), but keep the general rule in mind for later.
Finally, one more little word, not an adverb or a verb but just one of those useful little words like ĉu, jes and ne, of which there are perhaps a hundred or thereabouts in the language (you will have to learn them all separately): kaj. This little particle (the technical term is conjunction) is used to link parallel words or constructions together into a whole, and corresponds pretty closely to the English "and", closely enough that you can use the two interchangeably. For instance, you can create forms such as
Forte kaj grize pluvas
Forte fulmas kaj tondras
Blanke neĝas kaj grize pluvas
Finally, a few useful roots to use with your weather words:
varm' = having a high temperature; hot
bril' = emits lots of light; shine
laŭt' = making a lot of noise; loud
or' = rare metal found in California; gold
arĝent' = rare metal found in Nevada; silver
Try combining these (as adverbs) with various (appropriate!) weather words that you already know. Try combining them in groups (using kaj). Then try reversing the functions of the words by interchanging the e and the as, is, os endings. See how many combinations you can derive.
(By the way, the other two words in the title come from the roots kuraĝ', meaning "courage" or "bravery", and elegant', meaning "elegant". The expression is one that was widely used to encourage people to speak "forte, kuraĝe kaj elegante" by the late Rev. Andreo Cseh in his direct-method Esperanto courses in prewar Europe. It was Cseh, incidentally, who invented direct-method teaching, a system that is now used for many other languages in the appropriate circumstances.)
It is now possible for you to look out the window and say: "Pluvas!" (Or, "sunas", if the sun happens to be shining.) This is an important step in learning Esperanto; you can now tell other people what's going on with the weather.
On the other hand, it may be that you are comfortably sitting at your computer screen, reading e-mail or chatting with someone in some other part of the country, and you don't want to get up to see what the weather's like. Let your spouse do it -- that's what spouses are for, after all! Of course, the spouse in question may (himself or herself) be comfortable in some other chair, perhaps in front of some other monitor, and it may prove necessary to spur her (or him) on a bit, with a question. How do you ask questions in Esperanto?
There are actually two types of questions. The first is one which asks for specific information -- the "who, what, when, where, how" question. Let's leave that one for now. The second is much simpler -- it simply asks for a yes-or-no answer. In Esperanto you make such a question in one way: you take the original statement and turn it into a question by prefixing it with the little word "ĉu".
"Pluvas!" = "It's raining!"
"Ĉu pluvas?" = "Is it raining?"
English uses a similar system with some questions, using the verb forms "do" and "does" as prefixes equivalent to "ĉu". Unfortunately, in other situations you have to use a different system; for instance, you would rarely say "does it rain?", prefering instead a reversal of subject-verb order: "is it raining"? In Esperanto, you always use "ĉu", and while you're allowed to change the word order (if you have more than one word, which is not the case so far), it's not necessary, or evern preferred.
Of course, it's silly to ask a yes-or-no question if your spouse can't answer (or you can't understand) "yes" or "no". In Esperanto, "yes" is "jes" (which is prounced exactly as in English, though perhaps a bit more crisply) and "no" is "ne", which is like the "ne" in "net", but without the 't' on the end.
So your spouse can now answer your question: "Jes!" (if it happens to be raining) or "Ne!" (if it doesn't happen to be raining). And you need not leave your screen.
If the spouse in question wants to emphasize the "no" answer, he or she may want to be aware that "ne" in Esperanto does double duty; it means not only "no" but also "not". So the spouse may want to say: "Ne, ne pluvas!" ("No, it's not raining!").
Sometimes, you may want to use "Ĉu?" as a question by itself. This is perfectly legitimate, and corresponds to the comic word balloon containing only a question mark, or to our "Really?" or "Is that so?" or "Did he?"
Sometimes, "ĉu" is put together with "ne" to turn a positive statement into a question: "ĉu ne?", meaning roughly "isn't it", "doesn't it", etc. (I think I read somewhere that there are 22 different ways of saying this same thing in English, which would be nice if you could use them interchangeably, but I believe that you are not allowed to choose, but have to match them up with particular verbs.) So instead of asking your wife whether it's raining:
"Ĉu pluvas?"
you might want to indicate that you think that it's raining, but aren't sure, so please check ...
"Pluvas, ĉu ne?"
Of course, you might start by doubting that it's raining, but aren't quite sure. To turn a negative statement into a positive question, you can say "ĉu jes", but most people would simply add a "ĉu" without the "jes":
"Ne pluvas, ĉu?"
So you might have the following conversation:
(Spouse, looking out window): "Pluvas!"
(You, doubtful): "Ne, ne pluvas ... ĉu?"
(Spouse): "Jes, pluvas. Pluvegas.
(You): "Pluvetas, ĉu ne?"
(Spouse): "Ne, ne pluvetas, pluvegas."
(You): "Ĉu ne sunas?"
(Spouse): "Ne, ne sunas! Pluvegas!!"
At this point, your spouse probably wants to use some other words to you as well, but, perhaps fortunately, we haven't studied these yet.
Make up a few weather conversations of your own, for practice.
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"?
Not long ago we talked about pluvas. What's the easiest place to go from there?
Easy. pluvas means "it's raining", i.e. right now rain is falling. But what if you want to talk about last night or tomorrow morning rather than right now?
Remember I said that the as in pluvas was an ending meaning "it's going on right now"? Well, there are two similar endings to cover the past and the future. is is the one meaning: "it's already happened". os is the one meaning "it hasn't started yet, but is going to happen". So ...
pluvas = it's raining
pluvis = it was raining
pluvos = it will rain
Here are some useful roots:
pluv' = liquid stuff that falls from the sky in drops
hajl' = what you get when you freeze it into little (sometimes big) round balls
neĝ' = what you get when you freeze it into little hexagonal flakes
vent' = air moving sideways
fulm' = a big electric spark moving from ground to cloud, or between clouds
tondr' = loud noise you hear when one of those sparks jumps
sun' = round glowing ball that's in the sky during the daytime
lun' = that big round thing that orbits the earth and shows phases
Here are some practice questions; try to answer them with one word each.
How would you say "The sun will be shining"?
How would you say "There was thunder"?
How would you say "Lightning is flashing"?
How would you say "It was windy"?
How would you say "It will hail"?
How would you say "It was raining"?
How would you say "The moon is up"?
How would you say "Snow was falling"?