Having discussed the weather for seven lessons, let's widen our perspectives a little. You can say Pluvas! to inform the world that the environment is dropping rain on you; but what if you want to say that a cloud is dropping rain on you? In that case, you need to add something a bit more specific to the verb. What you need is a word for what it is that is doing the raining. In other words, you need the name of something. In Esperanto we show the name of something by adding, to the end of the root, the sound of -O, which basically means: "This is the name of something!"
In this case we need
nub' = A visible collection of water droplets floating high in the air; a cloud.
By adding an -O to the end, we get:
nubo = The name of a visible collection of water droplets floating high in the air; "a cloud"
So we can now say: Nubo pluvas! = A cloud is raining!
This is the second of three basic types of sentence in Esperanto. The first, which we've been studying, is:
"Something is happening".
Its general pattern is simply: -AS.
This second is:
"Sombody or something is experiencing something, or is doing something that affects only itself."
And its general pattern is simply: -O -AS. (1)
Let's learn a few roots that we can use in such sentences:
hom' = a human being.
arb' = a tree.
akv' = water.
river' = a river.
fal' = move spontaneously towards a source of gravitational attraction; fall
okaz' = go from a state of non-existence to one of existence; occur, happen
flu' = move smoothly and as a body from one location to another; flow
star' = be in a vertical position, supported by feet and legs; stand
sid' = be in a vertical position but supported primarily by the posterior; sit
kuŝ' = be in a horizontal position; lie
Try these sentences (remembering to put on the appropriate endings):
A tree lies (is lying down). (2)
Water falls.
A person (human being) is sitting.
A river flows.
Suppose you want to say: The river is flowing. How do you distinguish between some undefined river ("a river") and some specific river about which you are talking ("the river")? In Esperanto, the word for the is la; like "the", it goes directly before the word to which it is attached: La rivero fluas.
But what about the English a, an? They don't exist in Esperanto. In English, they serve two purposes: (1) to show that a word is indefinite; and (2) to show that it is a noun (e.g., to help distinguish red from a red). In Esperanto, the -O on the end of a word takes care of the second; and since la shows that the word to which it is attached is definite, its absence is enough to show indefiniteness. So rivero can be river or a river, and more often the latter.
OK, try saying:
The rain is falling. (3)
The storm is happening.
The snow is happening.
Next time: switching endings.
(1) In Esperanto, word-order is much less important than it is in English, and this particular pattern can just as easily be written -AS -O.
(2) To lie in English has several different and unrelated meanings which are described in Esperanto by totally different words.
(3) The ending -AS generally covers all three forms common for showing what's happening in English: sits, is sitting, does sit.