Esperanto at Stanford University

Lesson Zero - Grammar in General

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Lesson Zero - Grammar in General

This is my extremely simplified description of grammar in general:

Philosophical underpinnings: Everything in the universe is made up of “actions”. (We can discuss Quantum Mechanics when you've learned enough Esperanto for a discussion. :) Some of these actions seem solid and/or stable, so to simplify our lives we call them “things”.

As language users, to discuss anything, humans use words. Almost all the words we use are:

What kind of word:	This is what grammarians call them:
action - examples: to love, to fly, to beautify	verb
thing - examples: bird, Fred, beauty	noun
word describing a thing - examples: big, blue, quiet, beautiful	adjective
word describing an action - examples: rapidly, beautifully	adverb
word describing another describing word - examples: very, more... than	unfortunately, these are also called adverbs
word that connects words - examples: and, but	conjunctions and prepositions
word that replaces the name of a thing - examples: i, you, it	pronouns
words that yell - examples: hey!	interjections

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