Esperanto text examples with English translation

Esperanto is written in the Latin alphabet, exactly as it sounds, and most of its roots come from European languages – so words like familio, harmonio and karaktero are easy to guess. What makes a text look "Esperanto" are the regular endings: -o for nouns, -a for adjectives, -as for verbs in the present, -n for the object. Below are seven short texts, ordered from easy to harder. Five come from public-domain or official sources (four from Zamenhof's books of 1887–1905 and one from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights); two were written for this page.

Each text has an English translation and a short note on its grammar.

#What to look for in any Esperanto text

The whole system fits on one page: see the grammar overview.

#The seven texts at a glance

The levels are our own rough guide, not official ratings.

#1. A first conversation

Two learners meet online. Written for this page.

— Saluton! Mi estas Ana. Kiel vi nomiĝas?
— Saluton, Ana! Mi nomiĝas Marko. Mi loĝas en Kanado.
— Ĉu vi jam longe lernas Esperanton?
— Ne, nur tri monatojn. Kaj vi?
— Mi lernas ĝin jam unu jaron, kaj mi tre ŝatas ĝin. Ĝis revido, Marko!

English: "Hello! I'm Ana. What's your name?" – "Hello, Ana! My name is Marko. I live in Canada." – "Have you been learning Esperanto for long?" – "No, only three months. And you?" – "I've been learning it for a year now, and I really like it. Goodbye, Marko!"

What to notice. Ĉu at the start turns a statement into a yes/no question. Esperanton ends in -n because it is the object, and tri monatojn and unu jaron take -n because they measure time (the accusative). Where English says "have been learning", Esperanto simply uses the present lernas.

#2. Sentences from the Ekzercaro (1905)

The Ekzercaro is the exercise section of the Fundamento de Esperanto (1905), the binding basis of the language. These five sentences are a selection from its § 20; they are separate examples, not a story.

Hieraŭ mi renkontis vian filon, kaj li ĝentile salutis min. ― Hodiaŭ estas sabato, kaj morgaŭ estos dimanĉo. ― Se mi estus sana, mi estus feliĉa. ― Karaj infanoj, estu ĉiam honestaj! ― Ni estu gajaj, ni uzu bone la vivon, ĉar la vivo ne estas longa.

English: Yesterday I met your son, and he greeted me politely. – Today is Saturday, and tomorrow will be Sunday. – If I were healthy, I would be happy. – Dear children, always be honest! – Let us be cheerful, let us make good use of life, for life is not long.

What to notice. Five sentences, five verb endings: renkontis (past -is), estas (present -as), estos (future -os), estus (conditional -us) and estu (volitive -u, for commands and "let's"). Even esti "to be" follows the pattern, because Esperanto has no irregular verbs (verbs). Ĝentile "politely" is the adverb of ĝentila "polite".

#3. A day in modern life

An ordinary working day, written for this page.

Ĉiun matenon mi veturas al la laborejo per biciklo. Survoje mi aŭskultas podkaston en Esperanto. En la oficejo mi respondas al retmesaĝoj kaj partoprenas en retaj kunsidoj kun kolegoj el tri landoj. Vespere mi kuiras kun mia edzino, kaj poste ni spektas filmon. Antaŭ ol enlitiĝi, mi lernas dek novajn vortojn per aplikaĵo en mia poŝtelefono.

English: Every morning I cycle to work. On the way I listen to a podcast in Esperanto. At the office I answer emails and take part in online meetings with colleagues from three countries. In the evening I cook with my wife, and afterwards we watch a film. Before going to bed, I learn ten new words with an app on my phone.

What to notice. Esperanto names modern things by combining old roots: ret·mesaĝ·o "net message" (email), poŝ·telefon·o "pocket telephone" (mobile phone), labor·ej·o "place of work" and en·lit·iĝ·i "to get into bed" (word building). Ĉiun matenon "every morning" takes -n because it says when something happens. Per means "by means of": per biciklo, per aplikaĵo.

#4. Patro nia – the Lord’s Prayer (1887)

Patro nia is the first sample text in Zamenhof's first textbook, the Unua Libro (1887). In the original, every word was printed with commas between its parts – Patr,o ni,a – so that a reader who had never studied the language could look up each part in the book's word list. The text below is Zamenhof's 1887 wording in today's spelling; the original prints hod'aŭ for hodiaŭ.

Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo, sankta estu Via nomo, venu reĝeco Via, estu volo Via, kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero. Panon nian ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ kaj pardonu al ni ŝuldojn niajn kiel ni ankaŭ pardonas al niaj ŝuldantoj; ne konduku nin en tenton, sed liberigu nin de la malvera, ĉar Via estas la regado, la forto kaj la gloro eterne. Amen!

English (close translation): Our Father, who are in heaven, holy be Your name, may Your kingdom come, may Your will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth. Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors; do not lead us into temptation, but free us from evil (literally "the untrue"), for Yours is the rule, the power and the glory forever. Amen!

What to notice. The possessive can follow its noun – Patro nia, volo Via – because endings, not position, carry the grammar (word order). In Panon nian ĉiutagan all three words take -n: adjectives and possessives agree with their noun. Ŝuld·ant·oj "debtors" is a participle meaning "those who owe". Later versions, such as the one used by the International Catholic Esperanto Union (IKUE), replace malvera with malbono "evil".

#5. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This is its first article in Esperanto.

Ĉiuj homoj estas denaske liberaj kaj egalaj laŭ digno kaj rajtoj. Ili posedas racion kaj konsciencon, kaj devus konduti unu al alia en spirito de frateco.

English (official UN text): All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

What to notice. The Esperanto has 26 words against 30 in English, because one word can do the work of a phrase: de·nask·e "from birth" joins a preposition, a root and the adverb ending. Frat·ec·o "brotherhood" adds the suffix -ec- (quality) to frato "brother". Devus is the conditional of devi "must" – literally "would have to", here "should" (conditional).

#6. The fairy tale La feino (1905)

La feino "The Fairy" is the first story in the Ekzercaro (§ 11). It is Zamenhof's version of the tale known in English as "Diamonds and Toads", in which a kind girl is rewarded with roses, pearls and diamonds that fall from her mouth. This is its opening.

Unu vidvino havis du filinojn. La pli maljuna estis tiel simila al la patrino per sia karaktero kaj vizaĝo, ke ĉiu, kiu ŝin vidis, povis pensi, ke li vidas la patrinon; ili ambaŭ estis tiel malagrablaj kaj tiel fieraj, ke oni ne povis vivi kun ili. La pli juna filino, kiu estis la plena portreto de sia patro laŭ sia boneco kaj honesteco, estis krom tio unu el la plej belaj knabinoj, kiujn oni povis trovi.

English: A widow had two daughters. The elder was so like her mother in character and face that anyone who saw her might think they were seeing the mother; both were so unpleasant and so proud that no one could live with them. The younger daughter, the very image of her father in kindness and honesty, was moreover one of the most beautiful girls to be found.

What to notice. Long sentences are held together by ke "that" and by relative words: ĉiu, kiu "everyone who" and kiujn "whom", which takes -j and -n because it is a plural object (correlatives). La pli maljuna "the elder" and la plej belaj "the most beautiful" show comparison with pli and plej. In povis pensi, ke li vidas the second verb stays in the present: Esperanto keeps the tense of the original thought, where English shifts to "was seeing".

#7. La Espero, the Esperanto anthem

La Espero "The Hope" is a poem by Zamenhof, first printed without a title in 1890 in a textbook for Russian speakers. Sung to a 1909 march by Félicien Menu de Ménil, it serves as the unofficial anthem of Esperanto (flag and symbols). These are its first eight lines.

En la mondon venis nova sento,
tra la mondo iras forta voko;
per flugiloj de facila vento
nun de loko flugu ĝi al loko.
Ne al glavo sangon soifanta
ĝi la homan tiras familion:
al la mond’ eterne militanta
ĝi promesas sanktan harmonion.

English: Into the world has come a new feeling, / through the world goes a mighty call; / on the wings of a light wind / let it now fly from place to place. / Not to the sword that thirsts for blood / does it draw the human family: / to a world forever at war / it promises holy harmony.

What to notice. En la mondon takes -n because it means movement into the world, while tra la mondo "through the world" needs none (direction). Poetry bends the usual order: in glavo sangon soifanta the object sangon comes before the participle soifanta "thirsting", and ĝi la homan tiras familion splits the adjective from its noun. Mond’ drops its final -o to fit the metre, which Rule 16 of the Fundamento allows. Further on, the poem calls the speakers la esperantoj, "those who hope" – the word behind Zamenhof's pen name Doktoro Esperanto, which became the name of the language.

#Where to find more Esperanto texts

• The Fundamento de Esperanto. The Akademio de Esperanto publishes the full text free online, including all 42 sections of the Ekzercaro.
• Vikifontaro (Esperanto Wikisource) collects public-domain texts, among them La Espero.
• Project Gutenberg offers free Esperanto books, including Zamenhof's anthology Fundamenta Krestomatio (1903).
• Vikipedio, the Esperanto Wikipedia, gives reading practice on any topic.
• Our course. The 12-lesson course is built around dialogues, and free resources lists graded readers and podcasts.

#Common questions

#What does Esperanto look like?

Esperanto uses the Latin alphabet plus six letters with accents (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ), and it is spelled exactly as it is pronounced. Many roots look familiar to speakers of European languages, and regular endings mark the part of speech: -o for nouns, -a for adjectives, -as for verbs in the present.

#What was the first text published in Esperanto?

The Lord's Prayer, Patro nia, was the first sample text in Zamenhof's Unua Libro of 1887 (text 4 above). The same book also contained verses from Genesis, a sample letter and three poems.

#Can I understand Esperanto without learning it?

Partly. Readers of European languages recognise many roots, such as familio, portreto and harmonio, but the endings, the correlatives and small words like ĉu and ke need some study. The dictionary shows the meaning of every part of a word.

#Are these texts free to use?

Zamenhof's texts are in the public domain: he died in 1917. The texts written for this page are published under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, like the rest of the site.

#How do I read these texts aloud?

Every letter has one sound, and the stress always falls on the second-to-last syllable: Es·pe·RAN·to, fa·mi·LI·o. See the alphabet and pronunciation.

#Sources

• Akademio de Esperanto: Fundamento de Esperanto – Ekzercaro (§ 11 La feino, § 20)
• Zamenhof, Unua Libro (1887), page 19: scan on Wikimedia Commons
• Vikipedio: Patro nia (the 1887 text and the IKUE version)
• F. V. Lorenc, Úplná učebnice mezinárodní řeči dra. Esperanta (1890), the same 1887 text: Project Gutenberg
• Wikipedia: Unua Libro (contents of the book)
• Vikifontaro: La Espero
• Vikipedio: La Espero (first printed 1890); Wikipedia: La Espero (march by Menu de Ménil, 1909)
• Vikipedio: Universala Deklaracio de Homaj Rajtoj and Omniglot: Esperanto (Article 1 in Esperanto and English)
• PMEG: Verb forms in indirect speech and -n for measure
• Reta Vortaro (ReVo): entries retmesaĝo, aplikaĵo, podkasto
• Project Gutenberg: Fundamenta Krestomatio