Esperanto makes substantial use of affixes. The verb undergoes no change in conjugation, with change of form to indicate tense. Esperanto has a vocabulary that derives largely from the Romance languages, with a small component from the Germanic languages (and smaller still from Slavic and Greek).

All nouns in Esperanto end with 'o' (e.g., amiko = friend, arbo = tree, hundo = dog, libro = book, strato = street, viro = man). For plural nouns add a "j" (e.g., amikoj = friends, katoj = cats, birdoj = birds, ratoj = rats). The definite article is represented by "la" regadless of number (la kato, la katoj = the cat, the cats).

All adjectives in Esperanto end with 'a' (alta = tall, bela = beautiful, facila = easy, longa = longa, nova = new, sana = healthy, varma = warm).

Infinitive verbs all end in 'i' (doni = to give, fari = to do or make, havi = to have, ludi = to play, ridi = to laugh, scii = to know, vidi = to see). In the present tense, verbs always end in "as", in the past tense in "is", and in the future tense "os". In addition "us" for the conditional form and "u" for the imperative. There are no irregular verbs. To use the classic verbal conjugations..

mi estas = I am,	mi estis = I was,	mi estos = I will be
vi estas = you are,	vi estis = you were,	vi estos = you will be
li estas = he is,	li estis = he was,	li estos = he will be
sxi estas = she is,	sxi estis = she was,	sxi estos = she will be
gxi estas = it is,	gxi estis = it was,	gxi estos = it will be
ni estas = we are,	ni estis = we were,	ni estos = we will be
ili estas = they are,	ili estis = they were,	ili estos = they will be

Adverbs are created by adding an "e" to the root (e.g., aktive = actively, bonne = well, facile = easily, serioze = seriously, rapide = rapdily, silente = silently, vere = truly).

The use of the "mal" prefix gives a word its opposite meaning (e.g., malalta = short, malbela = ugly, malnova = old, malvarma = cold). There are several other prefixes which will be identified later. Esperanto also used over thirty suffixes which also create new words. An example is "et" which gives a dimunitive (e.g., demeto = cottage, libreto = booklet, hundeto = small dog). Note that the suffix is applied on the root, before adding the noun ending.

Esperanto typically uses subject-verb-object as the word order. However, this is not required. The object of a phrase can be identified by adding "n" (e.g., La kato amas la ratojn = The cat loves the rats = La ratojn amas la kato = The rats are loved by the cat).