-a

Adjectives End in -a

Level 1

Adjectives end in -a, every time.

How It Works

An adjective describes a noun. In Esperanto every adjective ends in -a.

RootAdjectiveMeaning
belbelabeautiful
grandgrandabig
novnovanew
bonbonagood

The ending -a adds the idea "having the quality of the root". An adjective can stand next to a noun, as in bela urbo, or after estas, as in La urbo estas bela.

An adjective takes the same -j and -n as the noun it describes: belajn urbojn. The next entries show how.

Possessive words such as mia (my) and ordinal numbers such as unua (first) are adjectives too, so they end in -a as well.

Examples (4)

  1. Parizo estas bela urbo.

    Paris is a beautiful city.

    Bela is an adjective: bel plus -a.

  2. Kofi havas novan libron.

    Kofi has a new book.

    Novan is nova with -n, because libron has -n.

  3. Hiro havas grandan domon.

    Hiro has a big house.

    Grandan describes domon and copies its -n.

  4. Fatima estas bona amikino.

    Fatima is a good friend.

    Bona describes the noun amikino.

How It Connects

Tap a pattern to see what it builds on and what it leads to.

-aLevel 1Adjectives End in -a

Learn This First

An adjective describes a noun, so it comes after the noun ending.

Learn Next

Patterns that build on this one.