Malgraŭ la vento, volontuloj kontrolis mikrofonon kaj laŭtparolilon.

Malgraŭ is a preposition meaning despite or in spite of. It introduces a circumstance that did not prevent the main action from happening.

In Esperanto, a noun after a preposition normally does not take the accusative -n just because of the preposition, so you get malgraŭ la vento, not malgraŭ la venton.

The comma separates an introductory phrase from the main clause. It helps the reader hear the pause and see that malgraŭ la vento is background information.

In Esperanto, this comma is often a matter of style, especially with a short introductory phrase. So you may see both versions, but the comma here is perfectly natural.

La is the definite article, like English the. Here it refers to the particular wind present in the situation, not wind in general.

Using vento without la would sound less anchored to a specific situation. With la vento, the sentence points to the wind they were dealing with.

The -j marks the plural, so volontulo means volunteer and volontuloj means volunteers.

Esperanto verbs do not change for person or number. So kontrolis is the same whether the subject is mi, li, or volontuloj.

The ending -is marks the past tense. So kontrolis means that the action happened in the past.

This is one of the very regular parts of Esperanto grammar:

• -as = present
• -is = past
• -os = future

Not usually. In Esperanto, kontroli usually means to check, inspect, or verify.

That makes it a bit of a false friend for English speakers. If you mean to control in the sense of to govern, manage, or direct, Esperanto often uses other verbs such as regi or estri, depending on the context.

The -n marks the direct object. These are the things the volunteers checked.

Since both nouns are direct objects joined by kaj, both take -n:

• mikrofonon
• laŭtparolilon

Esperanto has a definite article, la, but it has no indefinite article like English a/an.

So a bare singular noun like mikrofonon can often correspond to English a microphone. In context, it can sometimes also be understood as definite, but without la, the sentence itself does not strongly mark those objects as specifically identified.

It is a compound word:

• laŭt = loud
• parol = speak
• -il- = tool or instrument
• -o = noun ending
• -n = accusative ending

So laŭtparolilo is literally something like a loud-speaking instrument, which is how Esperanto forms the word for loudspeaker.

A helpful breakdown is laŭt-pa-ro-li-lon.

Two useful pronunciation points:

• aŭ sounds roughly like ow in cow
• stress in Esperanto falls on the next-to-last syllable

So the stress is on LI: laŭtparoLIlon.

Yes. Esperanto word order is fairly flexible, because endings show what each word is doing.

For example, you could also say:

Volontuloj kontrolis mikrofonon kaj laŭtparolilon malgraŭ la vento.

Starting with Malgraŭ la vento gives that circumstance extra emphasis and sets the scene first.