La ministro deklaris la novan leĝon.

The minister declared the new law.

Breakdown of La ministro deklaris la novan leĝon.

• la: the
• nova: new
• leĝo: the law
• ministro: the government minister

Questions & Answers about La ministro deklaris la novan leĝon.

What do the endings in La ministro deklaris la novan leĝon tell me?

Esperanto endings give you a lot of grammatical information:

• la = the
• ministro: the ending -o shows it is a noun
• deklaris: the ending -is shows past tense
• novan: the ending -a shows an adjective, and -n shows accusative
• leĝon: the ending -o shows a noun, and -n shows accusative

So just from the endings, you can see that:

• ministro is a noun and the subject
• deklaris is a past-tense verb
• novan leĝon is the direct object, with an adjective matching the noun

Why does deklaris end in -is?

In Esperanto, all verbs use fixed tense endings:

• -as = present
• -is = past
• -os = future
• -us = conditional
• -u = command/jussive
• -i = infinitive

So:

• deklari = to declare
• deklaras = declares / is declaring
• deklaris = declared
• deklaros = will declare

That means deklaris tells you the action happened in the past.