La terapiisto legas la diagnozon antaŭ ol rehabiliti lin.

The -n marks the direct object in Esperanto.

Here, la terapiisto is doing the action, and la diagnozon is the thing being read, so diagnozo becomes diagnozon.

A very literal breakdown is:

• la terapiisto = the subject
• legas = reads
• la diagnozon = the direct object

This -n ending is called the accusative.

For the same reason: lin is also a direct object form.

• li = he
• lin = him

Since the person is the one being rehabilitated, Esperanto uses lin, not li.

No. Lin means him, so it refers to a male person or male animal, not to diagnozo.

If you wanted to refer back to diagnozo, you would normally use ĝin instead, because diagnozo is a thing, not a male person.

So the sentence structure tells you that:

• la diagnozon is what gets read
• lin is the male person who later gets rehabilitated

The suffix -isto usually means a person զբաղված with a profession, activity, or ideology.

So:

• terapio = therapy
• terapiisto = therapist

This is a very common Esperanto pattern. For example:

• arto → artisto
• scienco → sciencisto
• turismo → turisto

No. Terapiisto is normally gender-neutral.

The word itself just means therapist. It does not say whether the therapist is male or female.

The sentence uses lin, but that refers to the person being rehabilitated, not the therapist.

So:

• terapiisto = neutral
• lin = male direct object

La is Esperanto’s definite article, meaning the.

So:

• la terapiisto = the therapist
• la diagnozon = the diagnosis

A few useful points:

• Esperanto has only one article: la
• It does not have separate words for a and an
• La does not change form, even when the noun takes -n

That is why you get la diagnozon, not something like lan diagnozon.

Antaŭ ol is the normal way to say before when it is followed by a verb idea.

Here it is followed by rehabiliti, so Esperanto uses:

• antaŭ ol rehabiliti lin

If you had a noun instead, you could use just antaŭ:

• antaŭ la rehabilitado = before the rehabilitation

So a useful rule is:

• antaŭ + noun
• antaŭ ol + verb / clause

Yes, it is the same word: ol.

In Esperanto, ol often appears in comparisons, but it also appears in the fixed expression antaŭ ol.

So in this sentence, it is best to think of antaŭ ol as one unit meaning before when followed by a verbal expression.

Rehabiliti is the infinitive form, meaning the basic verb form: to rehabilitate.

After antaŭ ol, Esperanto can use an infinitive when the idea is something like:

• before rehabilitating him
• before to rehabilitate him in a very literal sense

Using the infinitive here keeps the expression compact.

If you wanted a full clause with its own subject and tense, you could use a finite verb instead, for example with an explicit subject.

The most natural understanding is that it is the same subject as the main clause, namely the therapist.

So the sentence is naturally read as:

• the therapist reads the diagnosis
• before rehabilitating him

If you wanted to make it clear that someone else does the rehabilitating, Esperanto would normally say so explicitly, for example by naming another subject.

Because rehabiliti is used here as a transitive verb: it takes a direct object.

So Esperanto says:

• rehabiliti lin = rehabilitate him

not something like:

• rehabiliti al lin

Many Esperanto verbs work this way very directly. If the verb acts on something or someone, that object often just takes -n.

Yes, Esperanto word order is more flexible than English, partly because the -n ending shows what the direct object is.

So La terapiisto legas la diagnozon is the most neutral order, but Esperanto can move things around more freely than English without losing the basic meaning.

Still, the given order is the most natural and easiest for learners:

• subject
• verb
• object
• time relation phrase

Not necessarily. Legas is the present tense, but in Esperanto the present can also describe:

• what is happening now
• what usually happens
• a general procedure

So this sentence could mean an action happening now, or it could describe a typical sequence, such as what a therapist normally does in this situation.