Learn Hardcore Esperanto: En mia ĉambro estas lito, tablo kaj spegulo sur la muro. - In my room there is a bed, a table and a mirror on the wall.

The subject (lito, tablo kaj spegulo) comes after estas. The location phrase (En mia ĉambro) at the beginning already tells you where, so Esperanto doesn’t add a dummy word like “there.”

Why is it “En mia ĉambro estas…” and not “Estas en mia ĉambro…” or “Lito estas en mia ĉambro…”? Are those also correct?

All of these are grammatically correct, but they sound slightly different:

En mia ĉambro estas lito, tablo kaj spegulo sur la muro.
Focus: what exists in my room.
Estas lito, tablo kaj spegulo sur la muro en mia ĉambro.
Similar meaning; bit more “neutral,” but still existential (“there is/are”).
Lito, tablo kaj spegulo estas en mia ĉambro sur la muro.
Focus: the bed, table and mirror, then you add where they are. More like “The bed, table and mirror are in my room on the wall.”

So it’s mainly about emphasis and style. The original is the most typical “there is/are in X” pattern.

Why don’t lito, tablo, and spegulo have the -n ending (accusative)?

The -n ending marks:

Direct objects, and
Motion toward somewhere with a preposition (e.g. en la ĉambron = into the room).

In this sentence:

estas is a linking verb (“to be”), not an action done to something.
lito, tablo kaj spegulo are not objects; they are what exists in the room (they function as the subject/complement).
There is no movement; everything is in a static location.

So all nouns stay in the basic form (nominative), without -n.

Why is it mia ĉambro and not mian ĉambron after en?

With en:

If something is in a place (no movement), the noun is without -n:
- en mia ĉambro = in my room (static location)
If something moves into a place, the noun takes -n:
- en mian ĉambron = into my room (motion toward)

In En mia ĉambro estas…, we’re describing where things are, not movement into the room, so mia ĉambro stays without -n.

Why is there no word for “a” or “an” before lito, tablo, and spegulo?

Esperanto has no indefinite article (“a/an”). You just say the bare noun:

lito = “a bed” or “bed” (depending on context)
tablo = “a table” / “table”
spegulo = “a mirror” / “mirror”

The sentence En mia ĉambro estas lito, tablo kaj spegulo… is naturally understood as:

In my room there is a bed, a table and a mirror…

If you want “the”, you use la, but nothing is needed for “a/an.”

Why do we say “la muro” but not “la ĉambro”?

mia ĉambro already has mia (“my”), so you don’t normally add la:
- mia ĉambro ≈ “my room / the room that is mine”
- la mia ĉambro is unusual and usually wrong; la mia by itself can mean “mine,” but you don’t stack la and mia in front of a noun like that.
la muro uses la because we are talking about a specific wall that is contextually clear (the wall of my room):
- la muro = the wall (in that room)

Saying mia muro would mean “my wall” in a more literal ownership sense (for example, you own the wall), which is not what is intended here.

Does sur la muro apply to all three items (bed, table, mirror), or only to spegulo?

By default, sur la muro is understood to modify the nearest suitable noun, which is spegulo:

…lito, tablo kaj spegulo sur la muro.
→ the mirror on the wall, not the bed or the table on the wall.

To make it absolutely unambiguous, you could say:

En mia ĉambro estas lito, tablo, kaj sur la muro estas spegulo.

But in everyday Esperanto, the original sentence is normally read as:

In my room there is a bed, a table, and a mirror on the wall.

Could the sentence mean that all three things are on the wall?

Not in normal interpretation. The structure:

lito, tablo kaj spegulo sur la muro

would be taken as: bed, table, and mirror-on-the-wall.

If you really wanted to say that all three are on the wall (a very strange room!), you’d need to make that explicit, for example:

En mia ĉambro, sur la muro, estas lito, tablo kaj spegulo.
(Even then it sounds odd, but grammatically all three are now located “on the wall.”)

So context and world knowledge also push the reader to apply sur la muro only to spegulo.

Can sur la muro be moved elsewhere in the sentence?

Yes, Esperanto word order is quite flexible. For example:

En mia ĉambro, sur la muro, estas lito, tablo kaj spegulo.
En mia ĉambro estas, sur la muro, lito, tablo kaj spegulo.

Grammatically these are fine, but:

Putting sur la muro right after spegulo (the original sentence) is the clearest and most natural way to show that it belongs to spegulo.
Moving it earlier can create ambiguity about what is on the wall.

So: you can move it, but the original placement is stylistically best here.

Why is estas the same form even though there are three things (bed, table, mirror)? Shouldn’t the verb change for plural?

In Esperanto, verbs never change for person or number. The form:

estas is used with:
- I, you, he, she, it, we, they
- singular or plural subjects

So:

Estas lito. – There is a bed.
Estas lito kaj tablo. – There are a bed and a table.
Estas lito, tablo kaj spegulo.

All use the same estas. Esperanto has no equivalent of English “am/is/are” distinctions.

Why is there a comma after lito and tablo, but not before kaj?

In lists, Esperanto punctuation is similar to many European languages:

Items are separated by commas.
Before kaj (“and”) you normally do not use a comma in a simple list.

So:

lito, tablo kaj spegulo is the standard way.
An “Oxford comma” (, kaj) is usually not used in simple coordinate lists in Esperanto, except for special clarity in complex phrases.

Could we drop estas and just say En mia ĉambro lito, tablo kaj spegulo sur la muro?

No, not in normal, full sentences. Esperanto generally requires a verb, and estas is needed here.

You might see estas omitted in:

Very telegraphic styles (headlines, notes, labels), e.g. En mia ĉambro: lito, tablo, spegulo sur la muro.
Poetry or stylized language.

But in regular prose, a correct sentence must include estas:

En mia ĉambro estas lito, tablo kaj spegulo sur la muro. ✅