These are going to be the death of me. I really wanna learn Esperanto but the one thing that's holding me back are those correlatives! The affixes are hard as well but I think I can figure those out. It's only the suffixes that are hard.

Take heart!

In my experience, there is at least one thing about any new language which gives new students a problem.

Here are some of mine:

Spanish: The subjunctive mood drives me insane. It isn't enough that I have to learn the verbs and their conjugations, I never know when is the right time to use it!

Japanese: Like Chinese, the Japanese use counting words when expressing quantities. For example, in English you would never ask for "3 waters" at a restaurant. You would ask for "3 -glasses- of water". The Japanese extend this to pratically everything. You can't just say "3 little birds". It has to be "3 small animals of birds". I often guess at the counting word to use in certain situations and frequently guess wrong. To make matters worse, many Japanese people are so incredibly polite that they feel that correcting me is rude. *sigh*

Any Slavic Language: Don't get me started on the different noun declensions. That is still a very SORE subject with me!

Esperanto: I don't care how logical the correlatives are. Sometimes they can STILL be a pain in the butt!

Don't be discouraged, however. I have also learned that once you get past these minor irritations, that is the time that the language becomes really fun to use. Don't give up before you get to have the fun. You'll really miss out then and all your hard work will be for nothing!

CKyle22:These are going to be the death of me.

The correlatives drive me crazy too. For me,what is working, is learning the i- forms (io, iu etc) as something I can get my head round and then working 'out' to the other forms.

For the affixes I try & learn words that use them (viro, virino. rido, rideto etc) to try & nail them to my poor brain - that seems to help.

Here is a past thread on this problem that may be helpful. One change is that the link to Sylvan Zaft's text is unfortunately no longer available. However, if you send your email address to me in a message, I'll be able to attach the html to a reply.

They were the death of me, too. Luckily, I was able to arrange a resurrection!

Seriously, for probably the first year that I was studying, they were trouble. They all freakin' looked alike, and I couldn't remember which was what and so on.

And then, one day, I noticed that they just weren't a problem anymore. All it really took was getting used to them. I'd been reading and writing long enough that they had stopped looking alike, and I was actually able to tell "kiu" from "tiom".

Really, I think it's just a matter of practice. I totally get where you're coming from, since I was there too, but I can attest to the fact that if you stick with it, they will, after some time, no longer be an issue.

It's useful to remember that they have subtle yet strong similarities in meaning. Even if you already know, it pays to remind yourself a bit.
One way of thinking about it could be like this:
'k' = question word ("what")
't' = demonstrative word ("that")
'cx' = "every"
"nen" = no, not (negatory word)

====

io = [some/a] thing (e.g. something)
k+io = what thing = what?
t+io = that thing = that
cx+io = every thing = everything, all [things].
nen+io = no thing = nothing

iu = [some/a] ____ (____ = insert object of choice)
k+iu = what ____ = what/which ____?
t+iu = that ____ = that ____
cx+iu = every ____ = every/each/all ____
nen+iu = no ____ (e.g. no cats)

ia = [some/a] kind of ____
k+ia = what kind of ____
t+ia = that kind of ____
cx+ia = every kind of ____
nen+ia = no kind of ____

ie = [some/a] location (somewhere)
k+ie = what location = where
t+ie = that location = there (use with 'cxi' to form 'here')
cx+ie = every location = everywhere
nen+ie = no location = nowhere

iam = [some/a] time, [at some/a] time, ever
k+iam = what time = when
t+iam = that time = then
cx+iam = every time = all the time etc
nen+iam = no time = never

ial = [for some/a] reason
k+ial = for what reason = why
t+ial = for that reason = therefore
cx+ial = for every reason
nen+ial = for no reason

iel = [in some/a] way (way as in style, hard to explain)
k+iel = in what way = why (also doubles as 'as, like' etc)
t+iel = in that way = thus, so, such
cx+iel = in every way
nen+iel = in no way = by no means etc

iom = [to some/a] extent (also a little, some of (a quantity of things))
k+iom = what extent = how much/many
t+iom = that extent = that much/many
cx+iom = every extent = all (of it)
nen+iom = no extent = none (of it)

'Part from that I can't think of any other correlatives. Hopefully this helps people, I just thought it could be of use. Really you are only learning a few words:
k = what
t = that
cx = every
nen = none
io, iu, ia, ie, iam, ial, iel, iom, iel.... that's about 13 words as opposed to the 40 forms that you could try learning one by one (which would be slower).

Sadly though, writing this reminded me of how powerful the English language could be if we just changed the way we spoke a tad - but I doubt that will happen due to many persisting that it's not 'correct English' (not that today's image of correct English is traditionally sound at all... but hey).

EDIT: This reminds me - does anyone have any problems with 'k-?!' (e.g. the sound of an aspirated 'k') being used to emulate the English 'wh-?!' that might be found in comics or colloquially written dialogue?

ceigered:'Part from that I can't think of any other correlatives. Hopefully this helps people.

There's only one suffix missing from your impressively helpful message, namely ies, which indicates possession, e.g. kies = "whose", so you may wish to edit your message to include it, and you will then indeed have all 45 of them!

Miland:

ceigered:'Part from that I can't think of any other correlatives. Hopefully this helps people.

There's only one suffix missing from your impressively helpful message, namely ies, which indicates possession, e.g. kies = "whose", so you may wish to edit your message to include it, and you will then indeed have all 45 of them!

Oh thanks Miland, I'll do that one here:
ies = [some]one's
k+ies = what one's = whose
t+ies = that one's
cx+ies = every one's = everyone's
nen+ies = no one's

I had a feeling one was avoiding me

Hi

Miland kindly sent me the Sylvan Zaft on correlatives & it had a quote that really encouraged me, I hope that it encourages someone else:

Don Harlow writes that “these words make up approximately ten percent of all text in Esperanto.” If Harlow is correct, that means that when you have mastered these forty-five correlatives, you will have mastered ten per cent of the language.

For people struggling to learn the correlatives, here's a quote from Teach Yourself Esperanto that may be helpful:
"Some of these correlatives are used more than others, and some very seldom. For this reason, it is not recommended that the beginner should try to learn all these words at once from the table, which is given only for reference. The most important will be given a few at a time."
In fact, it's not until Unit 9 (out of a total of 15) that the last correlatives are mentioned.