Sidebar: The irregularities of Esperanto

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• The plural pronouns are separate lexical entries. Compare Quechua, where for example 'they' paykuna is formed by adding the regular plural suffix -kuna to the singular pronoun pay 'he, she'.
   
• The table of correlatives is clever and fascinating, but embodies morphological processes used nowhere else in the language, e.g. the genitive suffix -es, or the distinction between kiu for persons and kio for things, not reflected in the personal pronouns or the nominal system.
   
• It's unpredictable whether a particular root will be nominal or verbal, even for items in the same semantic field: e.g. martelo 'hammer', segi 'to saw' > segilo 'saw'.
   
• It's unpredictable whether a verb will be inherently intransitive (kreski 'grow') or transitive (rompi 'break').
   
• It's not easy to predict what preposition to use with a particular verb.
   
• Etymons from the source languages may appear in multiple forms:

  kun 'with'	vs. kom- in many words
  ĉambro 'room'	kamero 'chamber'
  -segno in 'design'	signo 'sign'
  vidi 'see'	-vju- in intervjui
  kuri 'run'	kori- in koridoro 'corridor'
  lakto 'milk'	galaksio
  legi 'read'	leci- in leciono 'lesson'
  lango 'tongue'	lingvo 'language'
  skribi 'write'	manuskripto
  okulo 'eye'	binoklo 'binoculars'
  paroli 'speak'	Parlamento
  meti 'put'	permesi 'permit'
  -gnozi in 'prognosis'	-gnosti- in 'agnostic'
  regi 'rule'	reĝo 'king'
  bazo 'basis'	-bato in akrobato 'acrobat'

• Some roots which could have been formed via regular derivation instead are taken from the source languages:

  fido 'faith'	vs. fidela 'faithful'
  granda 'big'	grandioza 'superb'
  akto 'act'	aktiva 'active'
  miri 'marvel at'	miraklo
  signo	signalo
  studi 'study'	studento

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