Paŭlo – Esperanto-Rakonto
A2 Esperanto listening practice · Esperanto (constructed language) · Curated for beginners
What does the ending “-ita” mean in Esperanto?
After Paulo ruins his new trousers playing rough at school, the story describes his shoes as covered in mud — the word doing that work is kovrita, built from kovri (“to cover”) plus the passive-participle marker -it- plus the ordinary adjective ending -a: something that has been covered, the way “broken” describes a “broken vase” in English. In the plural, to agree with ŝuoj (shoes), it becomes kovritaj.
-it- is one corner of a small, symmetrical system: active participles use -ant-/-int-/-ont- (doing/having done/about to do), passive ones use -at-/-it-/-ot- (being done to/having been done to/about to be done to). “Mud-covered shoes” itself would regularly be either a compound, kotkovritaj ŝuoj (koto + kovritaj glued into one word), or ŝuoj kovritaj de koto — both built on the same -it- ending you already know from kovrita.