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Which of the following is correct and why?
La ĉokolada kuko estas bongusta.
La ĉokolado kuko estas bongusto.
Also, which is correct in the following:
La kafo estas bongusto.
La kafo estas bongusta.
La kafo estas bonguston.
In general, what rule must I follow to determine the right word form/ending?
The basic rule that you may be missing here is that the ending -o marks a noun and -a marks an adjective. An adjective is a word used to decribe a noun. Such as in “the red car”, the “red” is an adjective decribing the car. In Esperanto this would become la ruĝa aŭto. The ruĝa is describing the aŭto. In Esperanto you ĝenerally can’t put two nouns next to each other to describe something like ruĝo aŭto. Instead you either have to make one of them an adjective, or combine them into one word like ruĝaŭto.
This sentence is correct and is a normal way to phrase it.
This is not correct because it has the two nouns “ĉokolado kuko” together. You could potentially make them into one word like ĉokoladokuko, but in my opinion this sounds a bit clunky and it changes the meaning slightly.
This sentence is grammatically correct but it probably doesn’t have the meaning you want. It would be like saying “the coffee is a good taste”, which just sounds odd.
This is correct and is a normal way to phrase it.
This is not correct. In general, esti does not take a -n ending, because it does not describe an action being done on something else so the accusative doesn’t make any sense.
