Esperanto vocabulary
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Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
contained around 900 root words and was defined in ''
Unua Libro ''Dr. Esperanto's International Language'' (russian: wikt:международный#Russian, Международный wikt:язык#Russian, язык), commonly referred to as ' (''First Book''), is an 1887 book by Polish ophthalmologist L. L ...
'' ("First Book"), published by
L. L. Zamenhof L. L. Zamenhof (15 December 185914 April 1917) was an ophthalmologist who lived for most of his life in Warsaw. He is best known as the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language. Zamenhof first dev ...
in 1887. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, '' Universala vortaro'' ("International Dictionary"), which was written in five languages and supplied a larger set of root words, adding 1740 new words. The rules of the Esperanto language allow speakers to borrow words as needed, recommending only that they look for the most international words, and that they borrow one basic word and derive others from it, rather than borrowing many words with related meanings. Since then, many words have been borrowed from other languages, primarily those of Western Europe. In recent decades, most of the new borrowings or coinages have been technical or scientific terms; terms in everyday use are more likely to be derived from existing words (for example  computer from o compute, or extending them to cover new meanings (for example  mouse now also signifies a computer input device, as in English). There are frequent debates among Esperanto speakers about whether a particular borrowing is justified, or whether the need can be met by derivation or extending the meaning of existing words.


Origins

Esperanto occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic"
constructed language A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...
s such as
Interlingua Interlingua (; ISO 639 language codes ia, ina) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It ranks among the most widely used IALs and is t ...
, which take words ''en masse'' from their source languages with little internal derivation, and ''a priori'' conlangs such as
Solresol Solresol (Solfège: Sol- Re- Sol), originally called Langue universelle and then Langue musicale universelle, is a constructed language devised by François Sudre, beginning in 1827. His major book on it, ''Langue Musicale Universelle'', was p ...
, in which the words have no historical connection to other languages. In Esperanto,
root word A root (or root word) is the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements. In morphology, a root is a morphologically simple unit which can be left bare or to which a prefix or a suffix can attach. The root word is the prima ...
s are borrowed and retain much of the form of their source language, whether the phonetic form ( from ''ex-'') or orthographic form ( from ''team''). However, each root can then form dozens of derivations that may bear little resemblance to equivalent words in the source languages, such as (government), which is derived from the Latinate root ''reg'' (to rule).


Word formation

One of the ways Zamenhof made Esperanto easier to learn than ethnic languages was by creating a regular and highly productive
derivational morphology Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as For example, ''unhappy'' and ''happiness'' derive from the root word ''happy.'' It is differentiat ...
. Through the judicious use of lexical
affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
es (prefixes suffixes), the core vocabulary needed for communication was greatly reduced, making Esperanto a more
agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to remain ...
than most European languages. It has been estimated that on average one
root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...
in Esperanto is the communicative equivalent of ten words in English. However, a contrary tendency is apparent in cultured and Greco-Latin technical vocabulary, which most Europeans see as "international" and therefore take into Esperanto ''en masse'', despite the fact they are not truly universal. Many Asians consider this to be an onerous and unnecessary burden on the memory, when it is so easy to derive equivalent words internally (for example by calquing them, which is what Chinese often does). This sparks frequent debates as to whether a particular root is justified, and sometimes results in duplicates of native and borrowed vocabulary. An example is "calligraphy", which occurs both as a calqued ("writing of beauty") and as the direct borrowing . A similar development has also occurred in English (''brotherly'' vs. ''fraternal''), German ( vs. for ''ornithology''), Japanese ( vs. for ''baseball''), Spanish ( vs. for ''basketball''), French ( vs. ), and other languages. However, although the debates in ethnic languages are motivated by nationalism or issues of cultural identity, in Esperanto the debates are largely motivated by differing views on how to make the language practical and accessible.


Affixes

One of the most immediately useful derivational affixes for the beginner is the prefix , which derives
antonym In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. For example, something that is ''long'' entails that it is not ''short''. It is referred to as a 'binary' relationship because there are two members ...
s: (heavy), (light); (upwards), (downwards); (to love), (to hate); (light), (darkness). However, except in jokes, this prefix is not used when an antonym exists in the basic vocabulary: (south), not "malnorda" from 'north'; (to be lacking, intr.), not "malesti" from 'to be'. The creation of new words through the use of grammatical (i.e. inflectional) suffixes, such as (mere) from (only), (contemporary) from (then), or (sight) from (to see), is covered in the article on
Esperanto grammar Esperanto is the most widely used constructed language intended for international communication; it was designed with highly regular grammatical rules, and as such is considered an easy language to learn. Each part of speech has a characteristic ...
. What follows is a list of what are usually called "affixes". Most of them, however, are actually lexical roots, in that they can be used as independent words and their relative order in a compound is determined by semantics, not grammar. They are called "affixes" mainly because they derive from affixes in Esperanto's source languages. Some are true affixes in that, although they may be used independently, their order within a word is fixed by the grammar. Only a few cannot be used independently and so correspond to how a typical affix behaves in English. When a root receives more than one affix, their order matters, because affixes modify the entire
stem Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...
they are attached to. That is, the outer ones modify the inner ones. Most affixes are themselves roots, and as such have an inherent part of speech. This is indicated by the final part-of-speech vowel in the suffix list below. A few affixes do not affect the part of speech of the root; for the suffixes listed in the tables below, this is indicated by a hyphen in place of the final vowel.


List of lexical suffixes


List of prefixes

There are, in addition, affixes not listed here: technical affixes, such as the biological family suffix seen in (
Guineafowl Guineafowl (; sometimes called "pet speckled hens" or "original fowl") are birds of the family Numididae in the order Galliformes. They are endemic to Africa and rank among the oldest of the gallinaceous birds. Phylogenetically, they branched o ...
s), and a few non-standard affixes taken from
Ido Ido () is a constructed language derived from Reformed Esperanto, and similarly designed with the goal of being a universal second language for people of diverse backgrounds. To function as an effective ''international auxiliary language'', I ...
, such as (full of) in (mountainous), (muscular), (porous). A proposed suffix makes adjectives out of nouns made from adjectives: (caloric, from warm), (nationalize).
Lexical Lexical may refer to: Linguistics * Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language * Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification * Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge * Lex ...
(i.e. derivational) affixes may act as roots by taking one of the
grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...
suffixes: (opposite), (slight), (a member), (a  doohickey), (possibly), (to become), (a bit, a crumb). Also, through compounding, lexical roots may act as affixes: (to see), (to be able to), (able to see, not blind); (head, chief), (a city), (a capital). It is quite common for prepositions to be used as prefixes: (to arrive), from (to) and (come); (hopeless), from (without) and (hope); (to consider), from (about) and (to think); (sell wholesale), from (at the rate of) and (large uantity, etc. There is even (registration form), from the preposition (to) and the suffixes (to become) and (an instrument).


Compounds

Compound words in Esperanto are similar to English, in that the final root is basic to the meaning. The roots may be joined together directly, or with an
epenthetic In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek language, Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable (''prothesis (linguistics), prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syll ...
(linking) vowel to aid pronunciation. This epenthetic vowel is most commonly the nominal suffix , used regardless of number or case, but other grammatical suffixes may be used when the inherent part of speech of the first root of the compound needs to be changed. : (a songbird) versus (a birdsong) : (a sailship) versus (a ship sail) : (a centennial year of a hundred versus (a century  hundred of years : (expensive, with an adverbial ) Prepositions are frequently found in compounds, and behave much like prefixes, : (to consider something) versus (to think about something). Since affixes may be used as root words, and roots may combine like affixes, the boundary between the two is blurred. Many so-called affixes are indistinguishable from other roots. However, "true" affixes are grammatically fixed as being either prefixes or suffixes, whereas the order of roots in compounds is determined by semantics. Although Zamenhof did not prescribe rules for which consonant sequences are not acceptable and therefore when the epenthetic is required, he generally omitted it when the result was a sequence of two consonants, as in above. However, he inserted an , * when the two consonants that would come together differed in voicing, and would both become different consonants if their voicing were changed, as in (rose-colored). This prevents the voicing assimilation that is so prevalent in the world's languages, including Zamenhof's Russian and German, and that would result in "" being mispronounced as (dew-colored) or . This is not a problem for
sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...
s, such as ''l, r, m, n, j'', which do not have voiceless equivalents in Esperanto, so the may be safely dropped from . * when the two consonants would be the same, as in (the evening of life). This reflects the general lack of
geminate consonant In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
s in Esperanto. However, epenthetic vowels are never used with affixes or prepositions, so double consonants are found in such cases, as in (short). * when the first element was very short and might not otherwise be recognized, as in (godlike). * when the compound would otherwise be homonymous with an existing word, as in (shell game); cf. (conclusion).


Reduplication

Reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
is only marginally used in Esperanto. It has an intensifying effect similar to that of the suffix . The common examples are (chock-full), from (full), (finally, at last), from (final), and (once in a while), from (once, sometimes). Reduplication has only used with monosyllabic roots that do not require an epenthetic vowel when compounded.


Some examples

: (a emalelover) : (lovable) : (loving) : (to feel distaste for) : (hopeful f a situation: inspiring hope : (hopeful f a person: tending to hope : (the Esperanto community) : (broken Esperanto) Affixes may be used in novel ways, creating new words that don't exist in any national language. Sometimes the results are poetic: In one Esperanto novel, a man opens an old book with a broken spine, and the yellowed pages rom the root (free) and the affixes and There is no equivalent way to express this in English, but it creates a very strong visual image of the pages escaping the book and scattering over the floor. More importantly, the word is comprehensible the first time one hears it. Derivation by affix greatly expands a speaker's vocabulary, sometimes beyond what they know in their native language. For instance, the English word (a single lens of a compound eye) is rather obscure, but a child would be able to coin an Esperanto equivalent, , from 'an eye' (or perhaps, more precisely, , by first coining for 'a compound eye'). In this way the Esperanto root (see) regularly corresponds to some two dozen English words: ''see (saw, seen), sight, blind, vision, visual, visible, nonvisual, invisible, unsightly, glance, view, vista, panorama, observant'' etc., though there are also separate Esperanto roots for some of these concepts. In the ''Fundamento'', Zamenhof illustrated word formation by deriving the equivalents of ''recuperate, disease, hospital, germ, patient, doctor, medicine, pharmacy'', etc. from (healthy). Not all of the resulting words translate well into English, in many cases because they distinguish fine shades of meaning that English lacks: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Perhaps half of these words are in common use, but the others (and more) are available if needed.


Correlatives

The
correlative In grammar, a correlative is a word that is paired with another word with which it functions to perform a single function but from which it is separated in the sentence. In English, examples of correlative pairs are ''both–and, either–or, nei ...
s are a paradigm of
pro-form In linguistics, a pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. They are used either to avoid re ...
s, used to ask and answer the questions ''what, where, when, why, who, whose, how, how much'', and ''what kind''. They are constructed from set elements so that correlatives with similar meanings have similar forms: There are nine endings corresponding to the nine ''wh-'' questions, and five initial elements that perform the functions of asking, answering, denying, being inclusive, and being indefinite about these nine questions. For example, the words (when) and (who, which), with the initial of questions, ''ask'' about time and individuals, whereas the (then) and (this/that one), with the same endings but the initial of
demonstrative Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s, ''answer'' those questions, and the words (never) (no-one) deny those questions. Thus by learning these 14 elements the speaker acquires a paradigm of 45 adverbs and pronouns. The correlatives beginning correspond to the English
demonstrative Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s in ''th- (this, thus, then, there'' etc.), whereas corresponds to and to ''some-''. The correlatives beginning with have a double function, as
interrogative An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
and
relative Relative may refer to: General use *Kinship and family, the principle binding the most basic social units society. If two people are connected by circumstances of birth, they are said to be ''relatives'' Philosophy *Relativism, the concept that ...
pronouns and adverbs, just as the ''wh-'' words do in English: (Which horse?); (The horse that ran away). The adjectival determiners ending in have the usual dual function of adjectives: standing alone as proforms, as in (everyone); and modifying a noun, as in (every day). Those ending in are exclusively used standing alone: (everything). The correlatives have a
genitive case In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
ending in . Therefore, the adjectival correlatives, ending in and , do not play that role, as adjectival
personal pronouns Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
such as ("my") do. However, adjectival correlatives do agree in number and case with the nouns they modify, as any other adjectives: (The horses which I saw). They, as well as the independent determiners ending in , also take the accusative case when standing in for the object of a clause. The accusative of motion is used with the place correlatives in , forming (hither, whither, thither, etc.).


Table of correlatives


Correlative particles

Several adverbial particles are used primarily with the correlatives: indicates generality, indicates proximity, and indicates distance. (Without these particles,
demonstratives Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
such as and are ''not'' specific about distance, though they are usually translated as "that" ather than "this" or "that over there") : (whatever) : (anything) : (that eneral annot modify a noun: (that one) an modify a noun: (that boy): (those) : (this one) : (that one yonder) : (hither o here : (each/every dog) : (all dogs) : (all these dogs)


An extension of the original paradigm

Sometimes the correlative system is extended to the root (other), at least when the resulting word is unambiguous, : (in another way), (someone else's). , however, would be ambiguous as to whether the original meaning "otherwise" or the correlative "elsewhere" were intended, so (from "place") is used for "elsewhere". As a practical matter, only and are seen with any frequency, and even they are condemned by many speakers.


Interrogative ''vs'' relative pronouns

Examples of the interrogative versus relative uses of the words: : (Who stole my ring?) : (The police haven't caught the thieves who lural/sub> stole my ring.) : (How did you do that?) : (I don't know how to do that.) Also, : (What kind of man is he?) : (What a man!) Note that standard Esperanto punctuation puts a comma before the relative word (a correlative in or the conjunction , "that"), a feature common to many Slavic languages.


Derivatives

Various parts of speech may be derived from the correlatives, just as from any other roots: (eternal), (ubiquitous), (contemporary), (a reason), (a little bit), (which floor?) ordinal answer of how many floors up, like (the 16th), rather than asking someone to simply point out which floor, which would be asked with . The same form is used for asking time: , literally "How-manyeth hour is it?"] Although the initial and final elements of the correlatives are not roots or affixes, in that they cannot normally be independently combined with other words (for instance, there is no genitive case in for nouns), the initial element of the correlatives is an exception, as seen in (a nobody), from plus , or , to nullify or destroy, from plus the causative .


Gender

Usually, feminine nouns are derived from
epicene Epicenity is the lack of gender distinction, often reducing the emphasis on the masculine to allow the feminine. It includes androgyny – having both masculine and feminine characteristics. The adjective ''gender-neutral'' may describe epicenit ...
(genderless) roots via the suffix . A relatively small number of Esperanto roots are semantically masculine or feminine. In some but not all cases, masculine roots also have feminine derivatives via . Usage is consistent for only a few dozen words. For others, people may differ in usage, or it may be difficult to tell whether a word is gendered because of social custom or because of the word itself.


Masculine roots

A small (and decreasing) number of noun roots, mostly titles and kinship terms, are inherently masculine unless the feminine suffix or the inclusive prefix are added. For example, there are (father), (mother), and (parents), whereas there is no proper word for in the singular (as explained in a following section). There are other words, such as (
pope The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
), which are generally assumed to be masculine due to historical reality, but there is no reason a feminine form "papino" couldn't be used in fiction, or if customs change.


The original setup

In the early twentieth century, members of a profession were assumed to be masculine unless specified otherwise with , reflecting the expectations of most industrial societies. That is, was a male secretary, and was a male teacher. This was the case for all words ending in , as well as ( "a rich ''man''"), and ethnicities ( "a male Christian", "an English''man''"), ( "a male mayor"), and the
participles In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
( "a male beginner"). Many domestic animals were also masculine ( "bull", "billygoat", "rooster"). These generally became gender-neutral over the course of the century, as many similar words did in English, because of social transformation. Once such a word is used ambiguously by a significant number of speakers or writers, it can no longer be assumed to be masculine. Language guides suggest using all ambiguous words neutrally, and many people find this the least confusing approach—and so the ranks of masculine words gradually dwindle.


The current situation

There is still variation in many of the above words, depending on the social expectations and language background of the speaker. Many of the words are not clearly either masculine or epicene today. For example, the plural is generally understood to mean "cattle", not "bulls", and similarly the plurals (Englishpeople) and (beginners); but a masculine meaning reappears in "a bull & cow", (an Englishman & Englishwoman), (a male & female beginner). There are several dozen clearly masculine roots: :Words for boys and men: (
bachelor A bachelor is a man who is not and has never been married.Bachelors are, in Pitt & al.'s phrasing, "men who live independently, outside of their parents' home and other institutional settings, who are neither married nor cohabitating". (). Etymo ...
– the feminine is used for 'miss'), (boy), (man). :Kinship terms: (grandfather), (husband), (fiance), (son), (brother), (cousin), (grandson), (nephew), (uncle), (father), (widower), but not (orphan) or (relative). :Titles of nobility that have feminine equivalents: (baron), (
czar Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word '' caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the t ...
), (count), (knight), (prince), (king), (lord, sir), but not generic (noble) or (monarch). Many non-European titles, such as (
shah Shah (; fa, شاه, , ) is a royal title that was historically used by the leading figures of Iranian monarchies.Yarshater, EhsaPersia or Iran, Persian or Farsi, ''Iranian Studies'', vol. XXII no. 1 (1989) It was also used by a variety of ...
) and (
mikado Mikado may refer to: * Emperor of Japan or Arts and entertainment * ''The Mikado'', an 1885 comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan * ''The Mikado'' (1939 film), an adaptation of the opera, directed by Victor Schertzinger * ''The Mikado'' (1967 f ...
), are considered masculine because there are no female examples (there is no "ŝahino" or "mikadino"), but like 'pope' above, this is subject to circumstance. For example, though (pharaoh) may be said to be masculine,
Hatshepsut Hatshepsut (; also Hatchepsut; Egyptian: '' ḥꜣt- špswt'' "Foremost of Noble Ladies"; or Hatasu c. 1507–1458 BC) was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. She was the second historically confirmed female pharaoh, aft ...
is described not only as a but as a female . :Religious orders that have feminine equivalents: (
abbot Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various Western religious traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not the head of a monastery. The fem ...
), (monk). Others, such as (
rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...
), do not occur in the feminine but, like (pope), that is a matter of custom rather than language. :Male mythological figures: (
cyclopes In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, the Cyclopes ( ; el, Κύκλωπες, ''Kýklōpes'', "Circle-eyes" or "Round-eyes"; singular Cyclops ; , ''Kýklōps'') are giant one-eyed creatures. Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguish ...
), (
leprechaun A leprechaun ( ga, leipreachán/luchorpán) is a diminutive supernatural being in Irish folklore, classed by some as a type of solitary fairy. They are usually depicted as little bearded men, wearing a coat and hat, who partake in mischief. I ...
), etc. These do not take the suffix . There are relatively few mythological terms that can only be masculine. (
incubus An incubus is a demon in male form in folklore that seeks to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women; the corresponding spirit in female form is called a succubus. In medieval Europe, union with an incubus was supposed by some to result in t ...
), for example, is prototypically masculine, but the feminine is found as an alternative to (
succubus A succubus is a demon or supernatural entity in folklore, in female form, that appears in dreams to seduce men, usually through sexual activity. According to religious tradition, a succubus needs male semen to survive; repeated sexual activity ...
). :Dedicated masculine words for domestic animals that have a separate epicene root: (buck), (stallion), (bull). These do not take the suffix . :Words for castrated beings: (
eunuch A eunuch ( ) is a male who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2nd millennium ...
), (castrated rooster), (castrated bull). These do not take the suffix . :A word for male: . Some of these, such as and the dedicated words for male animals, are fundamentally masculine and are never used with the feminine suffix. The others remain masculine mainly because Zamenhof did not establish a way to derive masculine words the way he did for feminine words. To partially remedy this, the root (man) has long been used to form the masculine of animal words. Originally a suffix, since the 1926 publication of the Esperanto translation of the Bible it has shifted in use to a prefix, but either way the resulting words are ambiguous. "bovine-man" and "man-bovine", for example, could mean either "
minotaur In Greek mythology, the Minotaur ( , ;. grc, ; in Latin as ''Minotaurus'' ) is a mythical creature portrayed during classical antiquity with the head and tail of a bull and the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, a being "pa ...
" or "bull", and therefore both (bull) and (minotaur) have been borrowed into the language to disambiguate. Adjectival usage of is also found, but is similarly ambiguous. More recently, the word (masculine) was created as an unambiguous alternative.


Feminine roots

There are several dozen feminine roots that do not normally take the feminine suffix : :Words for women: (lady), (matron), (shrew/bitch, from mythology); :Female professions: (
almah ''Almah'' ( ''‘almā'', plural: ''‘ălāmōṯ''), from a root implying the vigour of puberty, is a Hebrew word meaning a young woman ripe for marriage; despite its importance to the account of the virgin birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Ma ...
), (
geisha {{Culture of Japan, Traditions, Geisha {{nihongo, Geisha, 芸者 ({{IPAc-en, ˈ, ɡ, eɪ, ʃ, ə; {{IPA-ja, ɡeːɕa, lang), also known as {{nihongo, , 芸子, geiko (in Kyoto and Kanazawa) or {{nihongo, , 芸妓, geigi, are a class of female ...
), (concubine), (prostitute), (
odalisque An odalisque (, tr, odalık) was a chambermaid or a female attendant in a Turkish seraglio, particularly the court ladies in the household of the Ottoman sultan. In western usage, the term came to mean the harem concubine, and refers to the ...
), (
prima donna In opera or commedia dell'arte, a prima donna (; Italian for "first lady"; plural: ''prime donne'') is the leading female singer in the company, the person to whom the prime roles would be given. ''Prime donne'' often had grand off-stage pers ...
), (
soubrette A soubrette is a type of operatic soprano voice ''fach'', often cast as a female stock character in opera and theatre. The term arrived in English from Provençal via French, and means "conceited" or "coy". Theatre In theatre, a soubrette is a c ...
); :Female mythological figures: (
Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
), ( Fury), (
Muse In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...
), (
nymph A nymph ( grc, νύμφη, nýmphē, el, script=Latn, nímfi, label=Modern Greek; , ) in ancient Greek folklore is a minor female nature deity. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are ty ...
), (
siren Siren or sirens may refer to: Common meanings * Siren (alarm), a loud acoustic alarm used to alert people to emergencies * Siren (mythology), an enchanting but dangerous monster in Greek mythology Places * Siren (town), Wisconsin * Siren, Wisc ...
), etc. :Special words for female domestic animals: (heifer) :Spayed animals: (poulard) :Words for female: , . Like the essentially masculine roots (those that do not take the feminine suffix), feminine roots are rarely interpreted as epicene. However, many of them are feminine because of social custom or the details of their mythology, and there is nothing preventing masculine usage in fiction. Even outside of fiction, words such as (muse) (nymph) may be used metaphorically for males, and a collection of
Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
's poetry has been translated under the title ('The emaleMuse'), with gendered metaphorical usage. Similarly, is also the biological name for sea-cows (Latin ), and as such one can speak of (a female sea-cow).


Feminine personal names

The ending of all assimilated nouns in Esperanto with , including personal names, clashes with Romance languages such as Italian and Spanish, in which marks masculine names, and feminine names end in . For example, the fully Esperantized form of 'Mary' is , which resembles Spanish masculine rather than feminine . (Though suffixed is also available, it is seldom seen.) This has resulted in some writers using a final for feminine names with cognates in Romance languages, such as "John" vs. "Joanna", rather than using the feminine suffix for a more fully assimilated and , or "Joseph" and "Josephine". Some writers extend this convention to all female names.


Gendered pronouns

Esperanto personal pronouns distinguish gender in the third-person singular: (he), (she); but not in the plural: (they). There are two practical
epicene Epicenity is the lack of gender distinction, often reducing the emphasis on the masculine to allow the feminine. It includes androgyny – having both masculine and feminine characteristics. The adjective ''gender-neutral'' may describe epicenit ...
third-person singular pronouns: expanding the use of the demonstrative pronoun (that one), and (Zamenhof's suggestion). See the discussions at
gender reform in Esperanto Gender asymmetry is an aspect of the constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto which has been challenged by numerous proposals seeking to regularize both Grammatical gender, grammatical and Lexicon, lexical gender. In the text below, ...
.


Antonyms

People sometimes object to using the prefix to derive highly frequent antonyms, especially when they are as long as (far). There are a few alternative roots in poetry, such as for (very ugly) and for (lazy) – some of which originated in
Ido Ido () is a constructed language derived from Reformed Esperanto, and similarly designed with the goal of being a universal second language for people of diverse backgrounds. To function as an effective ''international auxiliary language'', I ...
– that find their way into prose. However, they are rarely used in conversation. This is a combination of two factors: the great ease and familiarity of using the prefix, and the relative obscurity of most of the alternatives, which would hamper communication. This results in English borrowings – such as (cheap) for (inexpensive) – failing to find favor even among native English speakers. Two root antonyms are frequently encountered: (little), and (hard ot soft. However, their popularity is due to their
iconicity In functional- cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness (which is typically assumed in ...
. is derived from the diminutive suffix and more properly means ''slight'', but it's a short word, and its use for (little) is quite common. The reason for the popularity of may be similar: perhaps official , with the repeated
continuant In phonetics, a continuant is a speech sound produced without a complete closure in the oral cavity, namely fricatives, approximants, vowels, and trills. While vowels are included in continuants, the term is often reserved for consonant sounds. ...
s ''m_l'', sounds too soft to mean "hard", while begins with a
stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
. Other antonymic words tend to have a different scope. For example, instead of (bad) we may see (of poor quality) or (shameful), but these are not strict antonyms. The antonymic prefix is highly productive among native-speaking children.


Proper names

Proper names may either be * translated into Esperanto: "John" * fully assimilated (respelled in the Esperanto alphabet and given the inflectional suffix ''-o'' of nouns). These can then be inflected like normal Esperanto nouns: ** "
Roosevelt Roosevelt may refer to: *Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), 26th U.S. president * Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), 32nd U.S. president Businesses and organisations * Roosevelt Hotel (disambiguation) * Roosevelt & Son, a merchant bank * Rooseve ...
" ** "the Roosevelts" ** in accusative case: "Now I will describe Roosevelt." ** changed to another part of speech: "the Roosevelt mansion" ** combined with other roots and affixes: "descendants of the Roosevelts" * partially assimilated, i.e. respelled only: "
Condoleezza Rice Condoleezza Rice ( ; born November 14, 1954) is an American diplomat and political scientist who is the current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as the 66th Uni ...
", or * left in the original orthography: . The last method is usually used only for names or transliterations of names in
Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
. As noted under
Gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
, feminine personal names may take the suffix ''a'' rather than ''o'' even when fully assimilated. When a name ending in a vowel is fully assimilated, the vowel is often changed to inflectional ''o'', rather than the ''o'' being added to the full root. As with borrowed common nouns, this may be criticized if the vowel is part of the root rather than inflectional in the source language, because the resulting form may not be readily recognized by native speakers of the source language. However, it is a common phenomenon in inflectional languages such as Russian or Latin. If a name is not fully assimilated, the accusative case may be tacked on with a hyphen, as ''-n'' if the name ends in a vowel, or as ''-on'' if it does not ().


Idioms and slang

Some idiomatic expressions have either been borrowed from Esperanto's source languages, or developed naturally over the course of Esperanto's history. There are also various expletives based on body functions and religion, as in English.


Idioms

In addition to the root words and the rules for combining them, a learner of Esperanto must learn some idiomatic compounds that are not entirely straightforward. For example, , literally "to give out", means "to publish"; a , literally "a compilation of words", means "a glossary" or "a dictionary"; and , literally "a place for necessities", is a toilet. Almost all of these compounds, however, are modeled after equivalent compounds in native European languages: after the German ''herausgeben'' or Russian , and from the Russian .


Contractions

(hello) is sometimes clipped to or even , and (from ) is seen as a quick hello–goodbye on internet chatrooms. Similarly: : (Esperanto) : (from 'and/or') : (from 'he/she' and 's/he') : (from 'is, are, am') In the contraction the stress shifts to the temporal suffix, which makes the tenses easier to distinguish than they are in formal , and effectively recapturing some of the stress patterns of
Proto-Esperanto Proto-Esperanto ( eo, Pra-Esperanto) is the modern term for any of the stages in the evolution of L. L. Zamenhof's language project, prior to the publication of in 1887. The of ca. 1879 The precursors to the Esperanto alphabet can be foun ...
(see
below Below may refer to: *Earth *Ground (disambiguation) *Soil *Floor *Bottom (disambiguation) Bottom may refer to: Anatomy and sex * Bottom (BDSM), the partner in a BDSM who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or ...
).


Word play

Sometimes Esperanto derivational morphology is used to create humorous alternatives to existing roots. For instance, with the antonym prefix , one gets, : (from to drink) to urinate (normally ) : (from to eat) to vomit (normally ). As in English, some slang is intentionally offensive, such as substituting the suffix (a sheath) for the feminine in (a woman), for , meaning a woman as a receptacle for a man. However, such terms are usually coined to translate from English or other languages, and are rarely heard in conversation.


Cultural "in" words

Esperanto has some slang in the sense of in-group talk as well. Some of this is borrowed; for example, (to whistle about something) means not to care about it, as in German. Other expressions deriving from Esperanto history or dealing with specifically Esperantist concerns have arisen over the years. A , for example, is something needlessly incomprehensible, derived from the name of the more complex and less immediately readable constructed language
Volapük Volapük (; , "Language of the World", or lit. "World Speak") is a constructed language created between 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, who believed that God had told him in a dream to create an i ...
, which preceded Esperanto by a few years. Words and phrases reflect what speakers of a language talk about. Tellingly, Esperanto has a slang expression (to crocodile) for speaking a language other than Esperanto when Esperanto would be more appropriate, such as at an Esperanto convention, whereas there is nothing equivalent in English.


Jargon

Technical
jargon Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular Context (language use), communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The conte ...
exists in Esperanto as it does in English, and this is a major source of debate in the language: whether international jargon should be borrowed into Esperanto, or whether more transparent equivalents should be constructed from existing roots. However, the normal wordplay people use for amusement is occasionally carried to the extreme of being jargon. One such style is called
Esperant’
', found in chat rooms and occasionally used at Esperanto conventions. ''(See
Esperantido An Esperantido (plural Esperantidoj) is a constructed language derived from Esperanto. ''Esperantido'' originally referred to the language which is now known as Ido. The word ''Esperantido'' contains the affix (''-ido''), which means a "child (' ...
.)''


Artificial variants

One line of verse, taken from the sole surviving example of the original '' Lingwe uniwersala'' of 1878, is used idiomatically: : (it's time). If this stage of Esperanto had been preserved, it would presumably be used to occasionally give a novel the archaic flavor that Latin provides in the modern European languages. Various approaches have been taken to represent deviant language in Esperanto literature. One play, for example, originally written in two dialects of Italian, was translated with Esperanto representing one dialect, and Ido representing the other. Other approaches are to attempt to reconstruct proto-Esperanto, and to create ''de novo'' variants of the language.


Reconstructions

With so little data available, various attempts have been made to reconstruct what proto-Esperanto may have been like. However, these reconstructions rely heavily on material from the intermediate period of Esperanto development, between the original ''Lingwe Uniwersala'' of 1878 and the ''
Unua Libro ''Dr. Esperanto's International Language'' (russian: wikt:международный#Russian, Международный wikt:язык#Russian, язык), commonly referred to as ' (''First Book''), is an 1887 book by Polish ophthalmologist L. L ...
'' of 1887. ''(See
Proto-Esperanto Proto-Esperanto ( eo, Pra-Esperanto) is the modern term for any of the stages in the evolution of L. L. Zamenhof's language project, prior to the publication of in 1887. The of ca. 1879 The precursors to the Esperanto alphabet can be foun ...
.)''


''De novo'' creations

There are various "dialects" and pseudo-historical forms that have been created for literary uses in Esperanto. Two of the more notable are a substandard jargon, '' Popido'', and a fictitious "archaic" version of Esperanto called ''
Arcaicam Esperantom ( en, Archaic Esperanto; eo, arĥaika Esperanto, ), is an auxiliary sociolect for translating literature into Esperanto created to act as a fictional 'Old Esperanto', in the vein of languages such as Middle English or the use of Latin cita ...
''. Neither are used in conversation. ''(See
Esperantido An Esperantido (plural Esperantidoj) is a constructed language derived from Esperanto. ''Esperantido'' originally referred to the language which is now known as Ido. The word ''Esperantido'' contains the affix (''-ido''), which means a "child (' ...
.)''


False friends

Because Esperanto vocabulary is largely international, it shares many cognates with English. However, because they were often taken from languages other than English, these do not always have their English meanings. Some of the mismatches are: : (to spare), vs. (to damage) : (to jam, obstruct), vs. (to embarrass) : (current, up-to-date), vs. (actual), vs. (effective) : (contingent), vs. (eventual) : (punctual, on-time), vs. (accurate) : (to check, keep track of), vs. (to control) : (suitable), vs. (convenient) : (dividend income), vs. (rent) : (section), vs. (paragraph)


Dictionaries

(English: ''The Complete Illustrated Dictionary of Esperanto'', abbreviated PIV) is the largest monolingual dictionary of the language and is generally regarded as the standard. (There is a free online version a
vortaro.net
) However, it is subject to criticism, for example for failure to distinguish rare, idiosyncratic, redundant, or even erroneous words attested in a few written texts from their conversational equivalents, and for giving French approximations of some difficult words rather than their Zamenhofian meanings.For example the common preposition , which has no exact equivalent in Romance and Germanic languages and is frequently misused by speakers of those languages, was defined in the PIV according to how it was misused by most French authors rather than to how it was used in Zamenhof's writings and by authors who follow his example. (Sergio Pokrovskij, 2007

The older , originally published in 1930 and reissued with an appendix in 1953, is still widely used, as more portable and less expensive than the PIV, and perhaps more accurate, even if somewhat dated. The (five volumes, 1989–2001) gives source-language etymologies of all fundamental and official root words (tentative and uncertain in a few cases), along with comparisons of equivalent words in four other constructed
international auxiliary languages An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primaril ...
.


See also

*
Esperanto grammar Esperanto is the most widely used constructed language intended for international communication; it was designed with highly regular grammatical rules, and as such is considered an easy language to learn. Each part of speech has a characteristic ...
* Word derivation by native speakers *
Esperanto lexicographers Esperanto lexicographers are individuals or groups, whether enthusiastic amateurs or trained linguists, who have produced single-language or bilingual dictionaries of Esperanto. More than 130 Esperantists, working singly or collectively, have pub ...
* *
Special Esperanto adverbs A limited number of Esperanto adverbs do not end with the regular adverbial ending ''-e''. Many of them function as more than just adverbs, such as ''hodiaŭ'' "today" (noun or adverb) and ''ankoraŭ'' "yet" or "still" (conjunction or adverb). Ot ...
* Esperanto words with the suffix -um * Esperanto profanity


Notes


External links

* , a discussion of the and , and criticism of the latter
Reta Vortaro
multilingual Esperanto dictionary
vortaro.net
{{lang, eo,
Plena Ilustrita Vortaro ''Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto'' (PIV; ''Complete Illustrated Dictionary of Esperanto'') is a monolingual dictionary of the language Esperanto. It was first compiled in 1970 by a large team of Esperanto linguists and specialists under ...
online
Vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...
Lexis (linguistics)