Esperanto vocabulary

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.

One of the ways Zamenhof made Esperanto easier to learn than the European languages predominant at the time was by creating a regular and highly productive derivational morphology.

[citation needed] 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[citation needed] 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).

A similar development has also occurred in English (brotherly vs. fraternal), German (Ornithologie vs. Vogelkunde for ornithology), Japanese (beesubooru vs. yakyuu for baseball), Spanish (básquetbol vs. baloncesto for basketball), French (le week-end vs. la fin de semaine), and other languages.

However, except in jokes, this prefix is not used when an antonym exists in the basic vocabulary: suda (south), not "malnorda" from 'north'; manki (to be lacking, intr.

The creation of new words through the use of grammatical (i.e. inflectional) suffixes, such as nura (mere) from nur (only), tiama (contemporary) from tiam (then), or vido (sight) from vidi (to see), is covered in the article on Esperanto grammar.

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.

[3] Lexical (i.e. derivational) affixes may act as roots by taking one of the grammatical suffixes: mala (opposite), eta (slight), ano (a member), umo (a doohickey), eble (possibly), iĝi (to become), ero (a bit, a crumb).

Also, through compounding, lexical roots may act as affixes: vidi (to see), povi (to be able to), vidpova (able to see, not blind); ĉefo (head, chief), urbo (a city), ĉefurbo (a capital).

It is quite common for prepositions to be used as prefixes: alveni (to arrive), from al (to) and veni (come); senespera (hopeless), from sen (without) and espero (hope); pripensi (to consider), from pri (about) and pensi (to think); vendi pogrande (sell wholesale), from po (at the rate of) and grande (large [quantity]), etc.

However, "true" affixes are grammatically fixed as being either prefixes or suffixes, whereas the order of roots in compounds is determined by semantics.

Sometimes the results are poetic: In one Esperanto novel, a man opens an old book with a broken spine, and the yellowed pages disliberiĝas [from the root libera (free) and the affixes dis- and -iĝ-].

[citation needed] 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.

In the Fundamento, Zamenhof illustrated word formation by deriving the equivalents of recuperate, disease, hospital, germ, patient, doctor, medicine, pharmacy, etc.

Not all of the resulting words translate well into English, in many cases because they distinguish fine shades of meaning that English lacks: sano, sana, sane, sani, sanu, saniga, saneco, sanilo, sanigi, saniĝi, sanejo, sanisto, sanulo, malsano, malsana, malsane, malsani, malsanulo, malsaniga, malsaniĝi, malsaneta, malsanema, malsanulejo, malsanulisto, malsanero, malsaneraro, sanigebla, sanigisto, sanigilo, resanigi, resaniĝanto, sanigilejo, sanigejo, malsanemulo, sanilaro, malsanaro, malsanulido, nesana, malsanado, sanulaĵo, malsaneco, malsanemeco, saniginda, sanilujo, sanigilujo, remalsano, remalsaniĝo, malsanulino, sanigista, sanigilista, sanilista, malsanulista.

The correlatives beginning with ki- have a double function, as interrogative and relative pronouns and adverbs, just as the wh- words do in English: Kiu ĉevalo?

However, adjectival correlatives do agree in number and case with the nouns they modify, as any other adjectives: La ĉevaloj, kiujn mi vidis (The horses which I saw).

Various parts of speech may be derived from the correlatives, just as from any other roots: ĉiama (eternal), ĉiea (ubiquitous), tiama (contemporary), kialo (a reason), iomete (a little bit), kioma etaĝo?

[6] A small (and decreasing[citation needed]) number of noun roots, mostly titles and kinship terms, are inherently masculine unless the feminine suffix -ino or the inclusive prefix ge- are added.

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.

Esperanto personal pronouns distinguish gender in the third-person singular: li (he), ŝi (she); but not in the plural: ili (they).

There are a few alternative roots in poetry, such as turpa for malbelega (very ugly) and pigra for mallaborema (lazy) – some of which originated in Ido – that find their way into prose.

This is a combination of two factors: the great ease and familiarity of using the mal- prefix, and the relative obscurity of most of the alternatives, which would hamper communication.

Eta is derived from the diminutive suffix and more properly means slight, but it's a short word, and its use for malgranda (little) is quite common.

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.

A volapukaĵo, for example, is something needlessly incomprehensible, derived from the name of the more complex and less immediately readable constructed language Volapük, which preceded Esperanto by a few years.

One line of verse, taken from the sole surviving example of the original Lingwe uniwersala of 1878, is used idiomatically: 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.

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 of 1887.

[8] The older Plena Vortaro de Esperanto, 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.