Esperanto vocabulary

Template:Use dmy dates Template:Esperanto sidebar The original word base of Esperanto contained around 900 root words and was defined in Unua Libro ("First Book"), published by L. L. Zamenhof 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 [a computer], from [to compute]), or extending them to cover new meanings (for example [a 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 languages such as Interlingua, which take words en masse from their source languages with little internal derivation, and a priori conlangs such as Solresol, in which the words have no historical connection to other languages. In Esperanto, root words 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 the European languages predominant at the time was by creating a regular and highly productive derivational morphology. Through the judicious use of lexical affixes (prefixes and suffixes), the core vocabulary needed for communication was greatly reduced, making Esperanto a more agglutinative language than most European languages. It has been estimated that on average one root 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 antonyms: (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. 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 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

	pejorative (expresses negative affect or a poor opinion of the object or action)	(to scrawl, from 'write'); (foul weather); (a hovel, from 'house'); (to gape at, from 'look at'); (tawdry, from 'beautiful'); (junk, from ); (to screw up, with ); (yuck!)
,	frequent, repeated, or continual action (often imperfective); as a noun, an action or process	(to keep on running); (a speech, from 'talk, speak'); (to carry on); (continual)
	a concrete manifestation; (with a noun root) a product	(food, from 'eat'); (news, a novelty, from 'new'); (an ice[cream], from 'ice'); (beef, from 'bovine'); (a snafu, from and ); (a thing);
	a member, follower, participant, inhabitant	(a Christian); (a US American) [cf. (a continental American)]; (a crew member); (a classmate, from 'same' and 'course'); (a kindred spirit, from 'same' and 'idea'); (a member)
	a collective group without specific number	(a forest, from 'tree'); (a dictionary, from 'word' [a set expression]); (humanity, from 'human' [a set expression; 'crowd, mob' is ]); (a flock of sheep); (a fleet of ships); (a society [group of members], from ); (a government, from 'rule, govern' and ); (a herd, group, set)
	masculine affectionate form; the root is truncated	(Jack); (daddy); (bro); (dear friend); (the 'boys')
	possible	(believable); (visible); (possibly)
	an abstract quality	(friendship); or (goodness); (Italianesque); (character [sum of qualities], with )
	augmentative; sometimes pejorative connotations when used with people	(a mansion, from 'house'); (a giant, from 'man'); (a tome, from 'book'); (boiling hot); (to guffaw, from 'laugh'); (great, humongous)
	a place characterized by the root (not used for toponyms)	(a school, from 'to learn'), (a store, from 'to sell'), (a court, from 'to judge'), (a kitchen, from 'to cook'), (a kennel, from 'dog'), (a desert, from 'without water'); (provenance, from 'to come from'); (the appropriate place)
	having a propensity, tendency	(playful), (talkative), (credulous, from 'believe'); (flammable, from 'burn'); (inclination); (unwilling, with )
	mandatory	(payable), (required reading)
	the smallest part	(a link, from 'chain'); (a spark, from 'fire'); (a snowflake, from 'snow'), (a stitch, from 'sew'), (a splinter, from 'wood'); (an ommatidium, from 'eye'); (a U.S. state, from 'USA'); (a morpheme, from 'word'); (a crumb etc.)
	a leader, boss	(a school principal [see ]); (a mayor, from 'city'); (a centurion, from 'hundred'); (a president of the United States, from 'USA'); (board of directors, with )
	diminutive; sometimes affectionate connotations when used with people	(a hut, from 'house'); (a booklet); (lukewarm); (to smile, from 'laugh'); (to crack, fracture, from 'break'); (to simmer, from 'boil'); (slightly)
	a country named after a geographic feature, and now after an ethnicity [unofficial]	(Mexico, from 'Mexico City'); (Nigeria, from 'the river Niger'); (England, from 'English person'); (fatherland, from 'father') [cannot be used as a root , because that means 'something']
	male [unofficial]	(a bull); (a father); (a male student); (a male)
	an offspring, descendant	(a kitten); (a prince, from 'king'); (a sapling, from 'tree'); (an Israelite); (a kit, pup, kid, etc.); (a clan, tribe, with )
	to make, to cause (transitivizer/causative)	(to kill, from 'die'); (to clean); (to have built); (to cause)
	to become (intransitivizer/inchoative/middle voice)	(to enjoy oneself); (to be born); (to blush, from 'red'); (to join, from ); (to become)
	an instrument, a tool	(a toy, from 'play'); (a knife, from 'cut'); (a remedy, from 'help'); (a solution, from 'solve'); (a tool); (equipment, set of tools, with )
	female	(a cow); (a mother); (a female student); (a female)
	worthy of	(memorable); (credible, from 'believe'); (dependable, trustworthy, from 'trust'); (something to cry about, from 'weep, cry' and ); (worthy)
	a holder, sheath	(a scabbard, from 'sword'); (a candle-holder); (a tooth socket); (stirrup, from 'foot'); (a cartridge, from 'bullet'); (a socket, etc.)
	a doctrine, system (as in English)	(Communism); (Christianity); (an ism)
	person professionally or avocationally occupied with an idea or activity (a narrower use than in English)	(teacher); (dentist); (a beekeeper); (a communist); (a member of parliament/congress)
	feminine affectionate form; the root is truncated	(Joanie); (mommy); (granny); (aunty); (nanny, from 'nurse'); (dear friend); (the 'girls', from or )
	multiple	(double); (triply); (more than once)
	fraction	(half [of]); (one hundredth); (a tithe, from 'ten' and ); (a fraction); (to divide into equal parts, with )
	in a collective group of specific number	(two together; by twos = ); (a trilogy); (how many together?); (together in a group, from ); (drop by drop, from 'drop'; = ); (isolated, individual); (a group, unit, team); (collective)
	a (loose) container, country (archaic when referring to a political entity), a tree of a certain fruit (archaic)	(a purse, from 'money'); (a saltshaker, from 'salt'); (a washbasin, from 'wash'); (a beehive, from 'bee'); (England [ in current usage]); (Kurdistan, the Kurdish lands); (appletree [now ]); (a container)
	one characterized by the root	(a youth); (a saint, from 'holy'); (a beginning reader [student, not book], from "ABC's"); (a mammal, from 'breast'); (a neighbor, from 'near'); (a woman with many children, from 'many' and 'child'); (someone without merit, from 'without' and the suffix ); ~ (a wretch, from the suffix ); (a contemporary, from 'then'); (someone who asks 'why' a lot, from 'why'); (a wisp of a girl); (a fellow)
	undefined ad hoc suffix (used sparingly: see list)	(a collar, from 'neck'); (to crucify, from 'cross'); (a cold, from 'cold'); (to fulfill, from 'full'); (to hug, from 'arm'); (to woo, from 'lovable' [see ]); (clockwise, from 'right'); (appellate court, from 'court(yard)'); (high society, from 'world'); (a community, from 'common'); (approximately, from 'near'); (hexadecimal, from '16'); (a thingamajig)

List of prefixes

	relation by marriage, -in-law	(a father-in-law); (to marry into a family, from 'a relative' and ); (to marry one's dead brother's wife, from 'to marry'); (a sister-wife); ([jocular] a friend of one's spouse)
	separation, scattering	(to throw about, from 'throw'); (to distribute, from 'send'); (to split by atomic fission, from 'atom'); (to escape in all directions, like pages dropping from a book with a disintegrated binding, from 'free' and ); (scram!)
	beginning, sudden, or momentary action (often perfective)	(a flash [of lightning], from 'shine'); (to fall in love); (to cry out); (to catch sight of); (to start); (inclusive 'from'); (off to war!); (hop to!)
	former, ex-	(an ex-husband); (a steer [jocular, from 'bull']); (former); (previously customary); (Down with our leader!)
	shameful, nasty, disgusting, filthy	(a wicked person); (foul-minded); (a profane word); (a dirty mouth); (vermin, from 'animal, beast'); (vile); (For shame!); (Shame on you!)
	both sexes together	(parents); (ladies and gentlemen); (waiters and waitresses); (the Zamenhofs)
	antonym	(small, from 'large'); (poor, from 'rich'); (empty, from 'full'); (a male [jocular], from ); (counter-clockwise [see ]); (a law that cannot be disobeyed, from 'to obey'), (opposite)
	incorrectly, awry	(to misplace); (to wrongly accuse); (disparaging, from 'well-known' and the causative suffix ); (incorrectly)
	great-(grand-), primordial, primitive, proto-	(a great-grandfather); (a forefather); (a prehistoric beast); (ancestral home); (Proto-Indo-European)
	over again, back again	(to send back); (to rebuild); (to rebound, from 'jump'); (to repeat); (to renew a subscription, from 'subscribe'); (reflection, glare, from 'shine'); (a return ticket, from 'to go'); (once again, from '[x] times'); ("", from 'until' and 'sight')

There are, in addition, affixes not listed here: technical affixes, such as the biological family suffix seen in (Guineafowls), and a few non-standard affixes taken from Ido, such as (full of) in (mountainous), (muscular), (porous). A proposed suffix makes adjectives out of nouns made from adjectives: (caloric, from warm), (nationalize).

Lexical (i.e. derivational) affixes may act as roots by taking one of the grammatical 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 [quantity]), 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 (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 [a year of a hundred]) versus (a century [a 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 sonorants, 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 consonants 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 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 is only used with monosyllabic roots that do not require an epenthetic vowel when compounded.

Some examples

(a [female] lover)

(lovable)

(loving)

(to feel distaste for)

(hopeful [of a situation: inspiring hope])

(hopeful [of 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 [from 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 correlatives are a paradigm of pro-forms, 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 demonstratives, 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 demonstratives in th- (this, thus, then, there etc.), whereas corresponds to and to some-. The correlatives beginning with have a double function, as interrogative and relative 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 ending in . Therefore, the adjectival correlatives, ending in and , do not play that role, as adjectival personal pronouns 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

		Question ("What")	Indication ("This/that")	Indefinite ("Some")	Universal ("Each, every")	Negative ("No")
		ki–	ti–	i–	ĉi–	neni–
Quality	–a	kia (what kind/sort/type of)	tia (such a)	ia (some kind/sort/type of)	ĉia (every kind/sort/type of)	nenia (no kind/sort/type of)
Reason	–al	kial (why)	tial (for that reason, therefore)	ial (for some reason)	ĉial (for all reasons)	nenial (for no reason)
Time	–am	kiam (when)	tiam (then)	iam (sometime)	ĉiam (always)	neniam (never)
Place	–e	kie (where)	tie (there)	ie (somewhere)	ĉie (everywhere)	nenie (nowhere)
Manner	–el	kiel (how, as)	tiel (thus, as)	iel (somehow)	ĉiel (in every way)	neniel (no-how, in no way)
Association	–es	kies (whose)	ties (this/that one's)	ies (someone's)	ĉies (everyone's)	nenies (no one's)
Thing	–o	kio (what)	tio (this/that)	io (something)	ĉio (everything)	nenio (nothing)
Amount	–om	kiom (how much)	tiom (that much)	iom (some, a bit)	ĉiom (all of it)	neniom (none)
Individual	–u	kiu (who, which one; which [horse])	tiu (that one; that [horse])	iu (someone; some [horse])	ĉiu (everyone; each [horse], all [horses])	neniu (no one; no [horse])

Correlative particles

Several adverbial particles are used primarily with the correlatives: indicates generality, indicates proximity, and indicates distance. (Without these particles, demonstratives such as and are not specific about distance, though they are usually translated as "that".)

(whatever)

(anything)

(that [general]) [cannot modify a noun]

(that one) [can modify a noun: (that boy)]

(those)

(this one)

(that one yonder)

(hither [to 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_[plural] 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?) [This last requests an 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 (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 below). Some words, such as (pope), are masculine in practice, but they are not inherently masculine and a feminine referent could 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 Englishman"), ( "a male mayor"), and the participles ( "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 – 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), (count), (knight), (prince), (king), (lord, sir), but not generic (noble) or (monarch). Many non-European titles, such as (shah) and (mikado), 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 is described not only as a but as a female .

Religious orders that have feminine equivalents: (abbot), (monk). Others, such as (rabbi), do not occur in the feminine but, like (pope), that is a matter of custom rather than language.

Male mythological figures: (cyclopes), (leprechaun), etc. These do not take the suffix . There are relatively few mythological terms that can only be masculine. (incubus), for example, is prototypically masculine, but the feminine is found as an alternative to (succubus).

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), (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" 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, while others use the unofficial suffix -iĉo.

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), (geisha), (concubine), (prostitute), (odalisque), (prima donna), (soubrette);

Female mythological figures: (Amazon), (Fury), (Muse), (nymph), (siren), 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's poetry has been translated under the title ('The [female] Muse'), 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, though there is no such gender in Esperanto grammar.

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 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.

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 – 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 [not soft]). However, their popularity is due to their iconicity. 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 continuants m_l, sounds too soft to mean "hard", while begins with a stop consonant. 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

File:Akihitum-et-michikam.jpg

The Japanese names "Akihito and Michiko" inflected in Latin as . Final vowels are often similarly changed to the inflectional suffix -o, -on in Esperanto.

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"
  • "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", or
• left in the original orthography: .

The last method is usually used only for names or transliterations of names in Latin script. As noted under Gender, 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 (see below).

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, so "to undrink") to urinate (normally )

(from to eat, so "to uneat") 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 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, 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 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.)

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 of 1887. (See Proto-Esperanto.)

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. Neither are used in conversation. (See Esperantido.)

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.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. 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.

See also

• Esperanto grammar
• Word derivation by native speakers
• Esperanto lexicographers
• Special Esperanto adverbs
• Esperanto words with the suffix -um
• Esperanto profanity

External links

• , a discussion of the and , and criticism of the latter
• Reta Vortaro, multilingual Esperanto dictionary
• vortaro.net, online