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The word base of Esperanto was originally defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. It contained some 900 root words. However, the rules of the language allowed 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. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, Universala Vortaro, translated into 5 languages, which supplied a larger set of root words.

Since then many words have been borrowed from other languages, primarily but not solely from western European languages. Not all such words catch on and come into general use. 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 komputilo , from komputi ), or extending them to cover new meanings (for example muso , now also signifies a computer input device, as in English). There are frequent debates among Esperanto speakers about whether a particular new 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" conlangs such as Interlingua, which borrow words en masse and do little internal derivation, and a priori conlangs such as Lojban, in which nearly all words are internally generated. In Esperanto, borrowed words retain much of the "form" of the source language, either phonetic (eks- from ex-) or orthographic (teamo from team); but each root can then form dozens of derived compounds, such as registaro (government) from regi (to rule), which may bear little similarity to their equivalents in the source language.

Most Esperanto roots are taken from languages of the Italic and Germanic families of Indo-European. The main languages contributing to Zamenhof's original vocabulary were,

French

Italian (or generic Romance)

English

German,

the modern languages most widely learned in schools around the world at the time Esperanto was devised. Only a few words were taken directly from the classical languages,

Latin: sed (but), tamen (however), abio (fir), and parts of the body such as brako (arm), okulo (eye), hepato (liver), reno (kidney)

Classical Greek: kaj (and), pri (about), and the plural suffix -j,

and surprisingly few from the languages Zamenhof was most familiar with,

Russian and Polish: barakti (to flounder), celo (aim, goal), ĉu (whether), kaĉo (porridge), klopodi (to take steps), kolbaso (sausage), krom (except), nepre (without fail), nu (well), pilko (ball), pra- (proto-), prava (right ), svati (to matchmake), vosto (tail), etc.

Lithuanian: du (two), tuj (immediately), ju (comparative the)

Hebrew: the jussive mood in -u.

Other roots appear to be unique to Esperanto, or at least haven't been traced to a source: ĝi (it, s/he), edzo (husband), -ujo (suffix for containers). The correlatives, although clearly derived from European languages (ki- is cognate with French qui and other Romance qu- words, ti- with telle etc. as well as English th- words, -es with the Germanic genitive, etc.), have been analogically leveled to the point that they are often given as examples of Esperanto innovations. Likewise plej (most), even though it's a modification of pli (more), from French plus .

Modern international vocabulary, much of it Latin or Greek in origin, is of course used as well, but frequently for a group of related words only one will be borrowed directly, with the rest derived from it using Esperanto means of word formation. For example, the computer term bit was borrowed directly as bito, but bitoko (byte) was then derived from bito by compounding it with the numeral ok (eight).

With the exception of perhaps a hundred common or generic plant and animal names, Esperanto adopts the international binomial nomenclature of living organisms, using suitable orthography, and changing the nominal and adjectival grammatical endings to -o and -a. For example, the binomial for the guineafowl is Numida meleagris. In Esperanto, a numido would be any bird of that genus, and a meleagro the Helmeted guineafowl specifically. If this causes confusion with another species named meleagris, the full form numido meleagra can be used. A numidedo would be a guineafowl in the wider sense of any bird in the guineafowl family Numididæ.

Word formation

One of the ways Zamenhof made Esperanto easier to learn was to create a regular and highly productive derivational morphology. Through the judicious use of lexical affixes (prefixes and suffixes), the core vocabulary needing to be memorized for communication was greatly reduced. 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 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 belskribo and as the direct borrowing kaligrafio. Something similar also happened in English (brotherly vs fraternal), German (Ornithologie vs Vogelkunde for ornithology), Japanese (beesubooru vs yakyuu for baseball), etc. However, while the debates in German and Japanese were partially motivated by nationalism, in Esperanto they're largely motivated by differing views on how to make the vocabulary practical and accessible.

Affixes

One of the most immediately useful derivational affixes for the beginner is the prefix mal-, which derives antonyms: peza (heavy), malpeza (light); supren (upwards), malsupren (downwards); ami (love), malami (hate); lumo (light), mallumo (darkness).

When a root receives more than one affix, the order does matter, as affixes on the outside modify the entire stem they're attached to. That is, the outer affixes modify the inner ones. Most affixes, like roots, have an inherent part of speech, and this is indicated by the final part-of-speech vowel in the suffixes listed below. A few affixes do not affect the part of speech of the root; for the suffixes listed below, this is indicated by a hyphen in place of the final vowel.

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). Also, through compounding, roots may act as affixes: vidi (to see), povi (to be able to), vidpova (able to see, not blind). 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), etc.

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), was mentioned in the article on Esperanto grammar. What follows is a list of the main lexical affixes.

There are, in addition, affixes not listed here: technical affixes, such as the biological family suffix -edo seen in numidedo above; a few taken from Ido, such as -oza (full of) in montoza (mountainous); and literary or poetic proposals at varying degrees of acceptance, such as the laudative (praising) suffix -el- in skribelo (fine penmanship) , or kia domelo! (what a house!) .

List of lexical suffixes

List of prefixes

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 vowel to aid pronunciation. This epenthetic vowel is most commonly the nominal affix -o-, used regardless of number or case, but other affixes may be used when the inherent part of speech of the first root of the compound needs to be changed.

kantobirdo (a songbird) versus birdokanto (a birdsong)

velŝipo (a sailship) versus ŝipvelo (a ship sail)

centjaro (a centennial ) versus jarcento (a century )

multekosta (expensive, with an adverbial -e-)

Prepositions are frequently found in compounds, and behave much like prefixes,

pripensi ion (to consider something) versus pensi pri io (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. However, affixes are grammatically set as either prefixes or suffixes, whereas the order of roots in compounds is determined by semantics.

Reduplication

Reduplication is only marginally used in Esperanto. In has an intensivizing effect similar to that of the suffix -eg-. The two common examples are plenplena (chock-full), from plena (full), and finfine (finally, at last), from fina (final). So far, reduplication has only been used with monosyllabic roots where the result is considered mellifluous, and where Esperanto phonotactics allow the grammatical suffix to be dropped from the first element.

Some examples

amantino (a lover)

aminda (lovable)

amema (loving)

malameti (to feel distaste for)

esperiga (hopeful )

esperema (hopeful )

Esperantujo (the Esperanto community)

esperantaĉo (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 disliberiĝas . 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 ommatidium (a single lens of a compound eye) is rather obscure, but a child would be able to coin the Esperanto equivalent, okulero. In this way the Esperanto root vid- (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 sana (healthy). 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. Perhaps half of these words are in common use, but the others (and more) are available if needed.

Correlatives

The correlatives or "table words" are a paradigm of proforms, used to ask and answer the questions what, where, when, why, who, whose, how, how much, and what kind. They end in nine ways for these nine questions, and start in five, forming a tableau of 45 adverbs and pronouns for the price of learning these 14 elements. Those beginning with ti- correspond to the English demonstratives in th- (this, thus, then, there etc.), while ĉi- corresponds to every- and i- to some-.

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

The adjectival determinerss ending in -u have the usual dual function of adjectives: standing alone as proforms, ĉiu (everyone); and modifying a noun, ĉiu tago (every day).

The adjectival correlatives, ending in -ia and -iu, agree in number and case with the nouns they modify, like any other adjectives. They, as well as the independent determiners ending in -io, 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 -ie, forming -ien.

Table of correlatives

Correlative particles

Several adverbial particles are used primarily with the correlatives: ajn indicates generality, ĉi proximity, and for distance.

kio ajn (whatever)

io ajn (anything)

tio (that )

tiu (that one)

tiuj (those)

tiu ĉi (this one)

tiu for (that one yonder)

tien ĉi (hither )

ĉiu hundo (each/every dog)

ĉiuj hundoj (all dogs)

An extension of the original paradigm

It's not uncommon to see the correlative system extended to the root ali- (other), at least when the resulting word is unambiguous,

aliam (at another time), alies (someone else's).

Alie, however, would be ambiguous as to whether the original meaning "otherwise" or the correlative "elsewhere" where intended, so aliloke (from loko "place") is used for "elsewhere".

Interrogative vs relative pronouns

Examples of the interrogative versus relative uses of the ki- words:

Kiu ŝtelis mian ringon? (Who stole my ring?)

La polico ne kaptis la ŝtelistojn, kiuj ŝtelis mian ringon. (The police haven't caught the thieves who stole my ring.)

Kiel vi faris tion? (How did you do that?)

Mi ne scias, kiel fari tion. (I don't know how to do that.)

Also,

Kia viro li estas? (What kind of man is he?)

Kia viro! (What a man!)

Note that standard Esperanto punctuation puts a comma before the relative word (a correlative in ki- or the conjunction ke, "that").

Derivatives

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? (which floor?) [This last requests a quantified answer of how many floors up, like la dek-sesa (the 16

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 -es for nouns), the initial element of the neni- correlatives is an exception, as seen in neniulo (a nobody), from neni- plus -ulo.

Gender

Masculine roots

A small (and decreasing) number of noun roots, mostly titles and kinship terms, are inherently masculine unless the feminine suffix -ino is added. For example, there are patro (father) and patrino (mother), with no good word for parent.

The original setup

In the early twentieth century, members of a profession were assumed to be masculine unless specified otherwise with -ino, reflecting the expectations of most industrial societies. That is, dentisto was a male dentist, and instruisto was a male teacher. This was the case for all words ending in -isto, as well as -ulo (riĉulo "a rich man") and the participles -into, -anto, -onto, -ito, -ato, -oto. These became gender neutral over the course of the century, as actor and author did in English, because of social transformation.

The current situation

Today we are left with twenty or so inherently masculine nouns:

Kin terms: avo (grandfather), edzo (husband), fianĉo (fiance), filo (son), frato (brother), kuzo (cousin), nepo (grandson), nevo (nephew), onklo (uncle), patro (father), vidvo (widower);

Words for boys and men: bubo (brat), knabo (boy), viro (man), and the learned term masklo (a male);

Titles: fraŭlo (bachelor - the feminine is used for miss), grafo (count), princo (prince), reĝo (king), sinjoro (lord, sir)

The word for friend: amiko

A few domestic animals: koko (rooster)

These remain masculine mainly because, officially at least, Esperanto has no other good way of indicating masculine gender. (The word for "male" is malino, the antonym of ino "female", but this does not work well as a suffix. One work-around, using vir- (man) as a prefix, would be considered bizarre with professions, titles, or kin terms, and even with domestic animals it's ambiguous: virbovo can mean either a bull or a minotaur.)

Not all of these words are stably masculine. Native English speakers in particular tend to treat kuzo (a cousin) and amiko (a friend) as gender neutral, and nepo (a grandson/grandchild), bubo (a brat), and koko (a rooster/chicken) are also often ambiguous. Once such a word is used ambiguously by a significant number of speakers or writers, it can no longer be assumed to be masculine, and so the ranks of masculine words gradually dwindle.

Feminine roots

On the other hand, besides the suffix -ino, there are several inherently feminine words, such as damo (a lady, queen; equivalent to sinjorino or reĝino) and femalo (a female; equivalent to ino).

Common approaches to regularizing Esperanto gender

Gender asymmetry (usually called sexism) is both one of the biggest issues people have with the Esperanto language (the others being adjectival concord, the accusative, the letters with diacritics, and the eternal debate over borrowing vs deriving technical vocabulary), and the one that seems easiest to "fix". Numerous solutions have been proposed over the years. However, two of these recur repeatedly, as they derive from existing resources of the language. These are the masculine suffix -iĉo and the epicene prefix ge-.

The masculine suffix -iĉo

Some people remedy the Esperanto gender asymmetry with an unofficial masculine suffix *-iĉo alongside feminine -ino, with the bare root now becoming epicene, as the names of professions such as dentisto did half a century ago:

patro (*parent)

patrino (mother)

*patriĉo (father)

(asterisked words and meanings are not officially recognized). Compare,

panjo (mama)

paĉjo (papa).

There are a few books published with such usage.

However, even with the availability of a masculine suffix, some speakers maintain viro (a man) as an inherently masculine word and use *femo (a root which already exists in such Esperanto words as femalo, feminismo) for "a woman", with adolto or plenkreskulo (a grown-up) for "an adult". This may be due to the number of established masculine derivatives of the root vir-, or to a desire to have basic root words for "man" and "woman" that can be used for further word formation.

Other Esperantists argue that removing the gender asymmetry requires making all noun roots gender neutral, and that in such usage viro should mean "an adult". However, a few feminine nouns such as damo will retain their gender regardless.

The main objection to this suffix, other than the general conservative concern of tinkering with the fundamentals of the language, is that some perceive it as being too similar to the pejorative suffix -aĉ-, and thus consider it to be disparaging to men. However, with the word stress on the vowel, -iĉo and -aĉo are as distinct as many other pairs of Esperanto suffixes, such as -ino -ano, -ilo -ulo, etc, and the brain would soon filter out the similarity as meaningless.

The epicene prefix ge-

Another approach to gender asymmetry that is often seen is the use of ge- as an epicene prefix in the singular,

*gepatro (parent)

patro (father)

patrino (mother).

To prevent confusion, some -iĉo users adopt this ge- as well and specify gepatro, patrino, or patriĉo, avoiding the bare root patro entirely.

Singular ge- is not generally accepted, however; ge- is traditionally used only with semantic plurals, and is officially inclusive, indicating both sexes together, rather than epicene.

Gendered pronouns

Esperanto personal pronouns distintuish gender in the third-person singular: li (he), ŝi (she); but not in the plural: ili (they). There are two practical epicene third-person singular pronouns: the demonstrative pronoun tiu (that), and Zamenhof's suggestion, ĝi.

See also the discussion and links at riism.

Antonyms

People sometimes object to using the prefix mal- to derive highly frequent antonyms, especially when they're as long as malgranda (little) or malproksima (far). There are a few alternative roots in poetry, such as mava for malbona (bad) — 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 mal- prefix, and the relative obscurity of most of the alternatives, which would hamper communication. This results in English borrowings such as ĉipa (cheap), for malmultekosta (inexpensive), failing to find favor even among native English speakers.

Two root antonyms are frequently encountered: eta (little), and dura (hard ). However, their popularity is due to their iconicity. Eta is derived from the diminutive suffix and more properly means slight, but it's a little word, and its use as little is quite common. The reason for the popularity of dura is similar: official malmola simply sounds too soft to mean "hard"!

Idioms and slang

There's not as much slang in Esperanto as in many ethnic languages, as slang tends to make international communication difficult, thereby working against Esperanto's main purpose. However, some slang, as well as a fair amount of derivational wordplay, is used to spice up the language, and 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, eldoni, literally "to give out", means "to publish", and vortaro, literally "a compilation of words", means "a glossary" or "a dictionary". Almost all of these compounds, however, are modeled after equivalent compounds in native European languages: eldoni after the German herausgeben, and vortaro from the Russian словарь slovar.

Contractions

Saluton (hello) is sometimes clipped to sal, and saluĝis (from saluton – ĝis la revido) is seen as a quick hello-goodbye on internet chatrooms. Similarly, there's,

espo (Esperanto)

kaŭ (from kaj/aŭ, and/or)

’stas (from estas, to be)

The latter places the stress on the tense suffix, which makes the tenses easier to distinguish, and effectively recaptures 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 mal-, one gets,

maltrinki (from trinki to drink) to urinate (normally urini)

malmanĝi (from manĝi to eat) to vomit (normally vomi).

As in English, some slang is intentionally offensive, such as substituting the suffix -ingo (a sheath) for the feminine -ino in virino (a woman), for viringo (a cunt ). 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 being in-group talk as well. Some of this is borrowed; for example, fajfi ion (to whistle 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 volapukaĵo, for example, is something stupid or incomprehensible, derived from the name of the rather stilted, complex, and proprietary constructed language Volapük, which preceded Esperanto by a few years and was replaced by it.

Words and phrases reflect what speakers of a language talk about. Tellingly, Esperanto has five expressions for speaking a language other than Esperanto when Esperanto would be regarded as more appropriate, as at an Esperanto convention, whereas there is nothing equivalent in English:

krokodili (to crocodile) to speak one's native language instead of Esperanto;

kajmani (to caiman) as above, but where the language is not native to all of the interlocutors;

aligatori (to alligator) where the language used is native to no one;

lacerti (to lizard) to speak another conlang, such as Ido.

These words are subsumed under the general term reptilumi (from reptilo, reptile, plus the undefined suffix -um), though this is rare and krokodili is generally used instead. There is even a term gaviali (to gharial), for speaking Esperanto in situations where another language would be more appropriate. The oldest of these expressions, krokodili, may come from a character in a fairy tale; the others were coined by analogy with it.

Jargon

Technical jargon exists in Esperanto as it does in English, and this is a major source of debate in the language.

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. Its characteristics are maximal use of elision, resulting in a lot of word-final stress (replacing the plural -oj with the collective suffix -aro, and using the undefined preposition je in place of the accusative -on, means that all nouns can have their grammatical suffix elided); compounding phrases into single words; and placing the verbal suffix on a "strange" word (often a bare root), freeing up the now-nominal verb for elision as well. (The verbal arguments become genitives possessing the verbal noun, or compound with it.) For example,

Ĉiamu onia obe’ je l’ Fundament’ for standard Oni ĉiam obeu la Fundamenton (Let one always obey the Fundamento).

An example of an Esperant’ Pater noster is given in the next section.

Artificial variants

There's one line of verse, taken from the sole surviving example of the original Lingwe uniwersala of 1878, that's used idiomatically,

jam temp’ está (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

Manuel Halvelik created two Esperanto variants for non-standard usage: Popido or "Popular Idiom" as a substandard "dialect", that, for example, does away with much of Esperanto's inflectional system; and Arcaicam Esperantom, a ficticious "archaic" version of Esperanto that "retains" a more complex inflectional system (dative and genitive cases in -d and -es, verbal inflections for person and number, etc.), as well as orthographic digraphs ph, tz, etc., hard c for , and the letters q, y, w.

Neither of these is used in conversation.

Sample of Popido

redonu al tu vir si pistol (Esperanto redonu al tiu viro sian pistolon: give that man back his gun)

Sample of Arcaicam Esperantom

The Arcaicam Esperantom Pater noster, compared to the Esperanto, Ido, and Esperant’ versions, is,

See also

Esperanto grammar

Esperanto orthography

Esperanto pronunciation

Esperanto phonology

History of Esperanto

Proto-Esperanto

Ido