Talk:Esperanto vocabulary

message: I have the suspicion that a good number of the suffixes are Slavic, though I've never seen this mentioned. The pra- prefix certainly is, and maybe a couple others; and I assume that -aro is Slavic. Could someone who knows Russian or Polish (and especially if you know German as well) go over these and point out any likely possibilities? kwami 03:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I always thought "-aro" was Latin, as in "aviary", collection of birds, "library", collection of books, etc. —  03:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe, though that's not the etymology of the ending (aquarium, secretary, secondary, sanctuary, etc., all "connected with"), and neither biblioteko nor birdejo use the -ar suffix. Still, there's both glossary and slovarj as analogies for vortaro, so a Latin source is certainly possible. kwami 05:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slavic suffixes? 

message: Wasn't edzo linked to German (or Yiddish) words like Prinzessin interpreted as princ-edz-in-o?
:I have no idea. Rather a stretch from es to edz. Can you find a ref? kwami 02:57, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Jen http://www.esperanto.org/Ondo/L-lr.htm --Yuu en 22:40, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Thank you for that, Yuu en. An unusually convoluted etymology. I've added it in. kwami 16:40, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edzo 

message: I see komput-il-o  in Wikipedia as a frequent example of Esperanto word creation from basic roots.
Isn't the computer-related meaning a modern innovation?
Old komputi was more like "meter" or "counter" as in gazkomputilo (gasometer, not *"gas-powered computer".
Hence, the proposal of komputoro and komputero.
An older root would be better.
:Komputi is a fairly recent root - more recent than kalkuli or the use of metro as a suffix meaning mezurilo. Do you have examples of komputilo ever being used for anything but 'computer'? kwami 01:20, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, though: we should have a recent compound created from an old root. Can't think of anything offhand. kwami 06:31, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Komputi 

message: Whoever the anon is who isn't bothering to read the article they're editing, there's a reason the part-of-speech endings are added to the lexical suffixes: they show which part of speech the suffixes function as. Please don't delete. kwami 19:15, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suffixes 

message: The meanings of kajmani and aligatori in the article at this writing are reversed from what is used among Esperantists I know (in the western United States):  Aligatori is where at least one person is speaking their native language and at least one person is not, and kajmani is where no one is speaking their native language, but the language spoken is an ethnic (as opposed to an artificial) language.  I wanted to see whether other Esperanto speakers use these meanings or whether someone made an editing mistake.  Comments? --Cxarli 22:12, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Krokodili 

message: :Compound words in Esperanto are similar to English, in that the final root is basic to the meaning.
This is not totally true.
I think PAG deals with this.
A counterexample is bon-kor-a ("goodhearted") from bona koro + -a.
Kor-bon-a ("heart-good") is also possible but not used.
Kompare sen-esper-a and esper-mank-a. 
Esper-sen-a is also possible, but prepositions are rarely used like that.
:Good point. Will deal with this when I have time, unless you get to it first! kwami 09:35, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree with the anonymous poster (PAG? Really?)'s reasoning (13 years ago or more!!). Bonkora is easily  analyzed as "having a good heart" (bona koro). That's how I've always understood it for the 50-some years I've spoken Esperanto, and I see no reason to force it into the Procrustean interpretation as "good at heart", with kor- modifying bon-. --Thnidu (talk) 04:55, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Definitely. I read it the same way, just didn't bother to critique it. But their second example works: prepositions used as prefixes are a counterexample to the general rule. Other than that, Esperanto compounds typically correspond to the word-order of a prototypical verb-final language, which is modifier–noun in addition to noun–postposition. And of course not everyone makes a distinction between centjaro and jarcento, so the order in a lot of compounds can be arbitrary. — kwami (talk) 05:05, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order in compounds 

message: There's an error here -- a meleagro undoubtedly means turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), not a kind of guineafowl. The word is actually in the Fundamento. Turkeys are in the order Galliformes like guineafowl but are in a different family, Meleagrididae. --Cam 18:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed it. --Cam 20:22, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Numido/meleagro

message: 'affectionate form' should probably redirect to hypocoristic not nickname.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Em3ryguy (talk • contribs) 02:02, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  affectionate form 

message: Per objection, I removed the following: 
:These words are sometimes subsumed under the general term reptilumi (from reptilo, reptile, plus the undefined suffix -um), though this is rare and krokodili is generally used instead as the generic term.
I've never actually heard reptilumi, though it has an article on wiki-eo. I wonder, though, do we want to keep all the other words besides krokodili ? Are they really Eo slang, or are they just proposals for Eo slang which hardy anyone actually uses? How many people have fluent command of these words, and use them in conversation or in writing? Should krokodili just be defined as "speaking another language when Eo would be appropriate", which is how it's generally used? kwami (talk) 02:09, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks almost like somebody wanted to launch new words. I am not sure of that, just I never heard/red them, except for the word kokodrili (from Piron's website). It can just be that I never was in some situation where such words were used. Maybe we can choose to leave only words wich are in some important dictionary, like the Plena ilustrita vortaro, and it will be easier (anyway, I don't thnk that we need them all). --Iosko (talk) 11:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, the PIV would work. I actually have heard these words, but only in discussions about which one means which. I've heard ne krokodilu! is spontaneous conversation, but never ne-anything else. But then, my experience is hardly enough to go on. kwami (talk) 12:05, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The Reta vortaro defines krokodili as Paroli kun esperantistoj ne en Esperanto. It doesn't mention the others. kwami (talk) 12:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  krokodili II 

message: Just curious, but wouldn't putting the '-i' (ki-,neni-,ti- etc) at the start of the correlative ending (e.g. -ia) help prevent confusion with things like adjective and noun endings if people learn the endings as for example "-ia" as a whole rather than trying to figure out the differences between noun/adjective endings and correlative endings? Sorry if that didn't make sense, if I could I'd show you what I mean in a diagram but not sure how to go about that. Ceigered (talk) 12:06, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That makes perfect sense, and may be a good pedagogic approach. Unfortunately, it doesn't correspond to the morphology. It would fail to account for neniaĵo, neniigi, nenieco, etc., where the i is part of the root, and nonce forms such as alies, aliom, where the i is also in the root. Also, in my dictionary, when the root is replaced by a swash ~, you get ~o, ~es, ~om, etc. kwami (talk) 14:55, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry - can -es be used in anywhere other than the correlatives? As far as I know, ali- is a root and not a correlative. Interchangeable|talk to me 21:39, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's been extended by analogy with the correlatives. We cover that somewhere. — kwami (talk) 04:04, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Where...? Interchangeable|talk to me 17:17, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Esperanto vocabulary#An extension of the original paradigm --JorisvS (talk) 18:41, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  table of correlatives

message: It seems to me that the origins section is flawed in saying that Esperanto is a compromise between naturalistic and an a priori language. Esperanto is between a posteriori and a priori (in that it contains borrowed roots but invented suffixes) but is schematic, not naturalistic (a distiction I always thought was seperate from a priori and posteriori), so this may need to be changed. Colorado 2993 (talk) 21:55, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's intermediate there as well. The suffixes are borrowed, not invented; they are used naturalistically for much of the vocabulary that uses them in the source language, but then extended schematically. — kwami (talk) 08:09, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contrast Correction 

message: The affectionate forms injo and iĉjo could not only be interpreted as affectionate forms of ino, but also as similar forms of ido (perhaps an English equivalent would be "my little pup/kit"). Perhaps this is worth mentioning in the affectionate forms' sections. Interchangeable|talk to me 22:49, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambiguities Regarding Affectionate Forms 

message: In the article: "This epenthetic vowel [inserted between the elements of a compound] is most commonly the nominal suffix -o- ..."  I see no justification to analyse this as a nominal suffix, and not simply an epenthetic phoneme, which is not, in fact, a morpheme.  I propose that a justification for this analysis be provided, or this description removed.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.252.102.67 (talk) 08:32, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Esperanto grammars characterize it as the nominal -o.  It contrasts with adjectival -a etc.  — kwami (talk) 18:59, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compounds 

message: § Antonyms says
: Two root antonyms are frequently encountered: eta (little), and dura (hard [not soft]). However, their popularity is due to their iconicity. Eta is derived from the diminutive suffix and more properly means slight, but it's a very short word, and its use for malgranda (little) is quite common. 
The reason given for dura is original research pure and simple; I have softened the wording to use "may" and "perhaps", and noted the phonetic factors which could be involved. 
The putative iconicity of eta is dubious, but IMHO it's at least somewhat plausible, so I've left it; but I've changed "little" in the description ("a little word")— a weasel word in this context— to "short". 
:--Thnidu (talk) 23:30, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''dura'' 

message: In §  Interrogative vs relative pronouns
the gloss in
: Kiel vi faris tion? (How did you do that [accusative]?)
where "[accusative]" applies to the correlative tion, is easily misread as applying it to the correlative being described, kiel: a stumbling block for the reader. Compare the immediately preceding example: 
: La polico ne kaptis la ŝtelistojn, kiuj ŝtelis mian ringon. (The police haven't caught the thieves who [plural] stole my ring.)
Here the similarly bracketed inflection-specifier "[plural]" refers to kiuj. The exact placement is less conspicuous than the bracketed term itself. To avoid such confusion, I'm changing both bracketed terms to subscripts:  
* La polico ne kaptis la ŝtelistojn, kiuj ŝtelis mian ringon. (The police haven't caught the thieves whoplural stole my ring.) 
* Kiel vi faris tion? (How did you do thataccusative?)
--Thnidu (talk) 22:04, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Bracketed inflection

message: The sentence: " Thus by learning these 14 elements the speaker acquires a paradigm of 45 adverbs and pronouns. " came up and the word "paradigm" seems to be a bit confusing. This was discussed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse#Is_it_appropriate_to_simplify_regular_wikipedia_vocabulary%3F  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hiveir (talk • contribs) 23:25, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reword paradigm? 

message: The section "original setup" clearly oversimplifies and distorts the linguistic aspects of implied gender assumptions in original Esperanto usage. I plan to make improvements by refining the current presentation. Hereby I provide an advanced warning to the original author or anybody who is interested.
Please let me know if I should be aware of any constraints or dependencies that I need to heed while undertaking this endevor. Thanks, Filozofo (talk) 22:59, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical misrepresentation