Esperanto etymology

Template:Short description Template:More citations needed Template:Esperanto sidebar Esperanto vocabulary and grammatical forms derive primarily from the Romance languages, with substantial contributions from Germanic languages. The language occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" constructed languages such as Interlingua, which borrow 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 (Template:Lang from international ex-, Template:Lang from German Template:Lang, Template:Lang from French Template:Lang) or orthographic form (Template:Lang and Template:Lang from English team and boat, Template:Lang from French Template:Lang). However, each root can then form dozens of derivations which may bear little resemblance to equivalent words in the source languages, such as Template:Lang (government), which is derived from the Latinate root Template:Lang (to rule) but has a morphology closer to German or Russian.

Source languages

Zamenhof took most of his Esperanto root words from languages of the Italic and Germanic families, principally Italian, French, German, Yiddish, and English. A large number are what might be called common European international vocabulary, or generic Romance: Roots common to several languages, such as Template:Lang "man", found in English words such as virile, and Template:Lang "eye", found in oculist. Some appear to be compromises between the primary languages, such as Template:Lang (to thunder), per French Template:Lang, Italian Template:Lang, German Template:Lang and English thunder.

Romance and Germanic

The main languages contributing to Zamenhof's original vocabulary were French, English, and German/Yiddish, the modern languages most widely learned in schools around the world at the time Esperanto was devised. The result was that about two-thirds of this original vocabulary is Romance, and about one-third Germanic, including a pair of roots from Swedish:

Comparative the Template:Lang (as in "the more the merrier"), from Swedish Template:Lang. (Cf. German Template:Lang.)

A couple of words, Template:Lang (street) and Template:Lang (yeast), are closer to Dutch (Template:Lang, Template:Lang) than German (Template:Lang Template:IPA, Template:Lang), but this may be a compromise between German and English the way Template:Lang (stone) is a compromise between German Template:Lang Template:IPA and English stone. (There's also Template:Lang (to snore), Dutch Template:Lang.) Template:Lang (fire) matches the pronunciation of English fire, but is also spelled and pronounced as Yiddish Template:Lang Template:Transliteration. Indeed, much of the supposedly German vocabulary actually appears to be Yiddish, specifically Zamenhof's native Bialystok (Northeastern) dialect, which had formed the basis of his abortive attempt to standardize that language. Words with the digraph Template:Lang in German may in Esperanto have either Template:Lang (seemingly corresponding to the spelling) or Template:Lang (seemingly corresponding to the pronunciation). This pattern is not random, but reflects Template:Lang and Template:Lang in Old High German, a distinction preserved in Yiddish: Template:Lang (home: German Template:Lang Template:IPA but Yiddish Template:Lang Template:Transliteration), Template:Lang (whistle: both German Template:Lang Template:IPA and Yiddish Template:Lang Template:Transliteration).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Zamenhof never admitted to a Yiddish influence in Esperanto, presumably to avoid arousing antisemitic prejudice.

Many of the Latinate roots were given an Italianesque appearance, corresponding to the use of Italian as a model for Esperanto pronunciation, but in form are closer to French, such as Template:Lang (shirt: French Template:Lang Template:IPA, Italian Template:Lang Template:IPA) and Template:Lang (horse: French Template:Lang Template:IPA, Italian Template:Lang Template:IPA). Since Zamenhof's day, a large amount of Latinate vocabulary has been added to the language. In 1987, Mattos calculated that 84% of basic vocabulary was Latinate, 14% Germanic, and 2% Slavic or Greek.<ref>Mattos, Geraldo, "La deveno de Esperanto", Fonto 1987.</ref>

Latin and Greek

Only a few roots were taken directly from the classical languages:

Latin: Template:Lang (but), Template:Lang (however), Template:Lang (after), Template:Lang (although), Template:Lang (as though), Template:Lang (during), Template:Lang (nor), Template:Lang (or), Template:Lang (today), Template:Lang (fir), Template:Lang (heron), Template:Lang (to go—though this form survives in the future tense in French Template:Lang), Template:Lang (frost), the adverbial suffix Template:Lang, and perhaps the inherent vowels of the past and present tenses, Template:Lang and Template:Lang. Many lexical affixes are common to several languages and thus may not have a clear source, but some such as Template:Lang (worthy of), Template:Lang (a person), Template:Lang (undefined), and Template:Lang (a number together) may be Latin (e.g. the Latin gerundive Template:Lang, the neuter inflection Template:Lang).

Classical Greek: Template:Lang (and, from Template:Lang Template:Transliteration), Template:Lang (about, from Template:Lang Template:Transliteration), the plural suffix Template:Lang, the accusative case suffix Template:Lang, the inceptive prefix Template:Lang (from Template:Lang Template:Transliteration), and perhaps the jussive mood suffix Template:Lang (if that is not Hebrew).

Latin and Greek: the suffix Template:Lang (offspring; from Latin Template:Lang and Greek Template:Lang Template:Transliteration).

As in the examples of Template:Lang 'heron' and Template:Lang 'fir' above, the names of most plants and animals are based on their binomial nomenclature, and so many are Latin or Greek as well.

Slavic and Lithuanian

Surprisingly few roots appear to have come from other modern European languages, even those Zamenhof was most familiar with. What follows is a fairly comprehensive list of such roots that do not also occur in principal languages:

Polish: Template:Lang (borscht, from Template:Lang), Template:Lang (whether, from Template:Lang, perhaps also Yiddish Template:Lang), Template:Lang (even, from Template:Lang), Template:Lang (a grating, from Template:Lang), Template:Lang (to solder, from Template:Lang), Template:Lang ([your] highness, from Template:Lang), Template:Lang (than, possibly from Template:Lang by analogy with Template:Lang), Template:Lang (a ball, from Template:Lang), Template:Lang (suspenders, from Template:Lang).

Lithuanian: Template:Lang (immediately, from Template:Lang); possibly also Template:Lang (two, from Template:Lang, if not from Latin Template:Lang), the suffix Template:Lang (a number together, cf. Template:Lang), and Template:Lang (it, from Template:Lang, Template:Lang).

However, although few roots come directly from these languages, Russian exerted a considerable substratum influence on the semantics of Esperanto. An oft-cited example is Template:Lang "full, complete", which is Latinate in form (French Template:Lang, Latin Template:Lang "full"), but has the semantic range of Russian Template:Lang Template:Transliteration "full, complete", as can be seen in the phrase Template:Lang "a complete dictionary", a usage not possible with the French or Latin words.

Other languages

Template:Expand section Other languages were only represented in the original vocabulary in so far as they were cognate with, or as their words had become widespread in, Esperanto's source languages. However, since that time many languages have contributed words for specialized or regional concepts, such as Template:Lang (chopsticks) from Japanese and Template:Lang (reindeer) from Saami.

Obscure roots

A few roots are obscure:

Template:Lang (it, s/he), Template:Lang (suffix for containers), Template:Lang (husband)

Template:Lang may possibly derive from the Lithuanian Template:Lang (she, it) and Template:Lang (he, it),<ref>Vilborg</ref> and Template:Lang from the French Template:Lang (case).<ref>Floriano Pessoa, 2005, Template:Lang [1] Template:Webarchive</ref>

Like another indirect German borrowing – Template:Lang (bachelor), which derives from Template:Lang (Miss, from German Template:Lang) less the feminine suffix Template:Lang – the Esperanto word Template:Lang (husband) appears to be a back-formation of Template:Lang (wife). Zamenhof claimed the latter derives from Template:Lang (crown princess), borrowed from the German Template:Lang, and then internally analyzed as Template:Lang (crown) Template:Lang (prince) Template:Lang (wife).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> However, Vilborg's Template:Lang argues that Template:Lang is more likely to have come from Yiddish Template:Lang Template:Transliteration (rabbi's wife; Mrs.), reanalysed as Template:Transliteration, and that Zamenhof made up the German etymology after the fact to avoid anti-Semitic prejudice against Esperanto. That would mean that Template:Lang ultimately derives from the Slavic feminine suffix Template:Lang. Regardless, few words have histories this convoluted.

The correlatives, although clearly cognate with European languages (for example, Template:Lang, Template:Lang with French Template:Lang (which), Template:Lang (such); Template:Lang with Italian Template:Lang (each), and Template:Lang with the German genitive Template:Lang, etc.), have been analogically leveled to the point that they are often given as examples of Esperanto innovations. This is especially true for the indefinite forms like Template:Lang (something), which were devised by iconically removing the consonant of the Template:Lang and Template:Lang forms. Likewise, the restriction of the Italian and Greek masculine noun and adjective ending Template:Lang to nouns, and the feminine noun and adjective ending Template:Lang to adjectives and the article Template:Lang, is an Esperanto innovation using existing forms.<ref>For speakers of Italian, Spanish or Portuguese, it may at first be jarring that Esperanto has the endings Template:Lang and Template:Lang of those languages, but assigns them to differentiate nouns from adjectives rather than masculine from feminine. However, there are parallels within Romance. In Provençal, for example, feminine nouns end in Template:Lang but take the article Template:Lang: Provençal Template:Lang (the window), Esperanto Template:Lang; Provençal Template:Lang (life), Esperanto Template:Lang; Provençal Template:Lang Template:IPA (the rose), Esperanto Template:Lang; Provençal Template:Lang Template:IPA (the road), Esperanto Template:Lang; etc. Even in Spanish and Italian, there are words with this pattern: Template:Lang (the hand), Template:Lang (the photo), Template:Lang (the radio), Template:Lang (the generator), etc., are common to Esperanto, Spanish, and Italian.</ref>

Some smaller words have been modified to the extent that they're difficult to recognize. For example, Italian Template:Lang, Template:Lang (to) became Template:Lang (to) under the influence of the Italian contraction Template:Lang (to the), to better fit the phonotactics of Esperanto, and in a parallel change, Latin Template:Lang (out of) and Slavic Template:Lang (by, than) may have become Template:Lang (out of) and Template:Lang (than), though the latter also has the German parallel Template:Lang.

Inflections

The Greek origin of the nominal inflections can be seen in the Greek a-declension nouns such as the word for "muse": musa, plural musai, accusative musan, which in Esperanto is muzo, muzoj, muzon. Greek o-declension words such as logos, logoi, logon (word) are similar, as are adjectival declensions such as aksia, aksiai, aksian (worthy). Greek was perhaps also the model of stressed i in Esperanto words like familío (family), which follows the common Greek pattern of aksía (worthy) and oikíai (houses).

Esperanto has a/i/o ablaut for present/past/future tense, which has partial parallels in Latin present amat, perfect amavit, and the corresponding infinitives amare, amavisse. Otto Jespersen said of the ablaut,

This play of vowels is not an original idea of Zamenhof's: -as, -is, -os are found for the three tenses of the infinitive in Faiguet's system of 1765; -a, -i, -o without a consonant are used like Z's -as, -is, -os by Rudelle (1858); Courtonne in 1885 Template:Sic had -am, -im, -om in the same values, and the similarity with Esperanto is here even more perfect than in the other projects, as -um corresponds to Z's -us. —An International Language (1928)

There may have been a Volapük influence as well, or the two languages may have shared a common influence from earlier languages. In Volapük, the vowels are present a-, future o-, past perfect i-, as well as imperfect ä- Template:IPA; Esperanto retained a distinction between preterite -is and imperfect -es until 1887, the year the modern form of the language was published.<ref>Christer Kiselman, 2010. 'Variantoj de esperanto iniciatitaj de Zamenhof'. In Esperanto: komenco, aktualo kaj estonteco Template:Webarchive, UEA.</ref>

Jespersen didn't parse all of the morphology.<ref>The infinitive -s in Faiguet drops in the indicative, leaving a simple vowel, and the -m in Courtonne is the first-person-singular suffix.</ref> The ablaut for the five languages is as follows:

	Faiguet (1765)[2]	Rudelle (1858)[3]	Volapük (1880)	Courtonne (1884)[4]	Esperanto (1887)
present	-a	-a	-a- <ref>Appears in the passive inflections; there is no Volapük present-tense suffix in the active voice.</ref>	-a-	-a-
future	-y <ref>Spelled "u" but pronounced Template:IPA, as a French u. Faiguet used -o for the past perfect.</ref>	-o	o-	-o-	-o-
past/preterite	-i	-i	i-	(i)<ref>There is no simple past tense, but -i- is used for the past subjunctive</ref>	-i-
imperfect	-e	-e	Template:IPA <ref>spelled "ä"</ref>	-e-	old -e-
conditional		-ju <ref>spelled "iy"; replacement for French "u"</ref>		-u-	-u-
subjunctive		-u <ref>spelled "y" (present subjunctive)</ref>		-ə-	-u

The infinitive suffix -i may derive from Latin deponent verbs, such as loqui (to speak). With elements like these that are only one or two letters long, it is difficult to know whether resemblances are due to the forms being related, or just coincidence. For example, it is speculated that the jussive -u is from the Hebrew imperative -û, but it could also be from the Greek [u] imperative of deponent verbs such as dekhou (receive!); or perhaps it was inspired by [u] being found in both Hebrew and Greek. Similarly, adverbial -e is found in Latin and Italian (bene) as well as in Russian (after a palatalized consonant); the participle bases -t- and -nt- are found in Latin, Italian, Greek, and German; and the pronominal base -i is found in Italian (-mi, -ti, -vi, -si, -gli for Esperanto mi, ci, vi, si, li) and English (me, we, he, she).

There are other parallels with prior constructed languages, such as ili 'they', the numerals un du tri and the feminine suffix -in, which are identical to Jean Pirro's Universalglot of 1868, but it's difficult to tell if there is a connection or if this is merely coincidence due to using similar source languages.

Technical vocabulary

Modern international vocabulary, much of it Latin or Greek in origin, is of course used as well, but frequently for a family of related words only the root will be borrowed directly, and the rest will be derived from it using Esperanto means of word formation. For example, the computer term 'bit' was borrowed directly as bito, but 'byte' was then derived by compounding bito with the numeral ok (eight), for the uniquely Esperanto word bitoko ('an octet of bits'). Although not a familiar form to speakers of European languages, the transparency of its formation is helpful to those who do not have this advantage. Moreover, even bito has the synonym duumo, based on du (two) and -um- (the affix with undefined meaning), thus, making possible to form the word duumoko (alternative to 'byte').

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, therefore, a numido would be any bird of the genus Numida, and a meleagra numido the helmeted guineafowl specifically. Likewise, a numidedo is any bird in the guineafowl family Numididæ.

Competing root forms

There is some question over which inflection to use when assimilating Latin and Greek words. Zamenhof generally preferred the oblique stem over the nominative singular form, as in reĝo (king), which follows the Latin oblique forms with reg– (compare English regicide), or floro (flower) as in floral, rather than nominative singular rex and flos. However, European national standards differ in this regard, resulting in debate over the form of later "international" borrowings, such as whether the asteroid Pallas should be Palaso in Esperanto, parallel to French and English names Pallas, or Palado, as in Italian Pallade, Russian Паллада (Palláda), and the English adjective Palladian. In some cases there are three possibilities, as can be seen in the English noun helix (x = [ks]), its plural helices (c = [s]), and its adjective helical (c = [k]). Although the resulting potential for conflict is frequently criticized, it does present an opportunity to disambiguate what would otherwise be homonyms based on culturally specific and often fossilized metaphors. For example, Venuso (the planet Venus) may be distinguished from Venero (the goddess Venus), all three of the forms of Latin helix are found as Esperanto roots, one with the original meaning, and the other two representing old metaphors: helico (a spiral), heliko (a snail), helikso (the incurved rim of the ear).

Normally the Latin or Greek inflectional ending is replaced with the Esperanto inflectional ending −o. However, the original inflection will occasionally be retained, as if it were part of the root, in order to disambiguate from a more common word. For example, a virus (from Latin vir-us) is virus-o instead of the expected *vir-o in order to avoid confusion with vir-o (a man), and the Latin root corp-us is the source of both korp-o (a living body) and korpus-o (a military corps). Similarly, when the sound ĥ is replaced with k, as it commonly is (see Esperanto phonology), the word ĥoro (a chorus) is replaced with koruso to avoid creating a homonym with koro (a heart). The redundant inflection may have been inspired by Lithuanian, which otherwise contributed relatively little to Esperanto: compare fokuso (focus), kokoso (coconut), lotuso (lotus), patoso (pathos), radiuso (radius), sinuso (sine), and viruso (virus), with Lithuanian fokusas, kokosas, lotosas, patosas, radiusas, sinusas, and virusas (virus) vs. vyras (man).

Traces of Proto-Esperanto

Proto-Esperanto had voicing ablaut, traces of which remain in a few pairs of words such as pezi 'to weigh' (to have weight) and pesi 'to weigh' (to measure the weight). Because little of Proto-Esperanto is attested, it is not clear which other aspects of Esperanto etymology might date to this period.<ref>Kiselman (2010:64–65)</ref>

Notes

Template:Reflist

Bibliography

Vilborg, Ebbe, Etimologia Vortaro de Esperanto. Five volumes, Stokholmo, 1987–2001.
Cherpillod, André, Konciza Etimologia Vortaro. One volume, Roterdamo, 2003.

External links

Template:Cite web Template:BrNote: This dictionary should be used with caution. For example, amelo (starch) is given as a rare example of a Greek word that does not occur in Latin. However, it is not only a Latin derivation (from amyl-um), but more directly derives from German amel-.
Esperanto page Template:Dead link with a list of languages sorted by similarity of basic vocabulary. EVOLAEMP Project, University of Tübingen.

Esperanto etymology

Contents

Source languages

Romance and Germanic

Latin and Greek

Slavic and Lithuanian

Other languages

Obscure roots

Inflections

Technical vocabulary

Competing root forms

Traces of Proto-Esperanto

Notes

Bibliography

External links

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Esperanto etymology

Source languages

Romance and Germanic

Latin and Greek

Slavic and Lithuanian

Other languages

Obscure roots

Inflections

Technical vocabulary

Competing root forms

Traces of Proto-Esperanto

Notes

Bibliography

External links

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