House found to be haunted by ghostly badgers.

Today, you get a couple of words I’ve come up with!

Firstly, we have:

malinformadi = to keep uninformed

• mal : prefix which reverses the meaning of a word
• informi : to inform
• -ad : a suffix which implies repeated or continual action (read more about ad)

Example sentence:

• Kiel antaŭzorgo, la sciuroj malinformadas la melojn = As a precaution, the squirrels keep the badgers uninformed.

It’s very much an active thing to be doing. When you are “malinformi” you are doing the very opposite of informing. Not simply just “not informing”, you are actively putting someone in the dark. The “ad” bit in the full word, stresses the ongoing, repeated process.

Next up, we’ve got:

feliĉigaĵo = something that makes you happy

• feliĉa : happy
• -ig : suffix which means “to make/cause <root>” (read more about ig)
• -aĵ : suffix which shows we’re talking about a concrete thing, which is somehow characterised by the word that comes in front of it. (read more about aĵ)

Example sentence:

• Ĉiu serĉu la feliĉaĵojn = Each person should look for the things that make them happy

At risk of blowing my own trumpet, I thought those words lend themselves to quite neat sentences 🙂

Also, please do excuse the title… I found myself giving this post a very boring title and decided to spice it up with a little strange. In future, I might use slightly more odd titles, but also try to translate them into Esperanto, you know, for kicks. 😀

Title: Domo troviĝis hantata de fantomaj meloj

Just got real

Well ‘ello there!

I’m receiving some top quality spam comments these days, here’s today’s top spam quote:

Your bio web page should contain the photographs of the topless product and specific specific information and facts

Topless Esperanto, eh? Not sure what that would entail.

Anyway, in about a month’s time, it looks like I’m meeting some Esperantists! Face-to-face Esperanting for the first time in my currently snowy home town. I hope they’re ready for some stuttering and a few “mi bedaŭras, ĉu vi povus ripeti tion?”‘s.

In an effort to not look like too much of a silly, I’m looking more closely at radioverda.com, so I can improve my listening skills (they are in desperate need). I’ve noticed that they now upload a transcript to accompany each broadcast, so it’s possible to check your understanding!

Anyway, here’s a few words I found and thought were pretty neatly constructed:

• trapiki = to pierce, puncture
  • tra = through
  • piki = to stab, sting, prick
  • literally means “to stab through”, just makes sense!
• intertempe = all the while, meanwhile
  • inter = between, among (see previous post)
  • tempo = time
  • The “e” is the adverb ending, it’s like the “ly” ending in English, only more regular.
  • Literally, the word is like “between time -ly”. So if you’re describing an action with it, then the action happens in a way that’s between times (meanwhile!)
• interplektita = intertwined
  • inter = among, between
  • plekti = to wreath, twine, plait
  • -ita is the completed passive participle ending. This means that the action (of intertwining) is complete, and that the thing we’re talking about, received the action (rather than performed it).

Esperanto’s offspring

I love some of the spam I get as comments on this website:

Good response in return of this issue with firm arguments
and telling the whole thing regarding that.

Today, I’m finally back at my work desk properly, slaving away already.

I’ve noticed that a few folks are chatting about Ido at Lernu.net, in a thread started by someone who was curious about why a person might choose to learn Esperanto instead; what makes Ido so bad? If you don’t know what Ido is, it’s another constructed language, a spin-off from Esperanto in which changes were made that were thought to fix Esperanto’s “flaws”. It was never widely adopted. Amusingly, “Ido” is Esperanto for “offspring”, it’s an Esperantido.

Among many smaller reasons, one key thing for me that makes Ido lesser in my eyes (from what little I’ve learnt of it), is that its word formation system sounds like it lacks the implicit fluid logic of Esperanto word building. Too much has to be made explicit, there’s no need for all that gumpf. Check out this interesting article about word formation in Esperanto, and read section 7 for a particular mention of how Ido’s word formation is different.