I’ve already covered ya basic participle shenanigans at length in the “partying with participles” series, but I did spot a nice little extra recently.
Participles are a big topic, but once the system is in your brain, it’s pretty neat. To briefly recap, we basically have a bunch of suffixes that we can apply to a verbal rootword in order to build a new word to describe something, where that new word encodes:
- Whether the action is completed, ongoing, or yet to occur, and
- Whether the thing being described is doing the action or having the action done to it
| Doing the action | Receiver of the action | |
| Action completed | -int | -it |
| Action ongoing | -ant | -at |
| Action yet to occur | -ont | -ot |
Then once you’ve added the necessary ending, you make it a noun, adjective or adverb according to taste with the -o, -a, or -e endings respectively:
La falantaj folioj estas ruĝaj.
The falling leaves are red.
The action is ongoing, and is an adjective describing the noun ‘leaves’. The leaves are doing the falling.
La manĝota pomo mortigos lin.
The apple about to be eaten will kill him.
The action is yet to occur, and is an adjective describing the noun ‘apple’. The apple is on the receiving end of the eating action.
La kantonto estas mia amiko.
The one/person about to sing is my friend.
The action is yet to occur, and is an noun. The person is doing the singing.
Notice the key quirk here: that the noun forms are always someone, not just any thing or any property – a person. Which brings me to a neat little trick that hadn’t yet occurred to me, and then I saw it whilst perusing the dictionary (I do actually have friends).
Esperanto actually has suffixes for deriving a “thing” from a root word, or deriving a “quality/property” from a root word – and you can of course freely smash them onto the end of participles too.
La rompitaĵo refariĝos.
Literally: The thing that was broken shall be remade.
Less clumsily: That which was broken shall be remade
The “aĵ” suffix makes a concrete thing from a root. So the action described by “rompit-” (the breaking is complete, so -i-, and the thing described was on the receiving end of the breaking so -t not -nt) is made into a concrete broken thing by the suffix.
And how about the “quality of <root>” suffix “-ec“?
Tiun rompitecon ni ĉiuj konas.
We are all familiar with that brokenness.
Literally “that quality of having been broken” (romp-it-ec-o).
Pretty flippin’ neat I thought. Very concise expression. I wonder if you’d agree that the following is sufficient to tersely express the spirit of a famous quote:
Asertitaĵo senpruva, tiel forigita senpruve
That which is asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof (literally: a thing asserted without proof, so dismissed without proof)
And as a little bonus, I noticed a neat word used in the dictionary definition of “-itaĵo”:
ĝisrezulte
until completion
What a nice word-build using “ĝis” (until/up to). A nice simple adverb to tag next to an action that you want to make clear was continued until completion. E.g.
Li ĝisrezulte farbis la murojn
He painted the walls until they were done
Annnnnd the coolest usage of “-aĵo” for a participle I can think of so far……
La okazontaĵo
That which will come to pass (or: “will occur” if you’re dull inside)
Old Adventures in Esperanto 