Slowly forgetting the old version of the blog still exists…. see the new post at the new blog: https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/opened-closed-shutted/
Opened, Closed & Shutted
Author: Andy Esperantisto
The toad and eagle-owl have been talking
Latest at the new blog: https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/have-been-talking/
The problem with with
Meanwhile at the new blog: https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/the-problem-with-with
My favourite fantasy
Read the latest post at the new blog: https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/my-favourite-fantasy/
And both
Next blog post over at: https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/and-both/
Running things without the cats unravelling everything
Off you go to the new blog! https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/cats-unravelling/
Unputdownable
Next up on the new blog! https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/unputdownable/
Esperanto of Dune
Dune hype over at the new blog: https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/dune-esperanto/
What stresses a grammarian?
Time for another saturdayly post at the new location: https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/what-stresses-a-grammarian
Laden with apricots
Next post is up on the new blog! https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/laden-with-apricots/
Verse 33
In a little supplementary post, the new blog revisits a translation I did a decade ago, to spruce with imagery, audio and a few new comments: https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/verse-33/
Worth a gander
There’s another new post over at the new blog! Might be worth unsubscribing here if you’re already subscribed over at the new location – I’ll continue to update here for a while until I see the traffic balance out!
Head over to the new post here here: https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/worth-a-gander/
Passing into the beyond
You’ll find a new post over at the new blog! https://www.adventures-in-esperanto.com/passing-by/
Finally moving on
This has been a draft post for a while now…
I think it might be time to go…
… To somewhere other than this rusty ole wordpress!!!
I’m moving over to a snazzy new platform at my own little domain: adventures-in-esperanto.com
There you’ll even find a little AI app for practicing Esperanto that I’ve built. It’s for roleplaying random scenarios with generated characters, solving mysteries, going on adventures and more. Though you’ll need to get a pay-as-you-go Open AI key to use it, since it’s built on Open AI’s GPT chat model.
I’ll transfer and spruce up my old posts as I get time and amuse myself by generating appropriately weird / weirdly appropriate AI images for each post that I port over – so hopefully even old posts have a new life to them!
I’d love for you to subscribe over there, so you’ll catch when I post more content there. Thanks for all those who’ve commented & liked over the years – it warms my heart!
Image generated by a prompt to DALL·E 3
A whiffle of chatter
Apparently, you might consider “whiffle” and “chatter” to be frequentatives of “whiff” and “chat” respectively!
A frequentative is a form of word used to express repeated or habitual action. So “chatter” is repeated/habitual/ongoing “chat”.
In English, they are most usually formed with an “-le” or “-er” suffix, and you can see a bunch of examples on wikipedia. But the suffixes are not productive, i.e. slapping one of them onto the end of a word doesn’t necessarily generate a frequentative or even a term that anyone will understand. Sometimes, the relation between the two forms is even a bit lost to time.
Though I feel there is something pleasingly quaint about the English frequentatives. Crumble, whiffle, clamber, nuzzle, sniffle. Why do they all sound so tremulous… so wobbly?
Frequaintatives?
The closest I can think of in Esperanto is the “-ad” suffix, which denotes repeated, lasting, or habitual action:
Babili, babilado
To chat, chatter
But that doesn’t sound very wobbly – more like business as usual. It’s got the advantage that everyone’s going to be able to get your meaning, pretty much no matter what word you stick the suffix on, but it’s definitely got me wondering about how to introduce some delicate wobbliness.
Is it sufficient to use a diminutive? The suffix “-et” reduces a thing to its small or diminutive form.
pluvi, pluveti
To rain, to drizzle
“To rain” already implies duration so I don’t think we need “-ad” above… but perhaps a combined “-adet” or “- etad” suffix (depending on whether the original word must be diminufied or made continual first) would make sense? Perhaps the slight unusualness of the construction would be enough to feel wobbly?
frapi, frapeti, frapetadi
To hit, to pat, to patter?
Or perhaps:
Fuzi, fuzado, fuzadeto
To fizz, fizzing, fizzle?
Well it makes sense to me.
Inedibilification
An Esperanto article gave me an idea for an English word: “inedibilify” = to make (something) inedible. And its corresponding noun form “inedibilification”. I suspect you might have even been able to parse out that meaning before I suggested it, because that “-ify” suffix in English is pretty neat for word-building and often acts pretty much like the Esperanto “-ig” (see posts about “ig”):
Manĝi, manĝebla, nemanĝebla, nemanĝebligi
To eat, edible, inedible, to make inedible (inedibilify!)
Vi nemanĝebligis mian kukon
You inedibilified my cake! (made my cake inedible)
But I’ve been sitting on telling you about this, because vexingly, I couldn’t think of an English term for the actual original Esperanto inspiration: nemanĝebliĝi = to become inedible
Post tago en la suno, la sciuro nemanĝebliĝis.
After a day in the sun, the squirrel became inedible.
Is there some kind of English suffix for “to become <something>” like our useful Esperanto “-iĝ”? Or is Esperanto just far too cool for English? (see posts about “-iĝ”)
And just because I always have to take things too far, using the tool suffix “-il” (which when attached to X makes something which makes/does X) – see posts about -il):
Ĉiu scias ke brokolo estas nur nemanĝebligilo.
Everyone knows that broccoli is just an inedibilifier.
The result of that which is done
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)
The Afterput Also
Afterput:
la postmetita “ankaŭ”
the “also” which is put after [something]
[from “post” (after) + the verb “meti” (to put) in its past participle “ita” form]
Aside from the delicious conciseness of “postmetita” (after-put), there’s a nice point in this section of the PMEG (which everyone by now should know is practically my Esperanto holy book).
Usually the word “ankaǔ” (“also” / “too”) is used immediately before the term it’s related to:
sciuroj (kaj ankaǔ meloj) ĉeestas la feston
squirrels (and also badgers) attended the party
But there are circumstances where that’s not the case – where it can appear after. And that’s usually after pronouns (I, she, they, etc.).
ili ankaǔ jam faris ruzajn planojn
they too had made cunning plans
Then the PMEG goes on to say that this is worth avoiding if there’s any chance of misunderstanding. And that got me wondering what structures could lead to misunderstanding, given that this seems like such a natural structure in English.
And I think the answer is when there’s a different possible meaning if the “also” were to apply to the following word instead – which doesn’t happen so much in English, no doubt because we’d use “also” instead of “too”. Let’s use an example…
mi ankaǔ amas ŝin
I too love her
Or is that “I also love her”? Does that mean 1. “I love her” in addition to someone else loving her? Or 2. is it that “I love her” in addition to some other emotion I feel toward her? In other words, does “ankaǔ” apply to “mi” (1) or does it apply to “amas” (2)- there’s the ambiguity.
Therefore, if we mean 1, we could say “ankaǔ mi amas ŝin” to eliminate the other possible interpretation.
If you’re curious, the other common place for an afterput also is with the “ki-” words:
la melestro alvenis, kaj nun ĉiuj atendas la sciureston, kiu ankaǔ estis malfrua
The leader of the badgers arrived, and now everyone is waiting for the leader of the squirrels who too was late
Unless the “also” is related to the entire sub-phrase or a multiword phrase (rather than just the “ki-” word):
la melo estis perforta kiam li estis kolera, kaj ankaǔ kiam li estis feliĉa
The badger was violent when he was angry and also when he was happy
To me, it often seemed to come down to “kiu” having the “also” afterput, and the other “ki-” words having it beforeput, but maybe that’s just my limited imagination!
Enjoying the Moment
Here’s a few musings that occurred to me as I read a particularly neat term recently:
antaŭĝoji = to look forward to
(an-tou-JO-yee, “ou” as in “ouch”)
I do love a ŭ followed by a circumflexed letter; it really does make a pleasant squiggle, which here is then also complemented nicely by the double dots that follow across the i and j.
la meloj antaŭĝojis la kvietan nokton
the badgers looked forward to the quiet night
Our term’s main component is “ĝoji”, which means “to rejoice” or “to be glad/happy”, from the same origin as English “joy”. It appears here with the term “antaŭ” as a prefix, which otherwise when appearing alone and friendless, means simply “before” or “in front of”. It is often used as a prefix with a similar meaning to the English prefix “pre-“:
antaŭjuĝi = to prejudge | antaŭjuĝo = prejudice
from “juĝi” = “to judge”
So you might think of “antaŭ-ĝoji” as “pre-enjoying” (pre-joying, pre-happying). And that immediately gets me wondering what other prefixing mischief I can substitute in there for a giggle. How about:
postĝoji
to enjoy something having happened? post-enjoying? post-happying?
“Post” is the opposite of “antaŭ” – it means “after” (or “behind”). So the gladness is on the other side of the nice event – we’re no longer looking forward it, we’re looking backward to it.
mi lacege postĝojis la grandan manĝon
I exhaustedly enjoyed the large meal [already in my belly]
Perhaps like a kind of nostalgia or afterglow?
ili kune enlite postĝojis
Together in bed, they enjoyed the afterglow
Though that’s its verb form, which I quite like, so it sounds cooler – more like “they afterglowed together”. We could use the noun form to render the English sentence more exactly, but then we’d have to use a verb like “enjoyed” or “felt” to convey the idea via the noun:
ili kune enlite ĝuis/ĝojis/sentis la postĝojon
Change the verbal ending to an “o” for the noun form, and don’t forget the “n” since it’s the direct object of the verb!
But we’ve skipped over the actual enjoyable bit, so how about we go back with:
nunĝoji = to enjoy the moment (enjoy the now)
from “nun” = “now”, literally, “to enjoy now”
Slap it in a sentence:
Ĉesu tropensi kaj simple nunĝoju!
Stop overthinking and just enjoy the moment (the -u ending makes a verb into a command)
Well I think that’s pretty neat, ĉu ne?
And here’s a few bonus “antaŭ”-prefixed terms. When building words using antaŭ, if “pre-” doesn’t work as a translation in your mind, you could think of “fore-” or “beforehand” as alternatives:
antaŭscii
to know beforehand, pronounced: an-toust-SEE-ee
antaŭdiri
to foretell
antaŭafikso
prefix
Now learn the difference, at your proper cost, / Betwixt true valour and an empty boast.
I’ve been thinking about the neatness of the Esperanto “propra” = “own”.
ĉiu propran saĝon posedas
everyone possesses their own wisdom
Notice how the English translation requires us to restate the possessive adjective (“their”) to complete the phrase – but if you’re truly honest with yourself, you know that the word “own” should be sufficient alone to get that meaning across – just like “propra” is sufficient in the Esperanto. So the English method just leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Esperanto’s “propra” is very useful for talking in generalities:
per propra volo
by one’s own will
Interestingly, though it sounds weird to my ear now, I learnt that English’s “proper” was used like “own” too. Makes sense – they’ll both have descended (like some other languages) from Latin’s “proprius”. Wiktionary has quotations ranging from 1596 to 1946. Including my post title and this:
Each animal has its proper pleasure, and the proper pleasure of man is connected with reason.
Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
My title usage, and the first usage of “proper” in the above quote actually both seem to correspond more to Esperanto’s “mem” rather than “propra” – a way of emphasising the ownership introduced, i.e. “the animal’s pleasure and no other’s“.
However, the second usage “the proper pleasure of man” is almost looking like Esperanto’s “propra” without even having to restate the possessive – right?
But I suppose, because of how else English uses proper, it’s a bit too ambiguous to start working this in to everything:
everyone possesses proper wisdom
their own wisdom? or the correct wisdom?
Shame! But surely, at the very least, if English cared a jot about anybody’s feelings it would at least allow “everyone possesses own wisdom”. Alas not.
Thank goodness we have Esperanto 🙂
p.s. I never really thought about the use of “proper” in “proper noun”. It’s not in contrast to “improper/incorrect” but instead “common” nouns. So it’s more like that older meaning of proper – it’s the “own” name of a specific thing – it belongs specifically to the thing being named. Which, as I think about it, seems a natural extension of one of the Latin “proprius” definitions: “special” or “particular”.
Nuances of Repetition
I stumbled across a little nuance in how we talk about repeated actions. I stumbled across a little nuance… ok, too obvious.
When we use a noun (Esperanto O-word) that names an action, we usually talk about a single instance of that action, and we can talk about several using the plural form.
Let’s roll with eĥo (echo), because ĥ is an under-appreciated letter (pronounced like the ch in Scottish loch).
Eĥo
A single echo
Eĥoj
Echoes – more than one echo
But in Esperanto, we also have access to the suffix “ad” (click to see related posts), which implies that an action is repeated or continual:
Eĥado
A long echoing, or several echoes together at a time.
What if we went full-on and pluralised that too? What then?
Eĥadoj
Several long echoes, or several times when echoes were repeated.
What happens is that we talk then of several long echoings or several points when echoes were repeated! Makes sense. I’d never really thought about comparing plurality with repeatedness, so I thought that was interesting! (check out the inspiration source at PMEG).
And I hope you’re enjoying as much as me the fact that an “echo” in itself is also a repeated sound, so we’ve got repeats inside repeats…
Whenever I talk about a word I tend to do a dictionary dive, and I wanted to also share something I found when reading up on eĥo:
Seneĥe
Echolessly
An example usage might be:
La krio seneĥe velkis
The cry echolessly faded
It’s just a joy to pronounce 🙂
In favour of numberable
If you’re anything like me, you often sit pondering the nature of countable nouns. The countability, or enumerability, of things is an important consideration – despite my spellchecker refusing to acknowledge it.
This is the idea that some nouns name individual things that one could count, and yet others name things whereby the quantity is unspecified or arbitrary, a non-individual thing or substance. And we use these nouns slightly differently. For example, with countable nouns like “squirrel”, “house”, and “tree”, we can talk about them like this:
There are two squirrels in a house.
But that would sound mega weird with uncountable nouns like “water”, “sand”, or “milk”:
There are two sands in a milk.
Because those are not countable; talking about one or more of them is a bit strange. There are some uncountable nouns, like “metal”, where we do sometimes use the plural to refer to many types of that noun (rather than individual instances). For example:
She held in her grasp two metals.
This does not mean two bits of metal, this means two types of metal.
This is all largely the same in Esperanto, with the same words you’d expect. But there is an interesting word-building quirk to be aware of!
When we make words with the aĵ suffix, we make a concrete thing to do with the root word. For example: “utila” means “useful”, and “utilaĵo” is a “useful thing”.
And the quirk to be aware of is that words produced in this manner can frequently make sense as either countable or non-countable nouns, and you’ll find them in both uses. One example that PMEG discusses is “produktaĵo”. The verb “produkti” means “to produce” so “produktaĵo” is a thing which is produced, and can be countable or non-countable depending on context. It is like the difference between English “product” and “produce”, where “product” names individual countable things, but we talk about “produce” as we would “water”:
Kiam vi kolektos la produktaĵon de la tero…
When you have gathered the produce of the land…
Sciuroj importas 75% de siaj produktaĵoj
Squirrels import 75% of their products.
Most of the time, context is gonna show you which you’d want to translate it as. And obviously the plural “j” is often a dead giveaway that we’re being countable. But sometimes, the sentence might be short enough that the meaning could go either way, the PMEG gives:
Li lavis tolaĵon
Countable: He washed a linen (e.g. item of clothing made of linen)
Uncountable: He washed linen
Pretty neat!
By the way, the Esperanto for “to count” is “nombri” from “nombro” (number). So “countable” is “nombrebla”, which is pretty delicious in my books. It’s inspired me to prefer “numberable” in English over all the other pretenders: countable, numerable, enumerable…
One Neat Trick
To -i or to -ado
What’s the difference between tricking and tricking? Or “trompi” and “trompado”?
For those unfamiliar with the suffixes, “i” is the base form of a verb, the dictionary form, the infinitive. So trompi means “to trick” – no sense of time/tense. Notice how when we want to put it in e.g. present tense in English we lose the “to”, and even sometimes add an “s”: “he tricks the squirrel” (present tense in Esperanto: trompas). But we use this base form under some circumstances, e.g. “he loves to trick squirrels” (“loves” is doing our tense work).
The “-ado” suffix has a few purposes, but the one I’m interested in here is using it to create the noun (or name) of an action from the action verb. So for example “trompi” is a verb meaning “to trick”, but “trompado” is a noun, so we can talk about “the tricking” of something, in a nouny way. E.g. “the tricking of squirrels is no simple matter”. If you want to learn a bit about Esperanto root words, and making them nouns/verbs/adjectives here’s an old blog post.
So lets compare this the usage of “trompi” and “trompado” below as closely as we can:
1.
la ruzaj meloj amas trompi sciurojn
the cunning badgers love tricking (to trick) squirrels
2.
la ruzaj meloj amas trompadon de sciuroj
the cunning badgers love the tricking of squirrels
In both cases, we’ve got the revelation that this particular clan of badgers enjoy squirrels getting tricked. But you may see the difference between these two sentences even from the English: in example 1, we’re suggesting that what the badgers enjoy is doing the tricking themselves, but in 2, we make no such implication; we’re suggesting that the badgers find enjoyment regardless of who is performing the tricking. And that’s exactly the difference in the use of -i and -ado here! The -i form always implies a subject doing the action, and it’s usually the same subject as the verb it’s working with (here “amas”), but -ado is independent of subject. Neat huh.
This post was inspired by this PMEG page, where you’ll also find the following quote, which demonstrates fluidly the flexible neatness of Esperanto participles.
Aga O-vorto nomas agon sen konsideri eventualan faranton
An action O-word names an action without considering a potential do-er (i.e. one who might do the action)
To me, “sen konsideri eventualan faranton” is a construction that flows so neatly in Esperanto, but always feels like a stumble in English. As you can see in my translation, I either resort to the informal “do-er”), or I have to spell out the exact meaning laboriously “one who does the action”. I could perhaps strain and use other terms like “actor”, but it feels clunky, and it’s nice to be able to derive my meaning from the base word that’s already appropriate: “do” (fari).
Learn more about Esperanto participles from my old series on them: https://adventuresinesperanto.wordpress.com/category/esperanto-quirks/partying-with-participles/.
“Screwing” is fun in Esperanto
I just had quite the enjoyable eight or so minutes; I discovered the word for “screw” in Esperanto, and it is gorgeous and supremely fun to pronounce over and over:
ŝraŭbi
The first bit might take some effort if you’re not used to the combo, because we’ve got ŝ sounding like “sh” in “show”, immediately followed by a rolled r! Then that satisfying ending with aŭ (like “ow” in “how”) followed by bi (like the word “bee”).
As Esperanto regulars will see, the “i” ending makes this the verb form, so it means “to screw”, from the base noun form “ŝraŭbo” which is just “a screw”.
And it only gets better with some of the combos you can build off of this guy. Let me show you a couple of my faves.
ŝraŭbaĵilo = screw threading tool
Now that’s fun to say, and I think, quite a neat construction. Here we’ve got two suffixes:
- aĵ : the ĵ is like the “s” in “pleasure”. This suffix when applied to a root which is at base a noun, produces that concrete thing/object which is most related to the original thing. So applying it to “wood” makes “something made from wood” applying it to spider makes “spider web”. Typically context will make this most clear. Here, “ŝraŭbaĵo” would be “screw threading”. See my other posts referring to aĵ. The PMEG has a super useful page for better understanding this powerful suffix here.
- il: applying this suffix (pronounced like “eel”) to a root we get a “tool for [root] “. Here, we get a “tool for producing screw threading”! Of course, followed by the “o” noun ending. Other posts mentioning il here.
ŝraŭbingo = nut
This also quite neatly produces a related word, by quite simple means. We’ve got the suffix: ing which means “holder for [root]”!
But crucially, the important bit is that these words are delightful to wrap the tongue around!
If you’d like to stick to the beauty of Esperanto’s one sound per letter, then remember to pronounce the ending as “bin” followed by “go” (as “go” in “got”), instead of how the “ng” merges in English “bingo”. But you won’t be hassled if you don’t care about such things!
Now, my wife caught me talking about using nuts on screws (not bolts), and gave me a informative lecture! So for anyone who knows the differences: if we go by the dictionary at vortaro.net , “ŝraŭbo” in Esperanto is a very general term for a cylindrical threaded object that one turns to fix!
Esperanto missed its chance
I’m not certain whether Esperanto can recover from such a horrendous and unforgivable oversight. I feel like it might be possible, but it’d take some work. Let me explain.
I’m talking about a dilemma that many Esperantistas will have encountered: the actual Esperanto word for dilemma “dilemo”.
Well now, the term “dilemma” and its many incarnations in other languages (dilema, dilemma, dilemme, Дилемма, dilema), originate from the greek for “double proposition”. Surviving separately in both English and Esperanto are the terms “lemma” and “lemo” respectively for just “proposition”. This separation means that “trilemma” is also used in English, for when you’ve got three alternatives to consider instead of two!
I thought that was pretty neat. But this is only possible because English is numerically promiscuous, caring not whether the number 2 is represented using prefixes like “bi”, “two”, or “di”.
To make this relationship more clear, I reckon that Esperanto should have gone for “dulemo” since our fair “two” is “du”. This would be the perfect hint that tri-lemo, dek-lemo and sescent-sesdek-ses-lemo are perfectly reasonable 😀
Now, of course I’m just playing with you, Esperanto; I love you to bits. But you gotta admit, dulemo is way more fun even by itself. For one, it looks like it could also mean “the tendency to be a ‘d-person'”, whatever that might be… 😀 (d(o) – ul – emo).
Turn around – de temp’ al temp’ mi disrompiĝas!
It’s all about word versatility this evenin’. We turn a simple word into whole bag of tricks. So don’t turn back, nor avert your eyes. The word of interest is:
Turni : To Turn (pronounced TOOR-nee)
This word specifically means that the subject is turning something. As in “I turned the hands of the clock”, or even “I turned the clock into a watch”. But never “I turned around” or “I turned into a badger”. The difference with those last ones, is that they are implying that the turning is happening to the subject of the verb, the thing doing the action. But Esperanto has a different word for that.
Therefore, if I said the broken phrase “Mi turnis en melon” for “I turned into a badger”, an Esperantist would ask you “You turned what into a badger?” Your sentence is incomplete!
First, lets take the dictionary dive:
Turnilo: winch / crank / tool for turning
Using the suffix “-il” for specifying a tool for performing an action, we can arrive at “a tool for turning”, which is quite versatile in itself; we can tack any noun at the front to get “a tool for turning [noun]”:
- ŝraŭbturnilo: screwdriver
- diskturnilo: disk unit / drive / turn table
Deturni: to turn away / to avert
Deturnu viajn okulojn! = Avert your eyes! Here we use the word for “from”. So instead of just turning a thing, we’re turning it from something else. Whenever you get a nice strong action word like this, you can make fun use of “sen” = “without” to describe things that proceed without that action. Here the “a” ending makes an adjective, for describing nouns:
- sendeturna: without turning away / unflinchingly. “la sendeturna okulo” = “The unaverting / unflinching eye”.
Returni: to turn back
The “re” prefix means repetition, or going back. So putting the “re” infront of “turni” will usually mean turning something back the other way, or in the opposite direction.
Turniĝi: to turn (around) / rotate / gyrate / revolve (toor-NEE-jee)
Here’s that sneaky “iĝ” suffix again. It means literally “to become [turned]”. Our root here is “turn”. So this is like putting the turning action back on the subject. Remember how we couldn’t use “turni” to have the subject talk about itself turning, it must always be turning something else? Well we can with the suffix: I turned into a badger = Mi turniĝis en melon. While it might be hard at first to deal with Esperanto’s strict nature about who is the subject of a verb, it actually means the sense of words very easy to interpret and reason over for word building when you get the hang of it.
Elturniĝi: to manoeuvre / wangle / contrive
Woah. How did we get that? Looks like a flippin’ Elvish name! So we start with the basic “turniĝi” and add to it the ever useful “el” meaning “out of”. So it’s literally like turning yourself out of a difficult situation! And whenever you’ve got yourself a cool verb like that, you can always make a word to describe someone with that quality:
Elturniĝema: elusive, resourceful, slippery, wily
The “em” suffix (and the adjective “a” ending here) describes something that has the tendency, inclination, or disposition for a given action. So something/someone that is “elturniĝema” is one who tends to be able to wangle and manoeuvre!
A lot of the above can be mix ‘n’ matched, many things that work for “turni” (turning something) work for “turniĝi” (being turned)!
Kapturno: dizziness, giddiness, swimming (in head), vertigo
Using the noun ending “o”, a “turno” is just “a turn(ing)”. When we combine with “kapo” = “head”, we have a head-turning. Which is used to refer to when it feels like your head keeps turning you strangely when you’re a bit dizzy!
And now for some extra fun outside of the safety of a dictionary:
Diskturnisto: DJ
Using the “ist” suffix, which is like English “er” in “Shoemaker”, “Writer”, “Runner”, or “ist” in “Novelist”, “Florist”, “Tourist”, we can define someone who is professionally occupied with turning disks 😀
Neturnita: Unturned / Yet to turn
One might used this to describe someone bitten by a zombie but not yet dead… 😛
Nuboj en la kosmo
Bela kaj bone vortigita blogaĵo pri interesa temo !
Homoj, kiuj regule uzas teleskopon scias ke nenio estas pli ĝena ol nuboj. Malgraŭ tio, multaj el la plej belaj strukturoj en la kosmo estas nubegoj. Ne temas pri nuboj el akvo, kiel tiuj, kiujn oni vidas surtere, sed nuboj el jonoj, gasoj kaj polveroj. Ili troviĝas ekster la sunsistemo, sed ja videblas kiel svagaj makuloj en multaj teleskopoj. Pro tio, ili nomiĝas nebulozoj, laŭ la Latina vorto ”nebula”, kiu signifas nebulo aŭ nubo. Kosma turisto ankoraŭ povus rigardi ĉirkaŭ si tamen. Malgraŭ tio ke nebulozoj estas miloj da fojoj pli densaj ol ”malplenaj” partoj de la universo, ili daŭre estas malpli densaj ol la plej bonaj vakuoj, kiujn inĝenieroj povas krei surtere. Se oni plenigus botelon de 1L en nebulozo, oni tipe kaptus kelkajn milionojn da atomoj. Tio sonas kiel granda kvanto, sed se oni farus la saman sur la surfaco de la Tero, oni fakte kaptus ĉirkaŭ 1022
View original post 2,108 more words
Apply squirrels where needed – Apliku laŭbezone sciurojn
I recently realised that one of the little enjoyments of my day is when I discover words that demonstrate neat uses of word building. And so this marks the start of a new sub-type of blog post category!
In “productive words”, I’ll introduce a root word which I think has one or more interesting, convenient, or useful constructions that are also found in an Esperanto dictionary (safety reasons). Then, we’ll completely throw caution to the wind and posit some more constructions that aren’t in the dictionary for the sheer heck of it.
Feel free to ask about any words used, or methods of construction; I won’t go into all of them here to start.
Bezoni : To Need
Dictionary examples:
- laŭbezone: where needed / as need be / as needed
- bezonaĵo: requisite / a thing that is necessary
- senbezona: needless
“Laŭ” (“according to” / “following” / “along”) is a frequent culprit for producing interesting constructed words. It works so nicely with so many things. Number 1 is definitely my favourite! So succinct, and avoids those different English variations in favour of a single logical version. But I do also like how simply we get to “requisite” using the “aĵ” suffix!
My thoughts:
- Bezonema: needy
- Bezonaĉo: base/nasty urge/need
Vortaro.net also has “necesbezono” as “manko de ĉio, kion postulas la fizika vivo”. What would you say that translates to? Basic needs?
Why not… Combine the power of -ig & -iĝ?!
… It’s sheer madness, that’s why. But it’s fun, and that’s what we’re here for.
I was trawling through the latest updates to the PMEG (because I know how to party), and found that it’s not entirely unheard of to combine the suffixes -ig & -iĝ in a word. But -ig & -iĝ are sorta like opposites, why don’t they just cancel out?
These suffixes are really useful word-building tools, so if you’re not familiar with how they work, then you can see some examples in my previous post here. Otherwise, here’s quick recap (skip if you’re familiar with -ig & -iĝ):
“g” is pronounced like “g” in “goat”, and “ĝ” is pronounced like “g” in “gem”.
[word]+ig = cause / make happen [word]
For example :
- “morti” = “to die”
- “mortigi” = “to kill” (literally: cause to die)
[word]+iĝ = become [word]
For example:
- “rompi” = “to break (something)”
- “rompiĝi” = “to become broken” (In English we tend to just keep using “break”, basically something breaking).
So the reason one might expect the suffixes to cancel out is: you’ve got “rompiĝi” = “to become broken”, so when adding -ig (rompiĝigi) you might expect to have made: “to cause something to become broken” which seems just the same as “rompi” (to break something)!
Note that the “i” ending after the suffixes is what makes the final constructed words into verbs.
An example of both -ig & -iĝ being used in the PMEG is: formoviĝigi
What a beautiful beast of a word, eh? Break it down:
- movi: to move (something)
- formovi: to move (something) away
- formoviĝi: to be moved away / to become moved away
- formoviĝigi: to cause to be moved away / to make (something) moved away
There’s a nuanced difference of meaning between your standard formovi and formoviĝigi.
“Formovi” alone implies a direct causation: we actually moved something away. Whereas there’s room for indirect methods in “formoviĝigi”, because we’re just causing something to end up being moved, to become moved. So the addition of “ig” doesn’t quite return us to the original meaning of “formovi”.
In the PMEG’s example, the moving is accomplished through intimidation, not actual physical movement:
- Rajdmilicanoj formoviĝigis la publikon = Yeomen made the public move away.
Well, we’ve had our fun. But, of course, we must be sensible when talking to new people. It’s usually more clear to just separate off the -ig:
- Rajdmilicanoj igis la publikon formoviĝi
But where’s the excitement there!? I say just talk more slowly and more loudly 😀 ĥeĥe
Esperantic Quest
“Esperantic”! Such a tasty word. I wish we had something like “Englic” as the adjectival form of English. A missed opportunity.
Long ago, I blitzed through the first version of the Esperanto course on Duolingo, and actually found it very useful for cementing vocabulary in my head in a way that helped my understanding and generation of sentences, right from the basics.
It has come to my attention in recent days that the course seems to have undergone a large update, with plenty new and higher level material! So the time has come to undertake some more Duolingo learning, since my vocabulary sucks compared to my grammar understanding.
Is there anyone who would care join the Esperanta Serĉado? A little competition always makes things more fun. Follow me at duolingo.com/AndehR !
Vintro Venas…
Old Adventures in Esperanto 