Comments on: Crocodiling

by: Jason Fisher

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:37:51 +0000

One thing nobody seems to have commented on — were these (very interesting) words Zamenhof’s creation or were they coined by later Esperantists? What I find most interesting here is the apparently spontaneous evolution of completely arbitrary language metaphors. To me, that seems to run counter to the original mission of Esperanto — to facilitate international communication, where the reliance on such arbitrary, unique, and culturally-specific metaphors would probably have been avoided. Instead, it shows Esperanto becoming more like a “real” language — by which, I intend no denigration; I just mean a language that developed “in the wild”, subject to all the peculiarites that entails. But assuming these are, in fact, recent coinages, does this indicate we are seeing a bona fide Esperanto culture emerging?

Does anybody know more precisely the origins of these terms?

by: David

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:45:19 +0000

Caymaning is fun, I really get a kick out of it.

by: BG

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 04:50:58 +0000

Actually, a number of Esperanto words come from Polish and Russia (Wikipedia doesn’t say which is which), but they total under 20. Lithiuanian one the other hand supposedly gives only the one word “tuj” (immediately). Since Zamenhof there has been at least one Asian word taken into Esperanto: “haŝio” (chopsticks) from Japanese. What Renato says is still true: Zamenhof took relatively few words from his own language and none from Asian languages .

Heres an exerpt from Esperanto Vocabulary:
Russian and Polish: barakti (to flounder), barĉo (borscht), bulko (a bread roll), celo (an aim, goal), ĉu (whether), eĉ (even), kaĉo (porridge), kartavi (to pronounce R in the throat), klopodi (to take steps), kolbaso (a sausage), krado (a grating), krom (except), luti (to solder), [via] moŝto ([your] highness), nepre (without fail), nu (well!), ol (than), pilko (a ball), po (per), pra- (proto-), prava (right [in opinion]), svati (to matchmake), ŝelko (suspenders), vosto (a tail), and perhaps the collective suffix -ar-;

by: Simon

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:32:11 +0000

Renato - doesn’t the Esperanto question word ĉu come from the Polish czy?

by: renato figueiredo

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 10:56:55 +0000

Let’us not forget that Zamenhof was a Polish-Ukarinian-Jew, and for this reason he tried to “recreate” Hebrew and Yiddish. I studied and speak Esperanto, but I think the greatest problem on Esperanto’s creation was that Zamenhof didn’t know a single or in Asisatic languages as Chinese. All Esperanto language is based on European languages. Another curiosity is that even being Polish, he put only one Polish word in Esperanto Sausace, Kelbaso.

by: Rmss

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 20:47:05 +0000

By the way, Simon, the article says he urged Yiddish speakers to adopt the Latin alphabet :-).

by: laci

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 17:11:56 +0000

In Russia they even executed a number of esperantists.

BG
just a tiny mistake :) the verb to speak is “paroli” so …,sed ne parolas…

by: Simon

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 11:40:51 +0000

laci mentions that there are two other similar words in Esperanto: lizardi, (to lizard), which means to use a constructed language other than Esperanto, and salamandraĵo (salamanderings?), which are words that exist in your native language but not in Esperanto.

by: rek

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 10:03:14 +0000

I was about to ask if there’s a word meaning to switch to a different language to converse privately among speakers of another language…

by: Rmss

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 08:50:08 +0000

I like Esperanto, but isn’t it rather annoying see Esperantists writing Esperanto as soon as something goes about Esperanto?