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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: EMS-EUD |
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ESPERANTO , an artificial international auxiliary
standing
At first he tried to construct his roots a priori by arbitrary combinations of letters. Then he fell back on the plan of taking his roots ready-made from existing languages, as the inventor of Volapiik had done before him. But instead of taking them mainly from one language, he has selected them from the chief
random , keeping, however, a certain balance between the Romance words, taken chiefly from Latin (tamen) and French (trotuar), on the one hand, and the Germanic on the other hand, the latter being taken sometimesfrom German (nur, " only "), sometimes from English, the words being generally written more or less phonetically (rajt=right). Most of the Germanic words are badly chosen from the inter-national point of view. Thus the German word quoted above would not be intelligible to any one ignorant of German. Indeed, from the international point of view all specially German words ought to be excluded, or else reduced to the common Germanic form; thus trink ought to be made into drink, the t being a specially German modification of the d, preserved not only in English but in all the remaining Germanic languages. This incongruous mixture of languages is not only jarring and repulsive, but adds greatly to the difficulty of mastering the vocabulary for the polyglot as well as the monolingual learner. The inventor has taken great pains to reduce the number of his roots to a minimum; there are 2642 of them in his dictionary, the Universala Vortaro (from Ger. Wort, " word "), which does not include such international words as poezio, telefono; these the learner is supposed to recognize and form without help. The most eccentric feature of the vocabulary, and the one to which it owes much of its brevity, is the extensive use of the prefix mal- to reverse the meaning of a word, as in malamiko, " enemy," and even malbona, " bad." The phonology of the language is very simple. The vowels are only five in number, a, e, i, o, u, used without any distinction of quantity, as in Russian. There are six diphthongs, expressed by an unnecessarily complicated notation. The consonant-system is simple enough in itself, but is greatly complicated in writing by the excessive and mostly unnecessary use made of diacritical letters not only for simple sounds but also for consonant-groups. c is used for ts, as in Polish. The grammar is, like that of Volapuk, partly borrowed from existing languages, partly a priori and arbitrary. The use of the final vowels belongs to the latter category. The use of -a to indicate adjectives and of -o to indicate nouns as in kara amiko, " dear (male) friend," is a source of confusion to those familiar with the Romance languages, and has proved a bar to the diffusion of Esperanto among the speakers of these languages. On the other hand, the following paradigm will show how faith-fully Esperanto can reproduce the defects of conventional European grammar: Singular. Plural. Nominative . . la bona patro la bonaj patroj Accusative . . la bonan patron la bonajn patr47n. It is difficult to see why the accusative should be kept when all the other cases are replaced by prepositions. The verb is better than the noun. Its inflections are -as present, -is preterite, -os future, -us conditional, -u imperative and subjunctive, -i infinitive, together with the following participles: Active. Passive. Present -anta -ata Preterite -inta -ita Future . -onta -ota The inventor has followed the good example of his native language in using esti, " to be," as the auxiliary
perdinte, " through having lost." The table of the forty
and adverbs is also elaborate and ingenious. Much ingenuity is displayed in the syntax, as well as some happy simplifications. But, on the other hand, there is much in it that is fanciful, arbitrary and vague, as in the use of the definite articlewhere the author has unfortunately followed French rather than English usageand in the moods of the verb. The following specimens will show the general character of this easy-flowing but somewhat heavy and monotonous language-" bad Italian," as it is called by its detractors: Patro nia, kiu estas en la eielo, sankta estu via nomo; venu regeco via; estu volo via, kiel en la eielo, del ankau sur la tero. Panon nian ciutagan done al ni hodiau; kaj pardonu al ni suldojn niajn, kiel ni ankau pardonas al niaj suldantoj ; kaj ne konduku nin en tenton, sed liberigu nin de la malbono. Estimata Sinjoro. Per tiu ci libreto mi havas la honoron prezenti al vi la lingvon internacian Esperanto. Esperanto tute ne havas la intencon malfortigi la lingvon naturan de is popolo. Gi devas nur servi por la rilatoj internaciaj kaj por tiuj verkoj au produktoj, kiuj interesas egale la tutan mondon. In summing up the merits and defects of Esperanto we must begin by admitting that it is the most reasonable and practical
double
work
change , or else it must crumble to pieces; its failure to work
End of Article: ESPERANTO If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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