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| Entry by 898 | 10.08.02, 13:42 CET |
Hello dear German friend,
Sorry I am writing you in English and not in your native speech since my working knowledge of German is rather limited (although I read it without any problem due to the similarities with my native language which is Dutch).
Compared with Europanto (which is a sort mixed language without a real concept of word structure and development), Esperanto is based on "roots" taken form different European languages rather than words. Zamenhof developped a system of affixes (pre- and suffixes) by which the Esperantist is able to created very easily a very rich vocabulary. Lets give you an example.
"Fraul-" is a root coming from "Fräulein" (German, isn't it?!), meaning in Esperanto "non married person". We have the affix -o which express a reality. So "fraulo" means "Junggeselle". We make this word female by introducing another affix -in-, so become "fraulino" which means "Fräulein". And if I want to express the reality of not being married, than I use the affix -ec- and the result is "frauleco" which means "Junggesellendasein". If I want to adress myself to a reunion of non-married persons for example, I can use the affix ge-. So, I am saying: "Karaj gefrauloj" which means "Liebe Junggesellen und Fräuleinen".
Due to this system and the whole structure of Esperanto, it seems that Esperanto is a sort of Romanic language. However, this is not the case. It is true that a lot of "roots" are coming from mainly French and Latin (not Spanish, dr Zamenhof didn't know any Spanish). But there is also 25% of these roots coming from the German language, and another 10% from the Slavic language family.
Nevertheless the whole concept of affixes is very Germanic (just like in German you can created a lot of news words by putting together roots and suffixes).
A good point for Esperanto is also the total concept of prononciation: Zamenhof choose the very open sounds of Italian so that most of the people can learn this pronunciation very easily. Europanto lacks this. |
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