Esperantido
Encyclopedia
Esperantido is the term used within the Esperanto
and constructed language
communities to describe a language project based on or inspired by Esperanto. Esperantido originally referred to the language of that name, which later came to be known as Ido
. The word Esperantido is derived from Esperanto plus the suffix -ido (a descendant). Thus, "Esperantido" literally means "an offspring of Esperanto".
A number of Esperantidos have been created to address a number of perceived flaws or weaknesses of Esperanto, or of other Esperantidos, attempting to improve their lexicon
, grammar
, pronunciation
, and orthography
. (See common objections.) Others were created as language games or to add variety to Esperanto literature. The only Esperantido in common use is Ido.
, are not considered Esperantidos.
in 1894, which were rejected by the Esperanto community and subsequently abandoned by Zamenhof himself.
(1907), the foremost of the Esperantidos, sought to bring Esperanto into closer alignment with Western European expectations of an ideal language, based on familiarity with French
, English
, and Italian
. Reforms included changing the spelling by removing non-Roman letters such as ĉ and re-introducing the k/q dichotomy; removing a couple of the more obscure phonemic contrasts (one of which, [x], has been effectively removed from standard Esperanto); ending the infinitives in -r and the plurals in -i like Italian; eliminating adjectival agreement, and removing the need for the accusative case by setting up a fixed default word order; reducing the amount of inherent gender in the vocabulary, providing a masculine suffix and an epicene
third-person singular pronoun; replacing the pronouns and correlatives with forms more similar to the Romance languages
; adding new roots where Esperanto uses the antonym
ic prefix mal-; replacing much of Esperanto's other regular derivation with separate roots, which are thought to be easier for Westerners to remember; and replacing much of the Germanic and Slavic vocabulary with Romance forms, such as navo for English-derived ŝipo. See the Ido Pater noster below.
Ido spawned its own idos, the first being Adjuvilo
(1908), which was created by an Esperantist to sow dissent in the Ido community.
(brother of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure
) published numerous Esperantido proposals, starting with a response to Ido later called Antido 1 ("Anti-Ido 1") in 1907, which increasingly diverged from Esperanto before finishing with a more conservative Esperanto II
in 1937. Esperanto II replaced j with y, kv with q, kz with x, and diacritic letters with j (ĵ and ĝ), w (ŭ), and digraphs sh (ŝ), ch (ĉ); replaced the passive in -iĝ- with -ev-, the indefinite ending -aŭ with adverbial -e, the accusative -on on nouns with -u, and the plural on nouns with -n (so membrun for membrojn "members"); dropped adjectival agreement; broke up the table of concords, changed other small grammatical words such as ey for kaj "and", and treated pronouns more like nouns, so that the plural of li "he" is lin rather than ili "they", and the accusative of ĝi "it" is ju.
("polysynthetic Esperanto", ca 1993) makes it considerably more complex. Besides the polysynthetic morphology, it incorporates much of the phonology and vocabulary of the Cherokee language
. It has fourteen vowels, six of them nasalized
, and three tone
s.
to break up consonant clusters, marks the accusative case with a nasal vowel, has inclusive and exclusive pronouns
, uses partial reduplication
for the plural (tablo "table", tatablo "tables"), and inversion for antonym
s (mega "big", gema "little"; donu "give", nodu "receive"; tela "far", leta "near"). Inversion can be seen in:
The antonyms are al "he" and la "she" (compare li "s/he"), the ge- (completive) and eg- (inchoative) aspects, fin- "to finish" and nif- "to begin", and graf- "to write" and farg- "to read".
The Universal reduplicated plural and inverted antonyms are reminiscent of the musical language Solresol
.
The changes are morphological:
Example:
Literally, "Behold (the) love of group of boys to the pretty-girl."
See the Esperant’ Pater noster below.
for machine translation
.
, dialect
ical variation, or archaism
s found in natural languages. Several authors have felt a need for such variation, either for effect in original literature, or to translate such variation from national literature.
would theoretically fulfill the need for archaism, but too little survives for it to be used extensively. In 1931 Kalman Kalocsay
published a translation of the Funeral Sermon and Prayer
, the first Hungarian text (12th century), in which he created fictitious archaic forms as though Esperanto were a Romance language deriving from Vulgar Latin
.
Manuel Halvelik went further in 1969 with a book on Arcaicam Esperantom
, where he laid out the grammar of a fictitious ancestor of modern Esperanto. It echoes Proto-Esperanto in a more complex set of inflections, including dative
and genitive case
s ending in -d and -es and separate verbal inflections for person and number, as well as "retention" of digraph
s such as ph and tz, writing c for [k], and the use of the letters q, y, w.
of Esperanto that, among other things, does away with much of Esperanto's inflectional system. For example, standard Esperanto
is in Popido,
("la" is the Popido equivalent of "lia"; the article in Popido is "lo")
follows, compared to the Ido, Esperant’ and Arcaicam Esperantom versions.
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
and constructed language
Constructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
communities to describe a language project based on or inspired by Esperanto. Esperantido originally referred to the language of that name, which later came to be known as Ido
Ido
Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...
. The word Esperantido is derived from Esperanto plus the suffix -ido (a descendant). Thus, "Esperantido" literally means "an offspring of Esperanto".
A number of Esperantidos have been created to address a number of perceived flaws or weaknesses of Esperanto, or of other Esperantidos, attempting to improve their lexicon
Esperanto vocabulary
The word base of Esperanto was originally defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. It contained some 900 root words. The rules of the language allow speakers to borrow words as needed, recommending only that they look for the most international words, and that they borrow one...
, grammar
Esperanto grammar
Esperanto is a constructed auxiliary language. A highly regular grammar makes Esperanto much easier to learn than most other languages of the world, though particular features may be more or less advantageous or difficult depending on the language background of the speaker...
, pronunciation
Esperanto phonology
The creator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, illustrated Esperanto pronunciation by comparing its letters with their equivalents in several major European languages and declaring a principle of "one letter, one sound"...
, and orthography
Esperanto orthography
Esperanto is written in a Latin alphabet of twenty-eight letters, with upper and lower case. This is supplemented by punctuation marks and by various logograms, such as the numerals 0–9, currency signs such as $, and mathematical symbols....
. (See common objections.) Others were created as language games or to add variety to Esperanto literature. The only Esperantido in common use is Ido.
Language reforms
These attempted improvements were intended to replace Esperanto. Limited suggestions for improvement within the framework of Esperanto, such as orthographic reforms and riismRiism
Gender asymmetry is one of the aspects of the constructed language Esperanto that is most frequently targeted for criticism. There are numerous proposals to regularize both grammatical and lexical gender....
, are not considered Esperantidos.
Mundolinco
Mundolingo (1888) was the first Esperantido, created in 1888. Changes from Esperanto include combining the adjective and adverb under the suffix -e, loss of the accusative and adjectival agreement, changes to the verb conjugations, eliminating the diacritics, and bringing the word stock closer to Latin, for example with superlative -osim- to replace the Esperanto particle plej "most".Reformed Esperanto
Zamenhof himself proposed several changes in the languageReformed Esperanto
Reformed Esperanto was a reformed version of Esperanto created in 1894. It is notable as the only complete Esperantido to have been created by Esperanto's original creator, Dr. L. L. Zamenhof. Although Zamenhof's stated preference was to avoid any discussion of changes, he was put under...
in 1894, which were rejected by the Esperanto community and subsequently abandoned by Zamenhof himself.
Ido
IdoIdo
Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...
(1907), the foremost of the Esperantidos, sought to bring Esperanto into closer alignment with Western European expectations of an ideal language, based on familiarity with French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, and Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
. Reforms included changing the spelling by removing non-Roman letters such as ĉ and re-introducing the k/q dichotomy; removing a couple of the more obscure phonemic contrasts (one of which, [x], has been effectively removed from standard Esperanto); ending the infinitives in -r and the plurals in -i like Italian; eliminating adjectival agreement, and removing the need for the accusative case by setting up a fixed default word order; reducing the amount of inherent gender in the vocabulary, providing a masculine suffix and an epicene
Epicene
Epicene is an adjective for loss of gender distinction, often specific loss of masculinity. It includes:* effeminacy — a man with characteristics that are traditionally feminine...
third-person singular pronoun; replacing the pronouns and correlatives with forms more similar to the Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
; adding new roots where Esperanto uses the antonym
Antonym
In lexical semantics, opposites are words that lie in an inherently incompatible binary relationship as in the opposite pairs male : female, long : short, up : down, and precede : follow. The notion of incompatibility here refers to the fact that one word in an opposite pair entails that it is not...
ic prefix mal-; replacing much of Esperanto's other regular derivation with separate roots, which are thought to be easier for Westerners to remember; and replacing much of the Germanic and Slavic vocabulary with Romance forms, such as navo for English-derived ŝipo. See the Ido Pater noster below.
Ido spawned its own idos, the first being Adjuvilo
Adjuvilo
Adjuvilo is a language created in 1910 by Claudius Colas under the pseudonym of "Profesoro V. Esperema". Although it was a full language, it may not have been created to be spoken. Many believe that as an Esperantist, Colas created Adjuvilo to help create dissent in the then-growing Ido movement...
(1908), which was created by an Esperantist to sow dissent in the Ido community.
Saussure
René de SaussureRené de Saussure
René de Saussure was a Swiss Esperantist and professional mathematician, who composed important works about Esperanto and interlinguistics from a linguistic viewpoint...
(brother of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
) published numerous Esperantido proposals, starting with a response to Ido later called Antido 1 ("Anti-Ido 1") in 1907, which increasingly diverged from Esperanto before finishing with a more conservative Esperanto II
Esperanto II
Esperanto II was a reform of Esperanto proposed by René de Saussure in 1937, the last of a long series of such proposals beginning with a 1907 response to Ido later called Antido 1...
in 1937. Esperanto II replaced j with y, kv with q, kz with x, and diacritic letters with j (ĵ and ĝ), w (ŭ), and digraphs sh (ŝ), ch (ĉ); replaced the passive in -iĝ- with -ev-, the indefinite ending -aŭ with adverbial -e, the accusative -on on nouns with -u, and the plural on nouns with -n (so membrun for membrojn "members"); dropped adjectival agreement; broke up the table of concords, changed other small grammatical words such as ey for kaj "and", and treated pronouns more like nouns, so that the plural of li "he" is lin rather than ili "they", and the accusative of ĝi "it" is ju.
Romániço
Romániço (1991) is designed to be more intuitive for native speakers of English. It replaces vocabulary and some grammar with Romance constructions, allows a somewhat more irregular orthography, and eliminates some criticized points such as case, adjectival agreement, verbal inflection for tense and mood, and inherent gender, but retains the o, a, e suffixes for parts of speech and an agglutinative morphology. It is intended as a compromise between Esperanto and naturalistic conlangs such as Interlingua.Esperanto sen fleksio
Esperanto sen fleksio (Esperanto without inflexion), proposed under this name by Richard Harrison in 1996 but based on long-term complaints from Asian Esperantists, is a morphologically reduced variety of Esperanto. The main changes are:- Loss of the pluralPluralIn linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
(the suffix -j), - Loss of the accusative caseAccusative caseThe accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
(the suffix -n), - Loss of verb tense: past, present, and future are all subsumed under the infinitive ending -i,
- Loss of the article la,
- The letter ŭ is replaced with w.
Poliespol
While most Esperantidos aim to simplify Esperanto, PoliespoPoliespo
Poliespo is an extension of Esperanto using Cherokee words, created by Billy Ray Waldon .-Principle of Creation:...
("polysynthetic Esperanto", ca 1993) makes it considerably more complex. Besides the polysynthetic morphology, it incorporates much of the phonology and vocabulary of the Cherokee language
Cherokee language
Cherokee is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people which uses a unique syllabary writing system. It is the only Southern Iroquoian language that remains spoken. Cherokee is a polysynthetic language.-North American etymology:...
. It has fourteen vowels, six of them nasalized
Nasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
, and three tone
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
s.
Esperantidos for amusement
There are also extensions of Esperanto created primarily for amusement.Universal
One of the more interesting Esperantidos, grammatically, is Universal (1923–1928) It adds a schwaSchwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
to break up consonant clusters, marks the accusative case with a nasal vowel, has inclusive and exclusive pronouns
Clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...
, uses partial reduplication
Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
for the plural (tablo "table", tatablo "tables"), and inversion for antonym
Antonym
In lexical semantics, opposites are words that lie in an inherently incompatible binary relationship as in the opposite pairs male : female, long : short, up : down, and precede : follow. The notion of incompatibility here refers to the fact that one word in an opposite pair entails that it is not...
s (mega "big", gema "little"; donu "give", nodu "receive"; tela "far", leta "near"). Inversion can be seen in:
-
- Al gefinu o fargu kaj la egnifu o grafu.
- He finished reading [lit. 'to read'] and she started to write.
The antonyms are al "he" and la "she" (compare li "s/he"), the ge- (completive) and eg- (inchoative) aspects, fin- "to finish" and nif- "to begin", and graf- "to write" and farg- "to read".
The Universal reduplicated plural and inverted antonyms are reminiscent of the musical language Solresol
Solresol
Solresol is an artificial language devised by François Sudre, beginning in 1827. He published his major book on it, Langue musicale universelle, in 1866, though he had already been publicizing it for some years...
.
Esperant’
Esperant’ (ca 1998) is a style of speech that twists but does not quite violate the grammar of Esperanto.The changes are morphological:
- The nominal suffix -o is removed, as in poetry. Knabo becomes knab’.
- The plural ending -oj is replaced with the collective suffix -ar-. Knaboj becomes knabar’.
- Adjectives lose their -a suffixes and combine with their head nouns. Bela knabino becomes belknabin’.
- In direct objects, the accusative suffix -n is replaced with the preposition je. Knabon becomes je knab’.
- Verbs become nouns, and their erstwhile tense and mood suffixes move elsewhere:
- This may be an adverb or prepositional phrase: donu hodiaŭ becomes hodiaŭu don’, and estas en la ĉielo becomes est’ ĉielas.
- If the verb contains a valencyValency (linguistics)In linguistics, verb valency or valence refers to the number of arguments controlled by a verbal predicate. It is related, though not identical, to verb transitivity, which counts only object arguments of the verbal predicate...
suffix, this may detach from the verb: fariĝu becomes iĝu far’. - If none of these options is available, jen may be used as a placeholder: amas becomes jenas am’. The choice of where the tense suffix ends up is largely a stylistic choice.
- Subjects of the erstwhile verb take the preposition de if nouns, or became possessives if pronouns: knabo amas becomes am’ de knab’, and kiu estas becomes kies est’.
- The article la becomes l’ whenever the preceding word ends in a vowel.
Example:
- Boys love the pretty girl.
- Esperanto: Knaboj amas la belan knabinon.
- Esperant’: Jenas am’ de knabar’ je l’ belknabin’.
Literally, "Behold (the) love of group of boys to the pretty-girl."
See the Esperant’ Pater noster below.
Esperanto specializations
There are various projects to adapt Esperanto to specialized uses. Esperanto de DLT (1983) is one; it was an adaptation of Esperanto as a pivot languagePivot language
A pivot language, sometimes also called a bridge language, is an artificial or natural language used as an intermediary language for translation between many different languages – to translate between any pair of languages A and B, one translates A to the pivot language P, then from P to B...
for machine translation
Machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.On a basic...
.
Esperantidos used in literature
Esperanto has little in the way of the slangSlang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
, dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
ical variation, or archaism
Archaism
In language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately or as part of a specific jargon or formula...
s found in natural languages. Several authors have felt a need for such variation, either for effect in original literature, or to translate such variation from national literature.
Archaism and Arcaicam Esperantom
Proto-EsperantoProto-Esperanto
Proto-Esperanto is the modern term for any of the stages in the evolution of L. L. Zamenhof's language project, prior to the publication of his Unua Libro in 1887.-The Lingwe uniwersala of 1878:...
would theoretically fulfill the need for archaism, but too little survives for it to be used extensively. In 1931 Kalman Kalocsay
Kálmán Kalocsay
Kálmán Kalocsay , in Hungarian name order Kalocsay Kálmán is one of the foremost figures in the history of Esperanto literature...
published a translation of the Funeral Sermon and Prayer
Funeral Sermon and Prayer
The Funeral Sermon and Prayer is the oldest known and surviving contiguous Hungarian text, written by one scribal hand in the Latin script and dating to 1192-1195...
, the first Hungarian text (12th century), in which he created fictitious archaic forms as though Esperanto were a Romance language deriving from Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
.
Manuel Halvelik went further in 1969 with a book on Arcaicam Esperantom
Arcaicam Esperantom
Arcaicam Esperantom is a constructed language created to act as a fictional 'Old Esperanto,' in the vein of languages such as Old English or the use of Latin citations in modern texts...
, where he laid out the grammar of a fictitious ancestor of modern Esperanto. It echoes Proto-Esperanto in a more complex set of inflections, including dative
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
and genitive case
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
s ending in -d and -es and separate verbal inflections for person and number, as well as "retention" of digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
s such as ph and tz, writing c for [k], and the use of the letters q, y, w.
Dialects and Popido
Occasionally reform projects have been used by Esperanto authors to play the role of dialects, for example standard Esperanto and Ido to translate a play written in two dialects of Italian. Halvelik (1973) created Popido ("Popular Idiom") to play the role of a substandard registerRegister (linguistics)
In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, when speaking in a formal setting an English speaker may be more likely to adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal...
of Esperanto that, among other things, does away with much of Esperanto's inflectional system. For example, standard Esperanto
- Redonu al tiu viro lian pafilon.
- "Give that man back his gun."
is in Popido,
- Redonu al tu vir la pistol.
("la" is the Popido equivalent of "lia"; the article in Popido is "lo")
Comparison of Esperanto, Ido, Esperant, and Arcaicam Esperantom
The Esperanto Pater nosterLord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...
follows, compared to the Ido, Esperant’ and Arcaicam Esperantom versions.
| Esperanto Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887... | Arcaicam Esperantom Arcaicam Esperantom Arcaicam Esperantom is a constructed language created to act as a fictional 'Old Esperanto,' in the vein of languages such as Old English or the use of Latin citations in modern texts... | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo, sanktigata estu via nomo. Venu via regno, fariĝu via volo, kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero. Nian panon ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ. Kaj pardonu al ni niajn ŝuldojn, kiel ankaŭ ni pardonas al niaj ŝuldantoj. Kaj ne konduku nin en tenton, sed liberigu nin de la malbono. | Patrom nosam, cuyu estu in Chielom, Estu sanctigitam Tuam Nomom. Wenu Tuam Regnom, Plenumizzu Tuam Wolom, Cuyel in Chielom, ityel anquez sobrez Terom. Nosid donu hodiez Panon nosan cheyutagan, Ed nosid pardonu nosayn Pecoyn, Cuyel anquez nos ityuyd cuyuy contrez nos pecait pardonaims. Ed nosin ned conducu in Tenton, Sed nosin liberigu ex Malbonom. | ||
| Ido Ido Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages... | Esperant’ | ||
Patro nia, qua esas en la cielo, tua nomo santigesez; tua regno advenez; tua volo facesez quale en la cielo tale anke sur la tero. Donez a ni cadie l'omnidiala pano, e pardonez a ni nia ofensi, quale anke ni pardonas a nia ofensanti, e ne duktez ni aden la tento, ma liberigez ni del malajo. | Nipatr’, kies est’ ĉielas, iĝu via nom’ sankt’. Viu la regnalven’. Iĝu via la volfar’, kielas en la ĉiel’, tiel ankaŭu surtere. Hodiaŭu ĉiutagpandon’ nin. Kaju la pardon’ al niofend’, kiel ankaŭas nipardon’ al ofendintar’ nia. Kaju nea nia konduk’ entent’, sedu nia la liberig’ de l’ malbon’. |
External links
- Patro Nia (pictured on a wall of the Convent of the Pater Noster)