Esperanto and Ido compared
Encyclopedia
This article attempts to highlight the main differences between Esperanto
and Ido
, two constructed languages that have a related past but have since parted ways. Ido was invented in the early 20th century after a schism between those who believed that Esperanto was almost good enough, were it not for inherent features seen by them as flaws that prevented it from being a suitable proposal of international auxiliary language
, and those who believed that Esperanto was sufficient as it was, and that endless tinkering with a language would only weaken it in the end.
The languages remain close, and to some extent mutually intelligible. An Italian play which was written with the dialog in two dialects of Italian was translated with Esperanto and Ido representing these two dialects. In the same manner in which dialects often serve as sources for new words through the literature of ethnic languages, so Ido has contributed many neologisms to Esperanto (especially in poetic substitutes for long words using the mal- prefix).
by L. L. Zamenhof
, whereas the grammar of Ido is explained in the Kompleta Gramatiko Detaloza di la Linguo Internaciona Ido.
is where one of the largest differences between the two languages can be seen. Both languages have the same grammatical rules concerning nouns (ending with -o), adjectives (ending with -a) and many other aspects. However, the relationship between nouns, verbs and adjectives underwent a number of changes with Ido, based on the principle of reversibility. In both languages one can see a direct relationship between the words multa "many" and multo "a multitude" by simply replacing the adjectival -a with a nominal -o, or the other way around.
Some minor differences include the loss of adjectival agreement
, and the change of the plural from an agglutinative -j tacked onto the end to a synthetic
replacement of the terminal -o with an -i. Hence, Esperanto belaj hundoj ("beautiful dogs") becomes Ido bela hundi. Ido also does away with the direct object ending -n in sentences where the subject precedes the object, so Esperanto mi amas la belajn hundojn ("I love the beautiful dogs") would in Ido become me amas la bela hundi.
However, Esperantists point out that the Esperanto adjective-noun agreement makes possible a greater freedom of word order and a somewhat greater redundancy.
Greater differences arise, however, with the derivations of many words. For example, in Esperanto, the noun krono means "a crown", and by replacing the nominal o with a verbal i one derives the verb kroni "to crown". However, if one were to begin with the verb kroni, "to crown", and replace the verbal i with a nominal o to create a noun, the resulting meaning would not be "a coronation", but rather the original "crown". This is because the root kron- is inherently a noun: With the nominal ending -o the word simply means the thing itself, whereas with the verbal -i it means an action performed with the thing. To get the name for the performance of the action, it is necessary to use the suffix -ado, which retains the verbal idea. Thus it is necessary to know which part of speech each Esperanto root belongs to.
Ido introduced a number of suffixes in an attempt to clarify the morphology of a given word, so that the part of speech of the root would not need to be memorized. In the case of the word krono "a crown", the suffix -izar "to cover with" is added to create the verb kronizar "to crown". From this verb it is possible to remove the verbal -ar and replace it with a nominal -o, creating the word kronizo "a coronation". By not allowing a noun to be used directly as a verb, as in Esperanto, Ido verbal roots can be recognized without the need to memorize them. However, this solution is only partial, and with other derivations it is still necessary to know the parts of speech of Ido roots.
Ido corresponds more overtly to the expectations of the Romance languages, whereas Esperanto is more heavily influenced by Slavic semantics and phonology.
in its entirety without any special characters or diacritic
s. Conversely, Esperanto eliminates the "unnecessary" letters ‹q
›, ‹w
›, ‹x
›, and ‹y
›; and adds ‹ĉ
›, ‹ĝ
›, ‹ĥ
›, ‹ĵ
›, ‹ŝ
› and ‹ŭ
›. Aside from these minor spelling differences, the creators of Ido aimed to correct what they believed to be deficiencies in Esperanto.
However, Ido lacks the one-to-one correspondence between letters and phonemes that Esperanto has, using the three digraphs
‹qu›, ‹sh› and ‹ch›. One-to-one correspondence has been adopted in Esperanto to ease pronunciation learning and parsability of the written text. (The Fundamento de Esperanto allows the use of the digraphs ‹ch›, ‹gh›, ‹hh›, ‹jh›, ‹sh› and the single letter ‹u› instead of the ordinary diacritical letters of Esperanto when those are unavailable. With the advent of computers, another system of surrogate Esperanto writing using ‹cx›, ‹gx›, ‹hx›, ‹jx›, ‹sx› and ‹ux› was introduced. It however remains unofficial.
The creators of Ido felt that much of Esperanto was either not internationally recognizable, or unnecessarily deformed, and aimed to fix these with more "international" or "corrected" roots. This can sometimes be at the expense of Esperanto's simpler word building process. Below are some examples in first Esperanto then Ido with English
, French
, German
, Italian
, Spanish
and Portuguese
for linguistic comparison:
Note that three of the languages chosen in this chart are Romance languages and that English has also had large influences from French and Latin. In comparison, Esperanto is somewhat more influenced by German vocabulary and Slavic semantics (as in the case of prefix mal-) and has more priority over word compounding by affixes.
-based sinistra for "left" instead of maldextra (mal- plus the word dextra, or dekstra for "right") is that often only the last one or two syllables can be heard when shouting commands. Esperanto has developed alternate forms for many of these words (such as liva for maldekstra), but most of these are rarely used in normal usage.
Most Esperanto words are gender-neutral ("table", "grass", etc.). However, Esperanto assumes the male gender
by default in other words, mainly words dealing with familial relationships
, profession
s and some animal
s. These words can be made female with the use of the feminine suffix. In Ido there is no default gender for normal root words, and one simply adds the corresponding masculine or feminine suffix only when desired. For example, frato means "brother" in Esperanto, but "sibling" in Ido. Ido uses the suffixes -ino ("female", used as in Esperanto) and -ulo ("male", not to be confused with the same Esperanto suffix which means "person"). Thus "sister" is fratino (the same as Esperanto), but brother is fratulo. "Sibling" and other gender neutral forms are especially difficult in Esperanto since Esperanto simply does not have a word for such gender neutral forms. Esperanto does, however, have an epicene prefix that indicates “both sexes together”: ge-. Patro means "father" and patrino "mother"; gepatroj means "parents". In standard usage gepatro cannot be used in the singular to indicate a parent of unknown gender; one would say instead unu el la gepatroj, "one (out) of the parents".
There is a nonstandard suffix in Esperanto that means "male": -iĉo- (see Gender reform in Esperanto). There is also an existing official prefix, vir-, with the same meaning. These gender differences exist for as many Esperanto words exist which are masculine by default.
A few exceptions exist in Ido's gender system as described above, which avoid its suffix system, for which it was decided that the feminine words were so much more recognizable to its source languages: viro ("man"), muliero ("woman"), patro ("father"), and matro ("mother"). Compare these with Esperanto viro, virino, patro, and patrino, respectively. Ido also has several other neutral-gender words, such as genitoro for "parent". Gepatri in Ido means the same as Esperanto gepatroj (i.e. "parents" of both genders); genitori means "parents" in the English sense, not making any implication of gender whatsoever.
Many other Ido words, such as amiko, follow Esperanto’s system of affixes; these words are normally neutral in Esperanto as well as Ido.
s organized as a table. Instead of that, Ido adopts ad hoc Latin-derived roots which are more recognizable for speakers of Romance languages but which do not form a regular system. Esperanto kio equals Ido quo, "what"; Esperanto tie equals Ido ibe, "there"; etc.
Personal names in Ido, on the other hand, are always left unmodified.
In the New World
, where citizens are named for their country, the name of the country is the main word, and its inhabitants are derived from that: Kanado ("Canada"), kanadano ("Canadian").
Names of cities may or may not have an Esperanto equivalent: Londono for London, Nov-Jorko for New York. Place names which lack widespread recognition, or which would be mangled beyond recognition, usually remain in their native form: Cannes is usually rendered as Cannes.
In Ido, country names must conform to the language's orthography but otherwise are left unchanged: Europa, Peru, Amerika. City names are treated as foreign words (London), except when part of the name itself is a regular noun or adjective: Nov-York (Nov for nova, or "new", but the place name York is not changed as in Esperanto "Nov-Jorko"). This is not a hard and fast rule, however, and New York is also acceptable, similar to writing Köln for the city of Cologne in Germany. South Carolina becomes Sud-Karolina, much in the same way that a river called the "Schwarz River" is not transcribed as the "Black River" in English even though schwarz is the German word for black. However, less well-known place names are generally left alone, so a small town by the name of "Battle River" for example would be written the same way, and not transcribed as "Batalio-rivero". This is because transcribing a little-known place name would make it nearly impossible to find in the original language.
The number of participants at the respective international conferences is also much different: Esperanto conferences average 2000 to 3000 participants every year whereas Ido conferences have had anywhere from 13 to 25 participants over the last decade. Each language also has a number of regional conferences during the year on a much less formal basis, and with smaller numbers.
The history of Esperanto and its relationship to Ido is one filled with perceived rivalry and betrayal as well as a good amount of misunderstanding. Many Esperantists have felt betrayed by the Ido movement, and many Idists feel their language doesn't get the respect it deserves.
In 1900 Louis Couturat
, after initial correspondences with Esperanto-founder L. L. Zamenhof
created the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language
. In 1907 in Vienna
, the Delegation met to chose an international auxiliary language
to give its approval from among the many candidates which had crept up. Most Esperantists assumed Esperanto would be an easy win. However, when Couturat presented his own pet project, a series of reforms to Esperanto which would eventually become Ido, and demanded an answer within a month, many in the Esperanto movement felt betrayed. Some Esperantists even accuse Couturat and his colleague Marquis Louis de Beaufront
of a conspiracy saying the International Delegation was simply a front to put forth Ido.
Idists tend to see things differently. They note that many of the changes Ido made to Esperanto were those originally proposed by Zamenhof's Reformed Esperanto
, which were ultimately rejected by the majority of the language's speakers. Idists perceived that Esperanto was flawed in many ways, and that rather than a conspiracy against the language, the proposals put forward by Courutat were simply improvements which were sorely needed.
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 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...
, two constructed languages that have a related past but have since parted ways. Ido was invented in the early 20th century after a schism between those who believed that Esperanto was almost good enough, were it not for inherent features seen by them as flaws that prevented it from being a suitable proposal of international auxiliary language
International auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
, and those who believed that Esperanto was sufficient as it was, and that endless tinkering with a language would only weaken it in the end.
The languages remain close, and to some extent mutually intelligible. An Italian play which was written with the dialog in two dialects of Italian was translated with Esperanto and Ido representing these two dialects. In the same manner in which dialects often serve as sources for new words through the literature of ethnic languages, so Ido has contributed many neologisms to Esperanto (especially in poetic substitutes for long words using the mal- prefix).
Linguistic comparison
Esperanto is based on the Fundamento de EsperantoFundamento de Esperanto
The Fundamento de Esperanto is a book by L. L. Zamenhof, published in the spring of 1905. On August 9, 1905 it was made the official source for the language by the fourth article of the Declaration of Boulogne at the first World Congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France:It is considered...
by L. L. Zamenhof
L. L. Zamenhof
Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was the inventor of Esperanto, the most successful constructed language designed for international communication.-Cultural background:...
, whereas the grammar of Ido is explained in the Kompleta Gramatiko Detaloza di la Linguo Internaciona Ido.
Morphology
MorphologyMorphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
is where one of the largest differences between the two languages can be seen. Both languages have the same grammatical rules concerning nouns (ending with -o), adjectives (ending with -a) and many other aspects. However, the relationship between nouns, verbs and adjectives underwent a number of changes with Ido, based on the principle of reversibility. In both languages one can see a direct relationship between the words multa "many" and multo "a multitude" by simply replacing the adjectival -a with a nominal -o, or the other way around.
Some minor differences include the loss of adjectival agreement
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
, and the change of the plural from an agglutinative -j tacked onto the end to a synthetic
Synthetic language
In linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
replacement of the terminal -o with an -i. Hence, Esperanto belaj hundoj ("beautiful dogs") becomes Ido bela hundi. Ido also does away with the direct object ending -n in sentences where the subject precedes the object, so Esperanto mi amas la belajn hundojn ("I love the beautiful dogs") would in Ido become me amas la bela hundi.
However, Esperantists point out that the Esperanto adjective-noun agreement makes possible a greater freedom of word order and a somewhat greater redundancy.
Greater differences arise, however, with the derivations of many words. For example, in Esperanto, the noun krono means "a crown", and by replacing the nominal o with a verbal i one derives the verb kroni "to crown". However, if one were to begin with the verb kroni, "to crown", and replace the verbal i with a nominal o to create a noun, the resulting meaning would not be "a coronation", but rather the original "crown". This is because the root kron- is inherently a noun: With the nominal ending -o the word simply means the thing itself, whereas with the verbal -i it means an action performed with the thing. To get the name for the performance of the action, it is necessary to use the suffix -ado, which retains the verbal idea. Thus it is necessary to know which part of speech each Esperanto root belongs to.
Ido introduced a number of suffixes in an attempt to clarify the morphology of a given word, so that the part of speech of the root would not need to be memorized. In the case of the word krono "a crown", the suffix -izar "to cover with" is added to create the verb kronizar "to crown". From this verb it is possible to remove the verbal -ar and replace it with a nominal -o, creating the word kronizo "a coronation". By not allowing a noun to be used directly as a verb, as in Esperanto, Ido verbal roots can be recognized without the need to memorize them. However, this solution is only partial, and with other derivations it is still necessary to know the parts of speech of Ido roots.
Ido corresponds more overtly to the expectations of the Romance languages, whereas Esperanto is more heavily influenced by Slavic semantics and phonology.
Vocabulary
Although both Esperanto and Ido share a large amount of vocabulary, there are many important differences. Ido uses the twenty-six letter Latin alphabetLatin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
in its entirety without any special characters or diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s. Conversely, Esperanto eliminates the "unnecessary" letters ‹q
Q
Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic sound value of Qôp was , a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones...
›, ‹w
W
W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V...
›, ‹x
X
X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Uses:In mathematics, x is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The usage of x to represent an independent or unknown variable can be traced back to the Arabic word šay شيء = “thing,” used in Arabic...
›, and ‹y
Y
Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound...
›; and adds ‹ĉ
C
Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...
›, ‹ĝ
G
G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...
›, ‹ĥ
H
H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....
›, ‹ĵ
J
Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic...
›, ‹ŝ
S
S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
› and ‹ŭ
U
U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
›. Aside from these minor spelling differences, the creators of Ido aimed to correct what they believed to be deficiencies in Esperanto.
However, Ido lacks the one-to-one correspondence between letters and phonemes that Esperanto has, using the three digraphs
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...
‹qu›, ‹sh› and ‹ch›. One-to-one correspondence has been adopted in Esperanto to ease pronunciation learning and parsability of the written text. (The Fundamento de Esperanto allows the use of the digraphs ‹ch›, ‹gh›, ‹hh›, ‹jh›, ‹sh› and the single letter ‹u› instead of the ordinary diacritical letters of Esperanto when those are unavailable. With the advent of computers, another system of surrogate Esperanto writing using ‹cx›, ‹gx›, ‹hx›, ‹jx›, ‹sx› and ‹ux› was introduced. It however remains unofficial.
The creators of Ido felt that much of Esperanto was either not internationally recognizable, or unnecessarily deformed, and aimed to fix these with more "international" or "corrected" roots. This can sometimes be at the expense of Esperanto's simpler word building process. Below are some examples in first Esperanto then Ido with 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...
, 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...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, 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...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
for linguistic comparison:
| Esperanto | Ido | English | French | German | Italian | Spanish | Portuguese |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bubalo | bufalo | buffalo | buffle | Büffel | bufalo | búfalo | búfalo |
| ĉelo | celulo | cell | cellule | Zelle | cellula | célula | célula |
| ĉirkaŭ | cirkum | around/circa | autour de | ungefähr/circa | circa | alrededor, cerca | ao redor, em volta |
| dediĉi | dedikar | to dedicate | dédier | widmen | dedicare | dedicar | dedicar |
| edzo | spoz(ul)o | husband/spouse | époux | Ehemann | sposo | esposo | esposo/marido |
| elasta | elastika | elastic | élastique | elastisch | elastico | elástico | elástico |
| estonteco | futuro | future | futur | Zukunft | futuro | futuro | futuro |
| kaj | e(d) | and | et | und | e(d) | y/e | e |
| lernejo | skolo | school | école | Schule | scuola | escuela | escola |
| limo | limito | limit | limite | Limit | limite | límite | limite |
| maĉi | mastikar | to chew/masticate | mâcher | kauen | masticare | masticar | mastigar |
| mencii | mencionar | to mention | mentionner | erwähnen | menzionare | mencionar | mencionar |
| nacio | naciono | nation | nation | Nation | nazione | nación | nação |
| penti | repentar | to repent | repentir | bereuen | pentirsi | arrepentirse | arrepender-se |
| ŝipo | navo | boat/ship | bateau/navire | Schiff | barca | barco/nave/navío | barco/navio |
| taĉmento | detachmento | detachment | détachement | Trennung | distaccamento | destacamento | destacamento |
| vipuro | vipero | viper | vipère | Viper | vipera | víbora | víbora |
Note that three of the languages chosen in this chart are Romance languages and that English has also had large influences from French and Latin. In comparison, Esperanto is somewhat more influenced by German vocabulary and Slavic semantics (as in the case of prefix mal-) and has more priority over word compounding by affixes.
Affixes
Ido claims the prefix mal- (creating a word with the exact opposite meaning) in Esperanto to be overused as a prefix, and also to be inappropriate since it has negative meanings in many languages, and introduces des- as an alternative in such cases. Ido also uses a series of opposite words in lieu of a prefix. For example, instead of malbona ("bad", the opposite of bona, "good"), Ido uses mala, or instead of mallonga ("short", the opposite of longa, "long"), kurta. Listening comprehension was also given as a reason: the primary Ido grammar book states that one reason for the adoption of the LatinLatin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
-based sinistra for "left" instead of maldextra (mal- plus the word dextra, or dekstra for "right") is that often only the last one or two syllables can be heard when shouting commands. Esperanto has developed alternate forms for many of these words (such as liva for maldekstra), but most of these are rarely used in normal usage.
Most Esperanto words are gender-neutral ("table", "grass", etc.). However, Esperanto assumes the male gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
by default in other words, mainly words dealing with familial relationships
Kinship terminology
Kinship terminology refers to the various systems used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology - for example some languages...
, profession
Profession
A profession is a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain....
s and some animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
s. These words can be made female with the use of the feminine suffix. In Ido there is no default gender for normal root words, and one simply adds the corresponding masculine or feminine suffix only when desired. For example, frato means "brother" in Esperanto, but "sibling" in Ido. Ido uses the suffixes -ino ("female", used as in Esperanto) and -ulo ("male", not to be confused with the same Esperanto suffix which means "person"). Thus "sister" is fratino (the same as Esperanto), but brother is fratulo. "Sibling" and other gender neutral forms are especially difficult in Esperanto since Esperanto simply does not have a word for such gender neutral forms. Esperanto does, however, have an epicene prefix that indicates “both sexes together”: ge-. Patro means "father" and patrino "mother"; gepatroj means "parents". In standard usage gepatro cannot be used in the singular to indicate a parent of unknown gender; one would say instead unu el la gepatroj, "one (out) of the parents".
There is a nonstandard suffix in Esperanto that means "male": -iĉo- (see Gender reform in Esperanto). There is also an existing official prefix, vir-, with the same meaning. These gender differences exist for as many Esperanto words exist which are masculine by default.
A few exceptions exist in Ido's gender system as described above, which avoid its suffix system, for which it was decided that the feminine words were so much more recognizable to its source languages: viro ("man"), muliero ("woman"), patro ("father"), and matro ("mother"). Compare these with Esperanto viro, virino, patro, and patrino, respectively. Ido also has several other neutral-gender words, such as genitoro for "parent". Gepatri in Ido means the same as Esperanto gepatroj (i.e. "parents" of both genders); genitori means "parents" in the English sense, not making any implication of gender whatsoever.
Many other Ido words, such as amiko, follow Esperanto’s system of affixes; these words are normally neutral in Esperanto as well as Ido.
Correlatives
Esperanto adopts a regular scheme of correlativeCorrelative
In grammar, correlatives are words that are separated in a sentence but function together to perform a single function.In English, examples are both—and, either—or, neither—nor, the—the , so—that , and if—then. In the Romance languages, the demonstrative pro-forms function as correlatives with the...
s organized as a table. Instead of that, Ido adopts ad hoc Latin-derived roots which are more recognizable for speakers of Romance languages but which do not form a regular system. Esperanto kio equals Ido quo, "what"; Esperanto tie equals Ido ibe, "there"; etc.
Proper nouns
Esperanto may or may not "Esperantize" names and proper nouns, depending on many factors. Most standard European names have equivalents, as do many major cities and all nations. Ido, on the other hand, treats most proper nouns as foreign words, and does not render them into Ido.Personal names
Most European names have Esperanto equivalents, such as Johano 'John', Aleksandro 'Alexander', Mario or Maria 'Mary', among others. Some Esperanto speakers choose to take on a fully assimilated name, or to at least adjust the orthography of their name to the Esperanto alphabet. Others leave their name completely unmodified. This is regarded as a personal choice, and the Academy of Esperanto officially affirmed this proclaiming that “everyone has the right to keep their authentic name in its original orthography, as long as it is written in Latin letters.”Personal names in Ido, on the other hand, are always left unmodified.
Place names
Most countries have their own names in Esperanto. The system of derivation, though, is sometimes complex. Where the country is named after an ethnic group, the main root means a person of that group: anglo is an Englishman, franco is a Frenchman. Originally, names of countries were created by the addition of the suffix -ujo ("container"), hence England and France would be rendered Anglujo and Francujo respectively (literally "container for Englishmen/Frenchmen"). More recently, many Esperanto have adopted -io as the national suffix, thus creating names more in line with standard international practice (and less odd-looking): Anglio, Francio, nevertheless the suffix remains unofficial.In the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
, where citizens are named for their country, the name of the country is the main word, and its inhabitants are derived from that: Kanado ("Canada"), kanadano ("Canadian").
Names of cities may or may not have an Esperanto equivalent: Londono for London, Nov-Jorko for New York. Place names which lack widespread recognition, or which would be mangled beyond recognition, usually remain in their native form: Cannes is usually rendered as Cannes.
In Ido, country names must conform to the language's orthography but otherwise are left unchanged: Europa, Peru, Amerika. City names are treated as foreign words (London), except when part of the name itself is a regular noun or adjective: Nov-York (Nov for nova, or "new", but the place name York is not changed as in Esperanto "Nov-Jorko"). This is not a hard and fast rule, however, and New York is also acceptable, similar to writing Köln for the city of Cologne in Germany. South Carolina becomes Sud-Karolina, much in the same way that a river called the "Schwarz River" is not transcribed as the "Black River" in English even though schwarz is the German word for black. However, less well-known place names are generally left alone, so a small town by the name of "Battle River" for example would be written the same way, and not transcribed as "Batalio-rivero". This is because transcribing a little-known place name would make it nearly impossible to find in the original language.
Number of speakers
Esperanto is estimated to have approximately 100,000 to 2 million fluent speakers. In the same manner estimates for the number of Ido speakers are far from accurate, but 500 to a few thousand is most likely. It is also important to note the distinction between the number of speakers compared to the number of supporters; the two languages resemble each other enough that a few weeks of study will enable one to understand the other with little difficulty, and there are a number of people that have learned Ido out of curiosity but prefer to support the larger Esperanto movement and vice versa.The number of participants at the respective international conferences is also much different: Esperanto conferences average 2000 to 3000 participants every year whereas Ido conferences have had anywhere from 13 to 25 participants over the last decade. Each language also has a number of regional conferences during the year on a much less formal basis, and with smaller numbers.
History
- This section attempts to chronicle the history of the Esperanto and Ido movements in relationship to one another. For individual histories of the languages, please see: History of EsperantoHistory of EsperantoThe constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto was developed in the 1870s and 80s by L. L. Zamenhof, and first published in 1887. The number of speakers has grown gradually over time, although it has not had much support from governments and international bodies, and has sometimes been...
and History of Ido.
The history of Esperanto and its relationship to Ido is one filled with perceived rivalry and betrayal as well as a good amount of misunderstanding. Many Esperantists have felt betrayed by the Ido movement, and many Idists feel their language doesn't get the respect it deserves.
In 1900 Louis Couturat
Louis Couturat
Louis Couturat was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist.-Life:Born in Ris-Orangis, Essonne, France, he was educated in philosophy and mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure...
, after initial correspondences with Esperanto-founder L. L. Zamenhof
L. L. Zamenhof
Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was the inventor of Esperanto, the most successful constructed language designed for international communication.-Cultural background:...
created the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language
Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language
The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was a body of academics convened in the early part of the twentieth century to decide on the issue of the which international auxiliary language should be chosen for international use...
. In 1907 in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, the Delegation met to chose an international auxiliary language
International auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
to give its approval from among the many candidates which had crept up. Most Esperantists assumed Esperanto would be an easy win. However, when Couturat presented his own pet project, a series of reforms to Esperanto which would eventually become Ido, and demanded an answer within a month, many in the Esperanto movement felt betrayed. Some Esperantists even accuse Couturat and his colleague Marquis Louis de Beaufront
Louis de Beaufront
Marquis Louis de Beaufront was a major influence in the development of Ido, an international auxiliary language. Beaufront was initially an advocate of Esperanto and was largely responsible for its early diffusion in western Europe as well as one of its first French proponents.Much of Beaufront's...
of a conspiracy saying the International Delegation was simply a front to put forth Ido.
Idists tend to see things differently. They note that many of the changes Ido made to Esperanto were those originally proposed by Zamenhof's Reformed Esperanto
Reformed 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...
, which were ultimately rejected by the majority of the language's speakers. Idists perceived that Esperanto was flawed in many ways, and that rather than a conspiracy against the language, the proposals put forward by Courutat were simply improvements which were sorely needed.
Language samples for comparison
Here is the Lord's Prayer in both languages: Esperanto version:
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Ido version:
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External links
- Fundamento de Esperanto.
- Kompleta Gramatiko di la Linguo Internaciona Ido (187-page PDF file).
- How is Ido different from Esperanto?, in Wikibooks.
- Which IAL? A comparison of the two languages and others by a supporter of both and the IALInternational auxiliary languageAn international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
concept in general. - Why Ido?.