Talk:Esperanto etymology

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Heard back from the contact at a Yiddish website about rebbetzin/rebbitzin that "It's a Hebrew word with 2 feminine suffixes attached to it." When I asked if these were Russian and German, she said, "Not necessarily Russian, but some Slavic language - probably Ukrainian or Belarussian." — kwami (talk) 21:53, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Misleading[edit]

This article on Esperanto etymology, although pretty long and detailed, lacks modern references, is in many parts misleading and makes many scientifically unproved statements.

1.) There is no up-to-date study on source language distribution in Esperanto. All statements like

  • "Esperanto vocabulary and grammatical forms derive primarily from the Romance languages, with lesser contributions from Germanic."
  • "Most Esperanto root words are taken from four languages of the Italic and Germanic families of Indo-European, namely Italian, French, German, and English."
  • The main languages contributing to Zamenhof's original vocabulary were Italian, French, English, and German, ..."
  • etc.

is pure and net unproved fiction stemming from a discussion in the 1920ies.

Such a study primarily had to difine:

  • which text corpus is taken into consideration (e.g. the stems from the Fundamento de Esperanto, from the de facto standard dictionary Plena Ilustrita Vortaro, from a modern Esperanto review like Monato, from a scientific Esperanto magazine, from the list of the most often 1000 words, from a recognized author, the Esperanto Bible or what so ever). It's obvious that one can expect the distribution quota to vary widely according to the chosen text corpus.
  • how Esperanto words are classified to be derived from one (or more?) source languages; e.g. the Esperanto word lampo, is it derived from English lamp or Russian lampa or German Lampe? Are admiralo or magazeno derived from English admiral or magazin (or its German counterparts) or from its original Arabic source (from which most European languages including English borrowed them)? What about tomato and ananaso (pineapple): Spanish words?
  • how to classify the many "mixed" Esperanto words like ghardeno: English garden or Italian giardino?
  • etc.

2.) The article does not even mention Volapük as a source language of Esperanto and only once mentions Yiddish Zamenhof's daily language as a sole practioner in the Jewish quarter of Warsaw (although there is even scientific literature written in English about this aspect whereas most linguistic literature about Esperanto etymology is written in Esperanto only).

3.) Although the leading Etimologia Vortaro [Dictionary] de Esperanto by Ebbe Vilborg is mentioned seemingly it was not or poorly consulted. Many of the maybe's and guesses made in the article are discussed there in depth, covering nearly all important prior scientific contributions.

4.) There are some more strange statements like "Italian [one of the modern languages] most widely learned in schools around the world at the time Esperanto was devised" [i.e. in the 1880ies]. Is there any source who shows this? Did Zamenhof had more than a very basic understanding of Italian based on his knowledge of Latin, French (quite fairly) and (hardly any) English? And yet he coined Esperanto words on this language hardly known to him? By the way: There is abundant literature on Zamenhof's language knowledge, none of it even aluded in the article.

To conclude: This article is scientifically of hardly any value.

Here at least the most important monographies on the topic:

  • 2007: André Cherpillod. Konciza etimologia vortaro. ISBN 92-9017-082-4. Verko, kies centra fokuso estas antaux-ekesta etimologio.
  • 2005: André Cherpillod. Etimologia vortaro de la propraj nomoj. Roterdamo: Universala Esperanto-Asocio 2005, X, 227 p. ISBN 92-9017-089-1
  • 1992: André Cherpillod. Mil Ekzotaj Vortoj. La etimo de 1250 esperantaj vortoj de ekstereuxropa deveno. Courgenard: La auxtoro 1992, 122 p. ISBN 2-906134-18-3 Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: checksum. Spuras esperantajn etimojn precipe al la araba, hungara, turka kaj multaj aliaj ne hind-euxropaj lingvoj.
  • 1989-2001: Ebbe Vilborg. Etimologia vortaro de Esperanto (5 vol.) ISBN 91-85288-179 /-195/-217/-225/-233. La plej grava kaj funda verko pri ekesta etimologio de Esperanto kun ampleksa listo de literaturo

And here the web links to two databases with hints about more than 200 contributions on the topic

  • Books about Esperanto etymology in the Austrian National Library (ÖNB)
  • Artices about Esperanto etymology in the data base (EBEA)

Helga Schneider (you find me in the Esperanto-Wikipedia)—Preceding unsigned comment added by Helga Schneider (talk • contribs) 20:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It was perhaps not clear enough (though stated in a few places) that the primary consideration was given to Zamenhof's vocabulary. As for Arabic etc., it's apparent that such words are common to European vocab rather than taken directly from non-European languages. Most post-Z vocab is also found in European languages. There is extremely little Zamenhofa vocab that is not found in Italian, French, German, or English (his English wasn't very good either, but he took a lot of basic vocab from English, like sxi and birdo, so I don't see how this can be used as an argument against Italian), and very little post-Z vocab that is not found in European vocab. Of course, he modified things a bit, but that doesn't change the basic outline. (And gxardeno, BTW, is apparently Italian. *-ino --> -eno is common to a lot of words, and does not require English as a source.) kwami (talk) 21:00, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good online link collection for improving the article: [1] kwami (talk)


Thank you for your prompt reply, kwami. It confirms my view that the article is largely misleading and does not reflect the current state of research on the topic.
It pretends to inform the reader about "Esperanto etymology", i.e. the etymology of a former language project published in 1887 which became a living language with a stable community of speakers, a history of more than 120 years and dictionaries with 160,000 entries. But the article gives "primary consideration ... to Zamenhof's vocabulary", i.e. the core vocabulary of 1887 with 900 word stems. So, already the title is misleading.
There are too many inconsistent and unconvincing assertations in most sections to mention them all. Therefore just a few more examples:
  • the official reference (not necessarily source) languages of the Fundamento are not even mentioned (French, English, German, Russian, Polish)
  • the etymology of Esperanto words between 1887 and 2008, i.e. how the changed within the last 120 years is not even mentioned (e.g. konkveri --> konkeri, Hxinujo --> Cxinio etc.)
  • the article does not make a difference between actual source languages and mere coincidences in the form of a given Esperanto word with e.g. Dutch, Spanish, Portugese words.
  • the correlatives are discussed without even mentioning the main source, namely Russian which can be found even on the Esperanto Wikipedia at korelativoj (but for sure one can also find it in more details in half a minute in the Vilborg dictionary and learn that Gaston Waringhien pointed to this as early as 1967)
  • Dutch is mentioned as a possible source language which is obviously erroneous and not forwarded by any serious researcher.
  • eks- "from international ex-" overlooks the Russian ekz- and Lithuanian eks-
  • nu is (only) attributed to Polish and Russian ignoring its also evident German source (this is like stating lampo stems from Italian or French whereas it's the same in Russian, Polish, German, English and other possible source languages)
  • and so on and so far concerning many more details.
The main critiques remain:
  • Without clearly difining text corpus and criteria how Esperanto words are classified to be (allegedly) derived from one or another language, no serious statement of source language distribution can be done.
  • The article has a western perspective overestimating the role of English and French and mainly (strange enough and a very personal view of the author of the article) Italian as source languages of Esperanto. It puts aside, ignors and underestimates mainly Russian, Polish and Yiddish as daily languages of Zamenhof. It furthermore underestimates Volapük as Zamenhof's most import rival in the 1880ies and 1890ies.
  • It badly lacks citations (meanwhile seeminlgy some were added [?]).
- It should be thoroughly revised. -
Kind regard or as we say in Esperanto Amike Helga Schneider (talk) 09:32, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the article is underreferenced, and that the title is misleading.
Than, please, clearly explain in your article that your are talking about the Esperanto of 1887 and not about the Esperanto of 2008!
However, many of your comments are also misleading or simply incorrect. It never claims Dutch or Portuguese as primary sources. As for what is ancestral and what is coincidental, that is largely guesswork, so we can never know for certain.
But we have a lot of research work on it for decades which you apparently never read or even took notice of.
As for "overestimating" English, French, and Italian, the vast majority of the language is Latinate, and I think the article accurately reflects that.
Who else besides you allegeds that Italian is a main source of Esperanto etymology?
Yiddish may well have been more important than Z let on, but again that is largely guesswork. Since Yiddish is so close to German, it's impossible in most cases to know whether Yiddish or German was the source of a particular Germanic word.
This is true for most of the Esperanto vocabulary. Only in exceptional cases an Esperanto stem can be traced to one and only one language. Most of them combine methods, ideas or elements from different languages (e.g. ortography of one language and approximate pronounciation of another) as in the ghardino case. This was already explained as early as 1903 (!) by Corturat/Leau (see p. 333). This was and still is done systematically to make Esperanto as easy as possible for as many possible speakers of different mother tongues. And this is why all these percentages of source language distribution are pure fantasy.
Very little is derived from Slavic, except of course semantically.
Do you mention this in your article?
You're misreading the table in the eo-wiki korelativoj article: they are giving Russian as a similar system, not claiming that Russian is the etymological source of the system. A quick glance will show you that they are not cognate: Esperanto ĉi- with Russian всj-, Eo -el with Russian -ак, Eo i- with R -то. Inspiration, perhaps, or a substratum, as Russian was throughout Eo morphology, but not an etymological source.
?? This is precisely the point. Your concept of etymology does not meet the specifics of a planned language like Esperanto and therefore misleads the reader. For sure, of all the languages Z. knew the Russian system is the most similar (not identical) to that of the Esperanto correlatives. That's why all important Esperantologist think it was the main source of inspiration for Z. when building the Esperanto system (see Vilborg vol. 5 p. 143 pointing to Waringhien, DucGominaz and Holzhaus). That the (further developed and generalized) Russian scheme than was put into western clothes (like "k" for questions as in e.g. French *qu*i) is only half of the truth. Not informing the reader of the underlying Russian scheme, as you do, is misleading him or her.
Reference languages are completely irrelevant.
No use to discuss this here further with you. We can do that on the Esperanto Wikipedia.
I have never seen a single Volapük etymology—care to enlighten me?
You're right about nu, though. kwami (talk) 12:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Under each Preview page Wikipedia says "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable." Please explain to the reader whether your article meets this standard and mainly, please, explain your stand-alone theory of "Italian being a main source of Esperanto etimology" (?!?) Amike Helga Schneider (talk) 20:27, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
P.S.: "ghi" is not "obscure" as you say, but most probably based on Lithuanian. Vilborg vol. 2, p. 77 with all relevant discussions on the topic. Did you ever consulted it?
"Gxi" is obscure according to all sources I've seen except Vilborg. I must say that Lithuanian ji isn't a very good match to Eo gxi. (Dutch zij would be a closer match, not that I'm claiming that's the source either.) I would appreciate it if you could quote the Vilborg passage. Thanks.
BTW, very few of your links work. You may be on a subscription service that I do not have access to. kwami (talk) 02:00, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Scientifically unprooved and unprovable[edit]

<-- I start from the left margin again. Please, kwami, search the literature quoted by me yourself. Here are the basic links:

The article about ghi In Vilborg is a bit too long to copy here completely. Vilborg refers to the explanation given by Albault in 1959 (!), discusses Brozovic's counter-arguments (1959) and then comes to a conclusion of his own.

By the way, kwami, obviously you took the (incomplete) citation of Mattos 1987 from the nice, but from a researchers' point insignificant article of Floriano Pessoa published in the Internet, probably without ever reading Mattos (you need two minutes to find the precise page and paragraph to complete the citation). Doing so one can see at once that Mattos neither refers to an earlier study, nor precisely difines his text corpus (whatever "primitiva radikaro" may be) nor his method of calculating. Assuming precise figures like "1,5%" he gives the impresion of a meticulous, down to the bottom study . If this study exists at all it is at least not verifiable from the booklet of Mattos. So the scientific value of Mattos' statement in this specific point equals nil, zero, nada. And you take this none-source most probably as a blind citation (or why you didn't add the precice page number?) to back your unprooved and unprovable argument. Do you think this is the kind of information and methodology readers of the Wikipedia, unfamiliar with the topic, diserve? I don't want to comment further on your method, just want to say that I'm disappointed. As one says in German "one looses his credibility only once" (man verliert nur einmal seine Glaubwürdigkeit). Helga Schneider (talk) 09:43, 30 December 2008 (UTC) P.S.: Your "source" is precisely one meager sentence in Mattos 1987, center of p. 11.[reply]

Helga, I'm not going to rewrite the article with proper sourcing. I'll add things piecemeal as I come across them, but I simply don't have the time for a research project, or even to retrace the sources I used for this years ago when I first put it together. I also can't add details you want but I don't have access to. This can't be a priority for me: I have an outside life that requires my attention right now.
Sorry, but once again your links are useless. They're just links to a library card catalogue, which doesn't tell me anything but ISBN numbers. kwami (talk) 11:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

serpo[edit]

serpo 'sickle' is attributed to Russian, but it's also French (serpe — the second Astérix book is La serpe d'or!); the Petit Robert derives it from a Late Latin verb. —Tamfang (talk) 19:03, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, it comes from Latin "sarpere", but the roots can be traced back further to Greek, where it is related to harpy[2] - see picture. — Sebastian 22:03, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Removed, since those are supposed to be specifically Russian words. — kwami (talk) 16:50, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The difference in initial consonants shows that Latin did not take sarpere from a Greek word; rather, harpy may be a cognate, showing the regular Greek change of ancestral initial /s/ to /h/. —Tamfang (talk) 18:56, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

tondri[edit]

The German noun Donner was changed to the verb donnern, to match the rest, and reverted. Comments? —Tamfang (talk) 18:02, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good. — kwami (talk) 04:08, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why? —Tamfang (talk) 05:09, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Didn't see your question, now have no idea what I meant. — kwami (talk) 05:03, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is sort of the opposite of esprit d'escalier. —Tamfang (talk) 05:14, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Percentages[edit]

“In 1987, Mattos calculated that 84% of basic vocabulary was Latinate, 14% Germanic, and 2% Slavic and Greek.”

It is wrong to assume that the sum of percentages cannot exceed 100%, because Romance, Germanic, Slavic and even Greek languages share many roots, and Esperanto words were chosen for, among others, their international character. Another source (alas, I don't have the reference at hand) has calculated that the original (“Fundamental”) Esperanto vocabulary (i.e. all words present in the vocabulary of at least one of the five “original editions” — Russian, Polish, German, French and English — published in 1887 or shortly thereafter) is about 70% French, 60% German, 50% Russian, with room left for other origins, including, but not limited to, the much-used kaj (“and”) which is Greek, and edzo (“spouse”), which has been said to be Yiddish using both borrowing and retroderivation (from, supposedly, rebbe → rebbetzin “rabbi → rabbi's wife”, then edzo “husband” from edzino “wife” by removing the feminine -in-). Even the initialism ktp for kaj tiel plu, much mentioned on the various Wiki articles about Esperanto, is a loan-translation from both Germanic (German usw. for und so weiter) and Slavic (Russian и т. д. for и так далее).

I'd like to see Mattos's description of his modus operandi, and compare it with other Esperantologists' values, because his results quoted above are so lopsided that they make me believe that they result from a self-fulfilling prophecy, viz. “if a word exists in French or Italian or Spanish or Portuguese or Classical Latin we regard it as Romance. If it doesn't, but it is found in German or English or Yiddish or Norwegian, we regard it as Germanic. Only words present in neither Romance nor Germanic languages are examined for Slavic or Greek origin.” I sincerely hope that that isn't how he proceeded, but then I'd like to know what he did.

Precise percentages cannot be computed anyway, because the famous “Rule 15” of the Esperanto grammar says that any word which “all languages have borrowed from the same source” can be imported in Esperanto too, only adapting it to the Esperanto phonology; however in the case of word families “it is better” to borrow only the root word and then derive the rest by means of the prefixes and suffixes, etc., already present in Esperanto. But how does one determine words borrowed from the same source by “all” languages? It is usually assumed that Zamenhof (rightly or wrongly) had in mind all European languages; and indeed, since the Fundamento was published, names of living organisms have usually been borrowed from their Latin scientific names, technical words have been borrowed extensively from Latin and Greek as in most West-European languages and to a lesser degree in Central-European ones, and words from all over the world which have found general acceptance have been accepted in Esperanto too. Some Esperantologists have argued that since they are imported by virtue of a rule of the Fundamenta Gramatiko they were part of the language from the beginning even if they weren't yet in use. Others, of course, retort that a word cannot be said to be part of the language as long as it hasn't been used — and Zamenhof himself wrote repeatedly that, like every language, the new International Language should lose and gain words by a process of archaisms and neologisms. So the Esperanto vocabulary, like that of any living language, is in a state of flux, and it will continue that way as long as the language lives. — Tonymec (talk) 10:32, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Esperanto inflections and part-of-speech endings[edit]

A table of parallels between Eo and other languages. For tracking, not any specific claim. — kwami (talk) 01:00, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Suffix use Latin Classical Greek other
-o noun 1st declension fem. -a
2nd declension masc. -o-s → -u-s
(-s drops)		 1st declension fem. -a
2nd declension masc. -o-s
(-s drops)		 Italian
-o, -a
-a adjective
-j plural -j (-æ /aj/, -œ /oj/ → -i) -j (-αι /aj/, -οι /oj/)
(masc. article sg. ho, pl. hoj)		 Rudelle -i
-n accusative -n (-αν, -ον) Steiner (Pasilingua) -n
Rudelle -m
-e adverb -e (e.g. bene) Russian
-e after Cʲ
-i infinitive -i in deponent verbs
(e.g. loqui)
-u jussive -u in deponent verbs
(e.g. δέχου)		 Hebrew -û
in masc. pl.
Rudelle -y /u/ (pres. sjv)
-o- future Faiguet (1765) -u
Rudelle (1858) -o
Courtonne (1885) -o-
Volapük o-
-a- present Faiguet -a
Rudelle -a
Courtonne -a-
Volapük -a- (appears in the passive)
-i- past perfect -i- Faiguet -i
Rudelle -i
Volapük i-
-e- old imperfect Faiguet -e
Rudelle -e
Courtonne -e-
Volapük ä-
-u- conditional Courtonne -u-
Rudelle -iy /ju/ < *-u /y/
-s indicative/
conditional		 English 3sg. -s
Faiguet -s
-t- passive
participle		 -t- -t- (perfective) German -t
Italian -t-
Courtonne -tə (incl. cond. -utə)
-nt- active
participle		 -nt- -nt- Italian -nt-
German -nd [nt]
Faiguet -ont
Courtonne -ntə (incl. cond. -untə)
-aŭ (indeterminate)
-i pronoun English me, thee, ye, we, he, she
Italian mi, ci, ti, vi, gli, li, si
Courtonne mi = mi, ti = ci, si = si
-u adjectival
determiner		 French -un
Italian -uno
ki- interrogative French qui, quel /ki/
Italian chi /ki/
ti- demonstrative French tel
German die, English this
i- indefinite (internal)
ĉi- inclusive Italian ciascuno
French chaque
neni- exclusive (doubling of ne)
-es genitive 3rd, 4th declension -s 3rd declension -is German -es
-al reason
-el manner French tel
-am
← -an		 time French quand
-om
← -on		 amount French combien

Added Latin perfect conjugation. — The names Faiguet, Rudelle, Courtonne are unfamiliar to me; what can you tell me about them? —Tamfang (talk) 19:32, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They're so obscure only Faiguet has a bio on WP-eo. But the languages each have an article, though only Faiguet's langue nouvelle is more than a stub: eo:Langue_nouvelle, eo:Pantos Dimu Glossa, eo:Novlatino (Courtonne). — kwami (talk) 03:19, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Dankon. —Tamfang (talk) 04:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
They are covered in Drezen Historio de la Mondolingvo. I did not think to look there in 2014 because most of my books were in boxes! —Tamfang (talk) 19:29, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Classical Latin genitive has s only in third and fourth declension singular; did earlier first declension also have s? —Tamfang (talk) 04:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Probably just a mistake. Wrote a quick article on Faiguet's Langue nouvelle. — kwami (talk) 05:31, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The term pater-familias preserves (iirc) an archaic genitive, which would otherwise be –ae. —Tamfang (talk) 22:51, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Kelka[edit]

I removed:

, kelka (few, from kilka)

wikt:kelka:

Borrowed from French quelque.

I see that wikt:kilka has:

Inherited from Proto-Slavic *koliko.
[...]
more than two but less than ten (a quantity from three to nine); several; few

Both seem possible. It may be from both at the same time. Since there is no reference for kelka, I remove it and leave it here in case that someone wants to search references. Error (talk) 15:18, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I added that a long time ago, from an old source I don't remember. No reason it should have been any more reliable than the sources we have now. Andras Rajki, Etymological Dictionary of the Esperanto Language gives
kelka = Fr. quelque, It. qualche
But I would think that the Polish parallel played a role. Note that there's also dialectical kielka in Polish. — kwami (talk) 19:18, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pre-1918 orthography[edit]

I think that Russian etymons for core Esperanto words should be in their pre-1918 orthography (ru-petr1708). Error (talk) 15:31, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see that it matters, but I have no problem with using the old orthography. — kwami (talk) 19:19, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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