Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Esperanto vocabulary:
The word base of Esperanto was originally defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. It contained some 900 root words. However, the rules of the language allowed speakers to borrow words as needed, recommending only that they look for the most international words, and that they borrow one basic word and derive others from it, rather than borrowing many words with related meanings. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, Universala Vortaro, which was written in five languages and supplied a larger set of root words
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2 comments:
Not as many Esperanto speakers have as much knowledge as you have you have yourself, about this language!
I say language, because it is now a living language!
You can see evidence at http://www.lernu.net
Saluton! Brian
It should also be noted that the root-words for Esperanto were selected from ethnic languages largely on the basis of 'maximum internationality' (i.e. those which would be recognized by the greatest number of educated people), and not on the basis of 'proportional representation' (i.e. the proportion from many language families depending on the number of speakers).
Also, Esperanto is intended for 'universal bilingualism' [YOUR ethnic language + non-ethnic Esperanto for all], and not as 'one language for the world', as is often wrongly supposed.
The seven points of the Prague Manifesto:
http://lingvo.org
provide a modern rationale for Esperanto.
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