Ch 12 · Lesson 8Esperanto · Chapter 12 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer
Compound words: the last root is the head
plus gives , a steamship: a ship, because the last root says what the thing is. Read any long word from the right.
The short version
The last root is the one that counts
Why?Hide
Glue roots together freely, and the rightmost one is the head. is a kind of ship; ŝipvaporo would be a kind of steam. Only that final root takes the grammatical ending, so the whole thing behaves as one word, , with a single stress on the penultimate syllable. English does exactly the same in steamship, then cannot decide whether to write ice cream, ice-cream or icecream.
Read a long word from the right-hand end
o
Why?Hide
You have never seen o and you can still take it apart, provided you start at the back. -ejo is a place, -ul- is a person, san- is healthy, mal- reverses it: a place for unhealthy people, a hospital. The linking -o- between roots is a pronunciation aid rather than a rule. Drop it when the join is easy to say, as in and , and keep it when it is not, as in and .
An compound puts its roots in one word, and the last root says what the thing is. A is a ship () driven by steam (). Only the last root takes the ending.
| Rule | Example | English |
|---|---|---|
| the last root wins | | a steamship |
| one ending, at end | | steamships (object) |
-o- if it is hard | | midnight |
no -o- if it is easy | | noon |
| prefer an affix | | a school |
The last root is the head
Rule 11 of the : compounds are made by joining words, and the main word stands at the end. Its example is .
steam
a ship
Swap the roots and you swap the thing:
| Compound | Head | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| | a steamship (a ship) |
ŝipvaporo | | would be: ship steam |
| | a songbird (a bird) |
| | birdsong (a song) |
English works the same way round: a houseboat is a boat, a boathouse is a house.
.- The songbird sings..- I heard the birdsong.
Read a long word from the right
Faced with a word you have never seen, start at the end and work left. Each piece narrows the one after it:
| Word | From the right | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| noun, place, person, healthy, not | hospital |
| noun, science, of language | linguistics |
| adjective, nation, between | international |
| noun, edge, of the sea | the coast |
o.- She works in a hospital.
Do this a dozen times on purpose and it becomes automatic: an unknown twelve-letter word turns into four pieces you already know.
One word, one ending, one stress
The roots on the left never change. The plural -j and the object -n go on the end, as on any noun:
.- I saw two big steamships.
A compound is one word, so it has one main stress, on the second-last syllable like every Esperanto word: , .
Going further: The linking -o- and the rest of the guide, when you want them. This lesson does not need them.
Practice
Practise this lesson
8-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end.
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