Kilo Lingo

Ch 14 · Lesson 24

Libroj kaj legantoj

Book, reader, dictionary, novel. A is a collection of words and a is someone reading - and the language had a literature from the start, Zamenhof translating Hamlet himself.

Practise this lesson

17-word session

A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.

Worth knowing

Vortaro, leganto, verki: the words of the bookshelf

Esperanto had to prove it could carry a book before anyone would read one in it, so its founder took on the hardest tests available. Zamenhof's own translations include Shakespeare's Hamleto and Eliza Orzeszkowa's novel Marta (Paris: Hachette, 1910). In 1903 he put together the Fundamenta Krestomatio, a reader of model Esperanto that also carries his own poems: Mia penso, which you met in chapter 12, among them.

The vocabulary of all that reading is the best advert for the language's word-building, because most of it is built in front of you.

Built, not borrowed

is a dictionary. Take it apart: - (word), -- (a collection of), -o. A dictionary is a word-collection, which is exactly what one is. The same -- gives , a forest, the tree-collection.

is a reader: leg- (read), -ant- (someone doing it now), -o. Every verb in the language gives you its doer this way. If someone is writing, they are a ; if someone is translating, a .

is the interesting one. English has one verb, "to write", for both a shopping list and a novel. Esperanto splits them. You a letter; you a book, a poem, a play, anything that is a work. The work itself is a , and the person who makes them for a living is a o.

The rest of the shelf comes in with international roots you can read on sight: , , (a novel; a Roman is spelt the same, built from Romo plus -an-, and context decides), , , , . And , to publish, is - (out) plus (give): to give a book out to the world.

The language still writes. The literary journal Beletra Almanako was launched in September 2007 and has come out three times a year since 2009: poetry, fiction, essays and reviews, original and translated.

Put it together

, . - I am reading a novel that he translated from English.

, . - The poet wrote the poem, and the magazine published it.

? . - Do you have a dictionary? I don't understand this word.

Sources

What do the colours mean?