Esperanto · Chapter 21 · Lesson 21 · Themed review
Mono kaj acxetado
Money, price, buy, sell. The words of the shop, and the pairs of opposites that share no root at all: acxeti and vendi, ricxa and malricxa.
Practise this lesson
13-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
Aĉeti, vendi: the opposites Esperanto refuses to build with mal-
Esperanto's proudest trick is -. Stick it on the front of a root and you get the exact opposite, every time, no exceptions to memorise. is rich, so is poor. Multekosta is expensive, so is cheap. English makes you learn "rich" and "poor" as two unrelated words; Esperanto makes you learn one and flip a switch. So here is the obvious question a beginner asks at the till: if means to buy, why isn't selling just i? It would be tidy. It is also wrong. Selling is , a completely separate root. Understanding why is worth more than any list of shop words.
When mal- is the right tool
- reverses a single quality. It takes one scale - warm to cold, rich to poor, dear to cheap - and walks you to the far end of that same scale. The thing being described does not change; only its degree does. A (price) can be high or (low), and it is still the same price, the same one number, viewed from the opposite direction. That is the test. If the opposite is the same thing measured backwards, - earns its keep. This is why works so cleanly for cheap: cheapness is not a different property from expensiveness, it is the low end of the one property, cost. (to cost) sits underneath both.
When the opposite is a different act
Now buying and selling. These are not one scale run backwards. They are two separate actions performed by two separate people facing two separate directions across a single counter. When you , (money) leaves your hand and goods arrive; when I to you, I do the mirror job with a wholly different role, a different risk, a different verb in every European language Zamenhof borrowed from. To (to pay) and to (to spend) are yet more distinct acts, not shades of one. So Esperanto keeps them as distinct roots, exactly as (shop), (store) and (bank) are distinct places rather than mal- variations of each other. - is for polar opposites of one quality. Genuinely different deeds keep their own words - and rightly, because pretending they are reversals would blur what actually happens in the transaction. One last hinge: -ad- marks sustained activity. A single purchase is ; the ongoing business of shopping is o. And whether you (to save) or spend is a choice - will never make for you.
Put it together
, - transakcio, . - I want to buy, but you want to sell; that is the same transaction, not the same word.
. - The rich person and the poor person pay the same price in the shop.
; o malo. - Saving money is easy; shopping in a big store is the opposite.
multekostas - fakte , do . - It does not cost much; in fact it is cheap, so I shall not spend a lot.
