Esperanto · Chapter 21 · Lesson 14 · Grammar primer
Parolata Esperanto: what people actually say
Saluton clipped to sal', gxis for goodbye, krokodili and its reptile family, kabei, mojosa, and the cxu ne? / nu / do habits that make a learner sound like a speaker.
The short version
Krokodili: the crime of speaking your own language
To krokodili is to speak your national language at an Esperanto gathering - the movement considered it enough of a sin to need a verb. Community usage extends the reptile family: aligatori is speaking your national language to someone learning it, though only krokodili has made the dictionaries. Use it and every Esperantist in the room will grin.
Ne krokodilu - ni estas cxi tie por paroli Esperanton!
Kabei: to quit like Kabe
Kazimierz Bein, pen name Kabe, was the finest stylist of early Esperanto - then in 1911 he walked away from the movement without a word and never came back. The community immortalised the betrayal as a verb: kabei, to abruptly abandon Esperanto while being good at it. A language that turns its own gossip into vocabulary is a living language.
Li estis nia plej bona verkisto, sed li kabeis.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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