Unofficial affixes: -oz-, -esk- and the technical ones

-oz-: disease, chemistry, full of

-oz- does three jobs, and the sources treat them differently:

The full-of sense has a real literary record. The Reta Vortaro cites, among others:

• muskoloa muscle
• haroa hair
• sablosand

Yet PMEG prints coinages like sabloza and sukoza between asterisks, its mark for "avoid this", and recommends compounds or plain adjectives instead. ReVo's own note agrees that -riĉ-, -plen- and -hav- are easier to understand:

• La strando estas sabloriĉa. - The beach is sandy.

-esk- and -al-: rare, and never adopted

-esk- means "in the manner of": ReVo cites Invit' al japanesko, a 1971 poetry collection, and ĉineska arkitekturo, Chinese-style architecture. Both ReVo and PMEG say -ec- normally does the job.

-al- in the sense "relating to" was offered to fill a real gap: varma means hot, so what means "about heat"? PMEG's verdict:

• Tiu propono neniam realiĝis en la lingvo. - That proposal never came about in the language.

Use a phrase (pri varmo) or a compound (varmorilata). As a botanical suffix for plant orders (rozaloj), -al- does live, inside botany.

Technical affixes: inside their field only

Most unofficial affixes belong to an international naming system. PMEG's rule for them: use them in that field and nowhere else.

-olog- and -ologi- work only where an international word already ends that way, as science in Esperanto explains. Even in medicine PMEG prefers the plain word: orelinflamo.

Unofficial prefixes split into one to use and several to avoid:

• Ni televidis la kongreson. - We watched the congress on TV.

Should you coin a new affix?

PMEG opens its chapter on unofficial affixes with exactly this:

La boneco de la Esperanta vortfarado tamen ne troviĝas en la afiksa sistemo, sed ĝenerale en la eblo libere krei kunmetitajn vortojn.

The strength of Esperanto word building is not in the affix system but in the freedom to make compounds. When a word is missing, reach for a compound before an invention. How far a reader will follow you:

PMEG does not forbid anything: Multaj neoficialaj fakaj afiksoj funkcias tute bone, kaj oni uzu ilin libere sur iliaj apartaj uzokampoj. - Many unofficial technical affixes work perfectly well, and one should use them freely in their own fields.