Esperanto · Chapter 31 · Lesson 21 · Themed review
La korpo en detalo
The body past the obvious parts. Where Esperanto stops borrowing roots and builds the part out of two you already know: dikfingro is thick-finger, okulharo is eye-hair.
Practise this lesson
16-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
Dikfingro, okulharo: the body built from parts you own
Look at a thumb. English gives it a word - thumb - that tells you nothing; you memorise it and move on. Esperanto refuses to play that game. A thumb is a : (thick) welded to (finger). A thick finger. That is exactly what a thumb is, and the word says so out loud.
The obvious parts are primitive, the finer parts are built
The big, unmistakable pieces of the body get their own roots, and you already carry most of them: (body), (head), (hand), (foot), (eye), (ear), (nose), (mouth). These are primitives - Esperanto simply names them and asks nothing further of you.
Go one level in, though, and the borrowing stops. Where English reaches for a brand-new opaque word, Esperanto snaps two roots together. An eyelash is an : (eye) plus (hair). A toe is a - a foot-finger, which, if you think about it without the inherited English word in the way, is precisely what a toe is. The pattern never varies: take the part you own, bolt on the qualifier, and the compound tells you what it means.
When the derivation goes a bit sideways
Not every part is that literal. A collar is a o - (neck) with the vague -um- suffix that Esperanto keeps for "some sensible thing related to this root". A collar is not a neck; it is the neck-ish thing, the bit of shirt that rings it. That is the one genuinely idiomatic derivation here, and it is worth flagging precisely because it breaks the tidy pattern the compounds set up.
The deeper internal machinery, by contrast, leans on plain international roots rather than compounds: (stomach), (muscle), (bone), (belly), (throat), plus (heart), (tongue) and (skin). These you learn flat - but they carry across languages, so most learners half-know them already.
Put it together
doloras. - My thumb hurts.
. - The eyelash fell into my eye.
. - He washes his toes.
o . - The collar presses on my throat.
