Affixes II: -ul-, -ist-, -an-, -estr-, ge-

-ul- turns a quality into the person who has it. juna gives junulo, fremda gives fremdulo, riĉa gives riĉulo, bela gives belulo. The result is a noun in -o, and it takes -in- cheerfully when you want the woman: belulino, riĉulino.

The line to hold is against -ist-. A -ulo is defined by what he is like; an -isto by what he does for a living or believes in. A komercisto trades for a living, a riĉulo merely happens to be wealthy. Note also the crowd of false friends among rank-1000 words: angulo, insulo, okulo and regulo are plain roots that end in the same three letters and have nothing to do with people.

-ist- gives you the person whose trade, craft or cause the root names. instrui gives instruisto, kuraci gives kuracisto, komerci gives komercisto, maro gives maristo. Always a noun in -o, always neutral as to sex until you add -in-.

Two boundaries matter. Against -ul-, an -isto is defined by occupation or allegiance rather than by a personal quality. Against -an-, an -isto follows a doctrine while an -ano merely belongs to a group, which is why a kristano is a Christian by membership and a komunisto by conviction. And once more, mind the false friends: mistero and historio are unbroken roots, not people who do anything.

-an- makes someone who belongs. urbo gives urbano, vilaĝo gives vilaĝano, Kristo gives kristano, and sama ideo gives samideano, the fellow traveller word Esperantists use of each other. The output is a noun in -o, and it lives as a free word too: ano on its own means a member.

The nuance is membership rather than conviction. Set it against -ist-: an -ano is inside the group, an -isto argues for the idea. It also drifts into adjectives, so usona and eŭropa come from the same machinery. As ever the letters lie sometimes: infano, pano, mano and plano are single roots with no suffix in them at all.

-estr- gives the person in charge of the thing the root names. urbo gives urbestro, ŝipo gives ŝipestro, lernejo gives lernejestro, regno gives regnestro. The result is a noun in -o, it takes -in- for a woman, and estro stands alone as the ordinary word for boss or chief.

Keep it apart from -an- and -ist-. An -estro runs the group, an -ano merely belongs to it, and an -isto practises the trade, so a school has one lernejestro and many instruistoj. The root must be the thing led, never the activity: a head cook is a kuirejestro, the head of the kitchen, and it is fenestro that trips everyone, being one plain root meaning window.

ge- gathers both sexes into one word. patro gives gepatroj, parents; frato gives gefratoj, siblings; edzo gives geedzoj, a married couple; sinjoro gives gesinjoroj, the standard way to open a letter or address a room. The output is a noun in -o, and it is very nearly always plural, because a mixed group needs at least two people in it.

That plural is the trap. A singular gepatro is a curiosity rather than an everyday word, so use unu el miaj gepatroj when you mean one of them. ge- is the natural counterpart of -in-: where -in- picks out the female half, ge- refuses to pick at all.