aliflanke

Aliflanke is one of the small number of Esperanto compounds that have set hard enough to be listed as words in their own right. Take it apart and nothing is hidden: alia (other), flanko (side), -e (the adverb ending). Say it out loud and you get the English idiom back, because English builds its version the same way and out of the same pieces.

It does both jobs the English phrase does, and the split is worth naming. Literally it means on the other side, and it takes de: aliflanke de la rivero is across the river. Figuratively it is the discourse marker, the second half of a weighing-up, and there it stands alone with a comma. Nothing in the word chooses between the two; the sentence does.

Where it sits among the other connectors matters more than the word itself. Tamen is however, and it contradicts. Cetere is besides, and it adds. Aliflanke does neither: it balances, and it wants something on the first side to balance against, which is why it reads badly at the start of a paragraph and well after a semicolon. The rest of the family is set out in Esperanto connectors, which covers tamen, kvankam, eĉ se, malgraŭ, do and tial.

One small style note. Because it is an adverb, it never agrees with anything and never takes -n. Unuflanke ... aliflanke is the standard pair for laying out two sides of an argument, and it is as close as Esperanto gets to the on-the-one-hand ceremony English enjoys so much.