aspiri

The seam that is real. Most of the false-seam warnings on this course say the same thing: the pieces you can see are not there. This one is the opposite. Aspiri really does contain spiri, to breathe, at rank 611. Latin ad-spirare meant to breathe towards, and every word in the family carries a breath at the bottom of it: to conspire is to breathe together, to expire is to breathe out for the last time, and inspiration is somebody else's breath entering you.

But it is not an Esperanto compound. This is the important distinction. Aspiri was borrowed whole from Latin, prefix already attached. Esperanto does not have a prefix a-, and you cannot make new words this way. The genuine Esperanto compounds on spiri use real prepositions: enspiri at rank 2431 is to breathe in and elspiri at rank 2436 is to breathe out, both of them arriving in this same chapter. Inspiri, rank 1727, is like aspiri a Latin lump.

The fence with strebi. Strebi, rank 1713, is the effort. Aspiri is the ambition. You strebi towards a goal by getting up early and doing the work; you aspiri to it by wanting it badly enough to shape your life around it. In practice strebi takes the harder, more physical reading and aspiri the loftier one, which is exactly the split English makes between striving and aspiring. Both take al.

And a third neighbour. Sopiri, rank 672, is to long for, and it is the emotional one: homesickness, missing somebody, wanting back something you have lost. Aspiri looks forward at something you have never had. You sopiras for your old house and aspiras to a better one.