Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of gastama
Coloured illustration of gastama
#2493 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

hospitable

Word origin

A compound built inside Esperanto from gasto ('guest') and the root am- ('to love'), with the adjective ending: guest-loving. The English word hospitable takes the same idea through Latin hospes instead.

Origin
Esperanto compound
Root
gasto + am- + -a
English cognates
guest

Examples

.

The family were very hospitable and kind.

.

A hospitable house always has room for one more.

.

They live in a hospitable village by the sea.

Three pieces, and none of them is an affix. Gasto is a guest, am- is the root of , to love, and -a makes an adjective. Guest-loving: hospitable. It is a compound, not a derivation, and the difference matters because -am- is not on the official list of Esperanto suffixes at all. You are welding two ordinary roots together, exactly as welds foot and ball.

The pattern is productive and worth stealing. Pacama is peace-loving, homama is philanthropic, laborama means loving one's work, mokama is fond of mocking. Once you see -ama as "loves doing this", a whole shelf of adjectives opens up.

Now the contrast that actually earns its keep: -ama against -ema.-- is an official suffix, and it means inclined or prone to, with no affection in it. So a is industrious, disposed to work, whether or not the person enjoys it; laborama says they love the work. a is irritable, quick to anger; nobody would say kolerama, because loving anger is a different claim. The rough test: -ema describes a tendency, -ama describes a taste. And a would mean inclined to have guests, which is close enough that you will meet it, but is the standard word.

Where you meet it in the wild. Esperanto's Pasporta Servo, the list of speakers who put visiting Esperantists up for nothing, runs entirely on this adjective, and is the compliment the movement pays most often. The noun is gastamo, hospitality, and the place is a gastejo. More on the spoken, travelling side of the language in spoken Esperanto.

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Esperanto · Free printables

gastama: worksheet, infographic and listicle

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This word is part of lesson 50.