Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of kamelo
Coloured illustration of kamelo
#2212 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

camel

Word origin

From Latin camelus and Greek kamelos, both borrowed from a Semitic word - Hebrew gamal, Arabic jamal. It is one of the oldest travelling words in Europe, older than most of the languages that carry it.

Origin
Latin, from Semitic
Root
camelus
English cognates
camel

Examples

.

A camel can walk for a long time without water.

.

We saw camels in the desert.

.

The camel carried a big bag on its back.

is the animal, either kind: the word covers the genus. If you need to separate them, the one-humped Arabian camel is dromedaro and the two-humped Bactrian is baktra .

A false seam, and a slightly odd one. The eye wants to read kam- plus --. It should not, for a reason worth stating plainly: -- is not an Esperanto suffix at all. Esperanto's neighbour Ido has one, and several national languages have diminutives that look like it, but the official list of Esperanto suffixes does not include --. The suffix a learner is actually thinking of is --, the tool suffix, and is emphatically not a kam-.

So is one root, -, plus the noun ending. Keep it away from , a fireplace, and kamero, a chamber - a language with this many borrowed roots inevitably puts a few of them next door to each other.

Where this fits

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Esperanto · Free printables

kamelo: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "kamelo" (camel): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

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This word is part of lesson 45.