karoto

A plain kitchen noun with one trap in it, and the trap is a good one to fall into once.

Karoto is not kar- plus -ot- plus -o. The -ot- participle is real, official and taught in participles: it is the future passive, the thing that is going to be done to something. Amota is about to be loved, legota is about to be read, konstruota is about to be built. So a learner who has just met the participle table and sees karoto can parse it as kar-ot-o, the one who is about to be dear, which is a beautiful phrase and an entirely imaginary word. There is no verb kari. The root here is karot-, borrowed whole from French, and the only ending on it is the -o.

The general lesson is the one the whole affix system depends on: an ending only counts as an ending if what remains in front of it is a real root. Check backwards, always. This band alone offers four of these traps (kontrasto, perspektivo, tamburo and this one) and the check disposes of all four in a second each.

The vegetable itself. Karoto is the plant and the root you eat. The adjective karota means made of carrots, so karota supo is carrot soup. Esperanto has no equivalent of the English carrot-and-stick idiom in wide use, though karoto kaj bastono is understood; and for the colour, oranĝkolora is the word, since oranĝa on its own is likelier to be read as a flavour.