Translation
educated, learned; well-read
Word origin
Most often traced to Latin clarus, bright or clear, by way of the enlightenment metaphor that also gave French éclairé and English enlightened. On that account klera and klara are Esperanto doublets of one Latin root, arriving by different routes and settling on different meanings.
- Origin
- Latin
- Root
- clarus
- English cognates
- clear, clarity
Other proposed origins
- Some accounts instead take it to Latin clericus, a cleric, in the mediaeval sense of the one man in the village who could read. English clerk carried exactly that meaning before it meant an office job. (Latin, from Greek, clericus)
Examples
.
She is a very well-read woman.
, .
An educated person knows how much they do not know.
, .
He became learned because he read every book in the house.
Two warnings, and the first is a false seam. There is no -er- at work here.
Esperanto's real -er- suffix names one unit of a mass, as in o, a
grain of sand, and o, a coin. Strip it from and you are left
with kl-, which is not a root in any language. Kler- is the whole root and
comes apart no further.
The second warning is about the meaning. is not . is
clear, obvious, easy to see through; is educated, cultivated,
well-read. The two look like a mal- pair and behave like strangers. A o is a clear explanation, and a is the person who can give
one.
The derivations are all in daily use: o is education in the sense of
cultivation rather than schooling, i is to educate oneself, and
i is to educate somebody else. That -- and -- pair is the same
machinery set out in igi and iĝi, and it is the
tidiest way in the language to say self-taught: memklerigita.
Where this fits
Add to review queue
Track this word in your spaced-repetition queue and be tested on it at the right interval.
Go to my review queueEsperanto · Free printables
klera: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "klera" (educated, learned; well-read): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
Free for members
The printable worksheets, infographics and PDFs are free with an account. Start a free week and download as many as you like.
Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 41.