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Line drawing of komunumo
Coloured illustration of komunumo
#1470 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

community; commune, municipality

Word origin

Built inside Esperanto from komuna (common, shared) plus the suffix -um, which is officially defined as having no fixed meaning at all. The root goes back to Latin communis, shared by all, which also gave English common and commune.

Origin
Latin
Root
communis
English cognates
common, commune, community

Examples

.

Our community is small but strong.

.

The whole community worked together.

.

He is an important member of the community.

is one of the words the -um article exists to explain. Every other Esperanto affix has one fixed job; -um has none, and is the escape hatch the language reaches for when no rule builds the word it needs. From , shared, you would expect o for a shared thing, and -um instead delivers the people who do the sharing: a community, and in official prose a commune or municipality. There is no way to derive that from the pieces, which is exactly the lesson - -um words are vocabulary, not arithmetic. Members of one are oj.

Where this fits

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Esperanto · Free printables

komunumo: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "komunumo" (community; commune, municipality): 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 30.