Translation
Word origin
Assembled inside Esperanto from reto, a net, and mesaĝo, a message. Reto comes from Latin rete, a fishing net, and mesaĝo from French message and Latin mittere, to send. The compound is younger than most of the language: it dates from the 1990s, when the community moved onto the internet earlier and more completely than almost any comparable group.
- Origin
- Esperanto
- Root
- reto + mesaĝo
Examples
.
I sent you an email yesterday.
.
Her email was short and clear.
.
Please reply to my email before Friday.
Two roots you already have: reto at rank 1435, a net,
and by extension the network; and mesaĝo at rank
1109, a message. Glue them and you have a network message, which is exactly what
an email is. No new root, no borrowing, no -, and the word was
comprehensible on first sight to every speaker who already knew the halves.
This is the affix and compounding system doing the job it was designed for, on
a technology that postdates Zamenhof by a century.
Retpoŝto, the other word, and when to use which. Retpoŝto is plus
poŝto at rank 1961: net-post, the email system. The
distinction the careful writers keep is that retpoŝto is the medium and
is the individual item, exactly as English post is the medium and a
letter is the item. In practice retpoŝto gets used for both and nobody
objects; but is unambiguous where retpoŝtojn makes a pedant wince. Your address is a retadreso or
retpoŝtadreso, the software is a retpoŝtilo, and the verb is retpoŝti or
plainly . The clipped i means to browse the web, not to
write email.
The - prefix element is now one of the most productive in the language:
a website, retpaĝo a web page, i to go online, retamiko an
online friend, retkonferenco a video call. It arrived faster than the
Akademio could rule on any of it and settled by use. See
Esperanto hodiaŭ for what the network
did to a language whose speakers had spent a century being thinly scattered.
For the register of the message itself, which in Esperanto is friendlier and
less formulaic than English business email, see
letter writing and register.
The short version: opens almost anything, Amike closes it, and
the elaborate English apparatus of "I hope this finds you well" has no
equivalent and is not missed.
Where this fits
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retmesaĝo: worksheet, infographic and listicle
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 50.