Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of romantika
Coloured illustration of romantika
#2446 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

romantic

Word origin

From French romantique, and behind it the medieval roman, a story written in the Romance vernacular rather than in Latin. Latin romanice meant 'in the Roman manner', which is to say in the everyday speech of the old empire, and the whole modern sense of romance descends from the kind of tale people told in it.

Origin
French
Root
romantique
English cognates
romantic, romance, Romance

Examples

.

They spent a romantic evening by the sea.

.

The romantic poetry of the past century still influences us.

.

He has too romantic a picture of the countryside.

Two senses, and they are further apart than English lets on.

The everyday one. A romantic dinner, a romantic gesture, a romantic film: , . This is the sense the first example carries, and it is the one that pairs with amindumi, to court or to woo, at rank 2046. Note that Esperanto does not use for the relationship itself; a couple are oj or simply , and what is is the evening, the letter, the walk.

The historical one. Romantiko is Romanticism, the movement that ran through European art and letters from roughly 1790 to 1850 and put feeling, nature and the individual above the previous century's rules. in the second example means poetry of that movement, not poetry about love, and the ambiguity is exactly as annoying in Esperanto as in English. The movement matters to this course more than it might look: Esperanto's own literary tradition begins in its long tail, and the nineteenth-century enthusiasm for national languages and folk poetry is a direct ancestor of Zamenhof's project. See esperanta literaturo.

The third, disparaging sense is in the last example. To call somebody's view of village life is to say it is pretty and false. English does this too, and the Esperanto works identically, which is a small mercy.

The adverb romantike and the noun o (romantic quality) both behave predictably. Romantikismo is available for the movement if you want to be unambiguous, and in careful writing it is the better choice.

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 queue

Esperanto · Free printables

romantika: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "romantika" (romantic): 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 week

This word is part of lesson 49.