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
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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.
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 49.