vinbero

This one is a gift, so take it slowly and enjoy it. Vino is wine. Bero is a berry. Vinbero is a wine-berry, which is a grape. Nothing is hidden, nothing has worn down, and a learner who knows the two pieces has the word for free before anybody teaches it. Most of the international vocabulary arrives as a finished lump you simply have to memorise; this is what the other half of the language looks like, and it is the half that makes 2,000 roots behave like six thousand words.

The compound keeps building. Vinberujo is the vine, using the -uj- suffix for the thing that bears (pomujo an apple tree, monujo a purse). Vinberejo is a vineyard, the -ej- suffix for a place. Vinberaro is a bunch, the -ar- suffix for a set. Best of all is sekvinbero, a raisin, which is seka dry plus the whole of vinbero: a dried wine-berry. Three pieces, no dictionary needed. See word building for the machine that does this.

Grapes and the other berries. Bero is the general root, so frago is a strawberry, mirtelo a bilberry, ribo a currant, and where English piles up compounds Esperanto often has a plain root. The colour words follow the trade rather than the eye: blankaj vinberoj are green ones, nigraj vinberoj the dark purple ones, exactly as with wine. And vinberoj is very often plural, because you rarely meet just one.