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Esperanto Dictionary: Where to Look Words Up

The Esperanto dictionary tools worth using: our free searchable dictionary of the core vocabulary with audio, plus PIV and Wells for when you outgrow it.

By Michael McGettrick5 Sept 202622 min read

Esperanto Dictionary: Where to Look Words Up

An Esperanto dictionary has an easier job than any other dictionary on earth, because the language does so much of the work upstream: spelling is phonetic, every part of speech announces itself with its final vowel, and a large share of the vocabulary is built from roots and affixes you already know. But you still need one, so here is the short, honest map of what to use - starting with ours, because for the core vocabulary it does things a paper dictionary cannot.

Our dictionary: the core vocabulary, with audio

Every word in our 1,000-word Esperanto course has its own dictionary page: meaning and senses, example sentences, recorded audio in two different accents, the word's affix family and related words, and links to the lessons and stories where it appears.

Two ways in:

  • Search - type English or Esperanto; accents and the x-system both work, so sxi, ŝi and she all land on the same page.
  • The course page carries the same dictionary search inline, alongside the chapters themselves - useful when a look-up turns into a lesson.
  • The word lists - the critical 100 and the core 1,000, every entry linking to its dictionary page - are the browsing route: the whole vocabulary in frequency order rather than one look-up at a time.

The deliberate limitation: it covers the core vocabulary the course teaches, not the whole language. Within that scope it is more than a dictionary - each entry is a mini-lesson - but the day you are reading unrestricted Esperanto prose, you will want the references below.

The serious references

PIV - the Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto - is the standard scholarly dictionary of the language: Esperanto-to-Esperanto, maintained by SAT with a century of lexicography behind it, and available free online at vortaro.net. Being monolingual, it doubles as reading practice; by mid-course you can use it in earnest, which is a milestone worth savouring.

Wells's English-Esperanto-English Dictionary is the usual answer for a two-way print dictionary, compiled by the UCL phonetician John Wells, a former president of the World Esperanto Association. Thorough, current, and with a grammar summary included. It is our pick on the Esperanto books page, alongside the rest of the shelf worth owning.

That is genuinely the whole list. Esperanto is well served at the top (PIV is better than the flagship dictionaries of many natural languages) and badly served in the middle, where the web offers mostly thin word lists recycled from one another. Skip the middle.

The dictionary you carry in your head

Here is the part no other language can offer. Vortaro, the Esperanto word for dictionary, is itself a demonstration: vorto (word) + -ar- (a collected set) + -o (noun). A dictionary is a word-collection, the same way arbaro (forest) is a tree-collection.

Because the affix system is fully productive - forty official affixes, combining freely with every root - a large share of "unknown" Esperanto words are known roots in different clothes. Malsanulejo is not a dictionary word to memorise; it is mal- (opposite) + san- (healthy) + -ul- (person) + -ej- (place): a hospital, read right off the parts. Our course teaches all forty affixes as a dedicated track precisely because each one you learn makes the dictionary you need smaller.

So the honest usage advice for any unfamiliar word: read it from the right, peel the ending and the affixes, and look up only the root that remains. Half the time there is nothing left to look up. The reasons this trick exists - and what it does to the hours the language costs - are the story of why Esperanto is the easiest real language to learn and, for many people, why it is worth learning at all.

Cross-references

Frequently asked

What is the best Esperanto dictionary?

For Esperanto-to-Esperanto, PIV (Plena Ilustrita Vortaro) is the standard scholarly reference, free online at vortaro.net. For a two-way English dictionary, the Wells English-Esperanto-English dictionary is the usual recommendation. For learning the core vocabulary, our own searchable dictionary covers every word in the 1,000-word course with example sentences, audio in two accents and each word's affix family.

What does vortaro mean?

Dictionary. It is a built word, and a neat demonstration of why Esperanto needs smaller dictionaries than other languages: vorto (word) plus the collective suffix -ar- (a grouped set of something) plus the noun ending -o. A dictionary is literally a word-collection, the same way arbaro (forest) is a tree-collection and homaro (humanity) is a human-collection.

How do I type Esperanto letters like ĉ and ŝ?

Read them, and type around them when you must. The standard workaround is the x-system: cx, gx, hx, jx, sx and ux for ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ, unambiguous because x is not a letter of the Esperanto alphabet. Our search accepts input with or without the accents, so sxi and ŝi both find the same word.