I and my sister were talking yesterday and she told me about a language that has only 900 words! We were wondering how would you communicate in such a language! As a matter of fact, we went on to list 150 items from the room we were in, and we could have easily made it to 1000 if we continued! We could probably list 5000 words looking around in the office itself! So how does a language work with just 900 root words? So I did some Google and found interesting material! The language is called “Esperanto” and it is a constructed language – meaning it was “invented”, and not “evolved”. Wikipedia has a nice (techy) article on it. Heck, they have a Wikipedia edition in Esperanto as well!
BTW, the exercise to find out stuff around in the room was fun! Try it out with your sibbling/parents 🙂
Esperanto has a lot more than 900 words. The standard dictionary, Plena Ilustrita Vortaro, has 16,780 headwords kaj 46,890 lexical units. That Esperanto is concise or simple is a myth told by the language’s adherents to attract new learners; once one is suckered in one realizes that it takes years to learn enough vocabulary for any substantial text or conversation.
Anyway, I’d stay away from Esperanto if I were you, as it is essentially a cult. If you become active in it, you’ll be discouraged from learning other languages or meeting with non-Esperantists in your travels. The movement has a strong believe that Esperanto is the only language permissible in international contexts, and I left after ten years of activity because I got sick of being told that my curiosity in the native languages of my peers makes me a bad man.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your valuable inputs! I figured there will be many more words in the language after reading some more on the web. But I agree I would stay away from it if it was not encouraged to try out other languages or learn from them. Discouraging talking to non Esperanto people sounds very short sighted actually!
:Nirav
The idea of “only 900 words” is a popular mistake. A German TV station made a report about Esperanto, they used it and even refused to correct themselves, although quite a few speakers pointed out that the number was unrealistic and misleading.
Where did it all come from? At the very beginning of the language, its initiator used 900 basic roots. But when translating the bible, he already introduced new words and expressions.
As an Esperanto speaker, I see it as a tool to communicate and encourage people to use and learn other languages. (Right now I am writing in English, which is not my native language.) Don’t believe what people want to make you believe! Decide for yourself whether you want to give it a try or not.
Thanks for the perspective Kunar! It would help people reading this.
Yes, of course Esperanto has more than 900 words — although 900 words would be more than adequate for most levels of discourse. After about 6 or 7 months of study (about an hour or so a day) I was able to correspond about fairly high level subjects with people in other countries.
I would, however, take Christopher Culver’s words with several spoons of salt. His characterization of Esperanto as a “cult” is grossly inaccurate and highly misleading (he apparently had some bad personal experiences that turned him off Esperanto and thereafter have colored his comments about Esperanto). It’s also completely incorrect that the Esperanto movement discourages people from learning and using other languages — quite the contrary! Esperantists are by far the most multilingual group I know! I don’t even know a single Esperantist who doesn’t know other languages besides their native language and Esperanto. After learning Esperanto I’ve gone on the learn German and French, as well as some Japanese, Russian and Italian — and it was my involvement with Esperanto that stoked my interest in language.
Don’t pay attention to some disgruntled naysayer — check out Esperanto for yourself… I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!
What you are missing here, is that from a few root words in esperanto, you can builds many, many more words (many of which don’t have equivalent in English).
For example:
bela -> beautiful (root word bel- ending -a for adjectives)
bele -> beautifully (root word bel- ending -e for adverbs)
belega -> gorgeous (root word bel- suffix -eg- (to accentuate) ending -a for adjectives)
beleta -> cute (root word bel- suffix -et- (diminutive) ending -a for adjectives)
belulino -> pretty girl (bel- -ul- (for person) -in- (for female) ending -o for nouns)
malbelulino -> ugly girl (prefix mal- (for opposite) belulino as above)
beleco -> beauty (root word bel- suffix -ec- (property) ending -o for nouns)
beli -> to be beautiful (root word bel- ending -i for verb)
beligi -> beautify (root word bel- suffix -ig- (to make) ending -i for verb)
beliĝi -> to become beatiful (root word bel- suffix -iĝ ending -i for verb)
komputi -> to compute (root word komput- ending -i for verb)
komputilo -> computer (root word komput- suffix -il- for tools ending -o for nouns)
komputilema -> who likes computer (root word komput- suffix -il- suffix -em- (for being “inclined to”) ending -a for adjective)
etc, etc.
You may start to see the point, that with just a few root words, you can build a rich vocabulary in esperanto just like when you assemble a couple of basic Lego bricks. With Esperanto, those assembling rules work for every words. If it’s logical, it’s correct.
As I said, some words don’t have equivalent in English (translation requires sometimes a whole sentence).
Here is an example:
Mi sekvas la sagon -> I follow the arrow
Mi malsekvas la sagon -> I follow the arrow in opposite direction
You see what happened here. The verb sekv-as (present tense for follow) has simply been transformed into malsekvas (to indicate the opposite). There is no such words as “malsekv-i” in English. But in esperanto, nothing prevents me from creating it.
So there might be millions of possible words in Esperanto, and yet the number of root words to memorize is not very high, saving lots of effort to memorization. It’s very flexible and fun and gives lots of room for creativity when writing in esperanto.
I might be breaking a taboo, but… dare I say that esperanto is more expressive and flexible than English?
Reminiscent, but more systematic, of a trading dialect … with rules similar to Latin (which dictatorially evolved over centuries).
Also reminds me a bit of pig-Latin with a purpose.
I know nothing of Espirito, and have no interest in it, but I would translate the opposite of “I follow the arrow” as “I do not follow the arrow”.
Esperanto is not as logical as its adherents claim it to be. I’m one of those who was attracted by the movement but soon I realised that some thing else was going on. Here is an example: ‘poemo’ means a ‘poem’ in Esperanto and when I wrote ‘poemisto’ (poet) and ‘poemarto'(poetry) as it should be according to the rules of the grammar, the true Esperantists told me to use ‘poeto’ and ‘poezio’ instead because they were more international.
When I told them to follow the rules they made me shut my mouth with a single phrase “Esperanto is a European language” and they as Europeans and Americans knew what was right and what was wrong. I’m an Asian and then I realised I’d rather go for Chinese or Japanese or any other natural langauge instead of Esperanto.
Esperanto estas malbonega lingvo!
So much here to which I would like to reply. First off, let me say that I am a supporter of the Esperanto language, but I know that there are flaws in the culture as there are with any other culture. We’re dealing with human beings after all. I’ll attempt to break my planned reply into several posts. Hopefully the system will allow me to post multiple time. Anyone interested in what I have to say in this discussion, please look for my followups here. I don’t know that I will personally be back here to check for replies to me, but please leave them anyway if you have them, as they may benefit someone.
When I learned of Esperanto as a child, it was through studies I was doing to help me with the creating of a language I had begun to invent myself. There have been many such languages intentionally invented over many years, for various reasons, but to me the most obvious reason is the same reason we build homes. Natural ones are nicer than none at all, but they tend to be messy, unstable, and generally less adequate than a society of thinking beings should have to put up with as their only option!
My invented language started out very different from Esperanto, but in the end I intentionally evolved it into a simplified version of Esperanto, hoping to help the benevolent dreams of Doktoro Esperanto come true. Simplified of course does not mean that it has “less to learn” or that it is “dumbed down” but rather that when you learn a rule, you don’t have to learn exceptions to it as well, which brings me to the first reply I would like to address directly. By the way, my language is named Pont’, which means “bridge”, and I have released the most Esperanto-like layer of it to the public, which goes by the name Esper’, and is basically regularized Esperanto with a few words changed to allow the “regularity” to be more complete. For example, “on” for “one”, “nul” for “zero”, “ji” for “this” and “zi” for “each” or “all of”.
Donald Arthur Kronos.
@Chetan Anand: I’m sorry you had such an experience. It is mainly a European language, but shame on those people for using that as an excuse to tell you that following its rules was not okay. The Esper’ language is, amongst other things, my attempt to settle such differences. I understand that different linguistic backgrounds cause different things to make more or less sense when learning a language and it’s bad enough having to learn new rules without having to be told that you can’t apply them where it makes sense to you. The Esper’ language’s solution to the particular case that you mentioned is simple. Specifically, the Esper’ language would treat the forms you had used as meaning just what such word constructions would suggest, and the forms that were suggested to you would be seen as “able to be interpreted the same way” but having a different range of possible meaning due to their different construction. For example, the stem “poem” can be SEEN AS a shorter stem “po” with the suffix “em” (tendancy) added. So what do poems tend to do? Well, there are many answers to that question, and the FULL UNDERSTANDING of the Esper word “poet’o” (the apoostrophe marks which part is the word ending, for clarification) includes all of them, but understanding one’s use of the word does not require thinking it through that much. My first thought is that poems tend to rhyme and have rhythm, so a “po’o” would be something fits the description of having such a tendency, which includes peoms but could be considered a little more broad than that. If such a stem extraction does not result in a “known stem” it can be treated in Esper’ as a pseudostem. In this case, “po” can be recognized as a stem meaning “at the rate of” which would imply that it leans more toward the “rhythmic” aspect of poetry than the “rhyming” aspect. From that derived stem or pseudostem (depending on how one percieves it and whether or not one knows the stem “po”) one could then recognize that a “poet’o” can be seen as basically a little poetic thing, or a little rhythmic thing. Not exactly a term of RESPECT for a serious poet, but perhaps more of a term of enderament for one. The construction “poemist’o” would signify in the Esper’ language someone who has a past state of “poem” or in other words, one who is experienced in poetry. This of course includes the usual Enperanto meaning. Looking at “poemist’o” from the perspective of the derived stem “po”, the term “poemist’o” would basically signify that which is well established as having a tendency toward rhythm. No “official word stem” is needed for this “reverse engineering” process, but if one learns a “common form” of a word, they may choose to use that common form simply because they believe it will be commonly recognized. That’s a PERSONAL choice. I do hope that some day the world will have a powerful and simple to learn common language. To me it’s not important what language gains such a status but rather that we recognize its value and work together toward making it possible.
By the way, your Esperanto rendition of “Esperanto is an extremely bad language” is spot on, so you obviously didn’t come to the conclusion that it’s a bad language becaause you couldn’t learn to construct or understand sentences in it, but I believe the statement to be misdirected as it is not the language which was at fault for your bad experience but rather those particular speakers of the language. Any language with enough speakers is probably bound to include some such people, but it’s really not the language which is to blame. I personally think Esperanto is a great language. It’s not perfect, but probaably no human language ever can be. Since you obviously know some Esperanto and have some feelings about what you like and dislike about it, I would suggest that you look into the Esper’ language which is intended to evolve alongside of Esperanto as it’s “open source counterpart” which anyone can contribute to improving under the sole restrictions that their “improvements” will be accepted or rejected by people on an individual basis rather than voted upon by an official body of representatives, and any such changes which are accepted by an individual are allowed to be used by that individual in whatever ways make the most sense to that individual. You can find an open source textbook on the Esper’ language being developed on WikiBooks.
Donald Arthur Kronos.
@Agricolae Sunt:
Very astute observation, that application of the “mal” prefix is “subjective” and depends upon the person interpreting the constructed word. This is actually the difference between a constructed word and a word phrase. The word phrase has individual words in it, each of which is recognized as in some sense a selfe contained unit, whereas the constructed simply offers some basis for begining to understand a new word the first time it is encountered rather than having to memorize the meanings of each new word individually. I could more likely have interpreted the opposite of “I follow the arrow” as something like “I precede the arrow” or more accurately as “I go in the opposite direction of the arrow, before it starts”, but in truth the Esperanto language tends to rely on establishing “accepted definitions” and expecting people to “learn them” rather than simply apply the rules to known word elements as they see fit. This is where the Esper’ language come in and the Esperanto language augment each other. Esperanto is in a sense to the Esper language what the “Legal English” used in court rooms is to the “English” language. It’s good to have such a well established “agreed upon” set of definitions, for legal matters and such, but it seems that the reason L. L. Zamenhof set it up that way stems more from his goal of having anyone from anywhere be able to communicate with anyone else from anywhere else and not have to risk being misunderstood in the process.
This is why the Esper’ language, and the Pont’ language which it is a layer of, have been evolved to fully support spoken Esperanto, even though they started out quite different, and even though there are a few words with a “prefered form” which does not match that of the Esperanto language. For example, in Esperanto, the only two syllable single digit number names are “unu” meaning “one” and “nulo” meaning “zero”. These are “supported by” the Esper’ language, so it is not considered “wrong” to use them, although the Esper’ word for the number “one” is “on” which is derived from the Esperanto pronoun “oni” allowing regular formation of the Esper proform “oni'” with the same meaning, and the Esper’ word for “zero” is “nul” allowing for the regular formation of the noun “nul’o” which is basically interchangeable with the Esperanto number name “nulo” as a word, but allows for the formation of other words, such as the constructed proform “nuli'” meaning “nobody” or “nothing”.
Donald Arthur Kronos.
@dominiko:
I recall writing a rather extensive article entitled “Word of Beauty” in which I had used the word stem “bel” as an example in such a way. Not sure if I ever did actually publish it or not. This was some time age. Seeing that though has inspired me to perhaps go back and revisit that idea as I am now working on a book about the Esper’ language on WikiBooks and it would be a good way of demonstrating each affix in turn. It’s a shame though that translating many of them proves to be so difficult.
An interesting point though, which I just went over in a reply to another person’s reply to your post, is that each such formation can be taken a number of different ways, or more accurately, a range of different ways. I look at it as a single polished facet of a raw gem. Look inside and what do you see? Well, it depends on the angle from which you are looking, but the basic structure is the same from any angle. It’s more a matter of “how you look at it” than “what it is” that’s in question. Each stem or word element in turn also has such a “range of meaning” and what the Esper’ language attempts to do is to treat different interpretations of the same word or the same word elements as “correct from the perspective of the person using them” so that any recipient of their usage is best off to look at the context in which each word or word element is being used and search for meaning from that perspective as it is as close as they are likely to get to the perspective of the person who put them there in the first place. This requires a bit of extra mental processing, but one can always use “learned meanings” as a shortcut until their brains become more accustomed to the advanced linguistic processing that the Esper’ language will teach it in time.
Donald Arthur Kronos.
@Kunar:
Where the “900 words” came from, is that Dr. Zamenhof’s original layout of how the language was to be written included “little commas” to be placed between the elements of any given word, allowing them to fully function as separate words while in theory allowing people to learn certain arrangements of them “as if” such arrangements were words themselves. The original “basic vocabulary” list of such word element is where the 900 comes from, but it was even pointed out in his original publication that a more extensive vocabulary list would need to be consulted for words which he had expected to be needed much less frequently. The idea was to be able to carry a short list of translations of these basic “words” to and from a main language of an area you are in so that you could allow locals to use it to interpret things you write out in Esperanto. Sort of a “pocket translator” without the need for nanoscale computer technology.
The Esper’ language uses the apostrophe to mark the end of the end of the last word element before any word ending, or in other words the end of the full word stem including suffixes, for much the same purpose, but with the compromise of not expecting all word elements to have such a character placed between them. The orthography is very similar to that of Esperanto, but without the “letters with hats” that end up needing to be worked around on many computer systems and typewriters, and taking advantage of the full 26 letter set from the standard alphabet for which most modern technology includes support. See the Esper’ textbook at WikiBooks for details if you’re corious.
Donald Arthur Kronos.
@Nirav:
Part of the problem with the whole “language with only 900 words” concept is in the choice of concepts defining “what constitutes a word” such as for example, does the list “boat, boating, boats, boatings” have in it “four words” or “four forms of the word boat” or is it the three words “boat”, “ing” and “s”, in various combinations? This is to say nothing of the ambiguity in whether “boat” is a verb or a noun and whether or not each such “sense of the word” should be considered a separate word. Another part of the equation is the fact that the Esperanto language has been around for 125 years since that first list of “900” was introduced, and it has grown. But the biggest problem with any statement that a given “living language” has only a certain number of words, is that anybody can add one to that list, officially or otherwise, and then the number is invalid. I’m not sure the exact process, but I understand there is an “official list” kept somewhere, and that there is a process for new words being included in it, but nobody who really understands the Esperanto community is going to think that all of its members are going to adhere to strict usage of only the “official” words or their “official” meanings. It’s a community of real people. And while it is true that MANY Esperantists have adopted a very unfriendly attitude toward speaking other languages in situations where Esperanto would suffice, (especially one’s native language or VERY ESPECIALLY another intentionally invented language), it does not seem to be the majority and it is certainly not a universal problem within the community. Probal Dasgupta himself, the current president of the World Esperanto Association, told me that he feels it is a responsibility of Esperantists to ENCOURAGE the study of other languages, experimentation with language improvements, and the development of other new languages. At the same time it is quite understandable that many Esperantists are somewhat desperate to see Esperanto’s popularity finally spread like wildfire within their lifetimes, and it is probably easy to assume that this will require strict enforcement of practicing and spreading Esperanto at the exclusion of all other languages, but this actually goes AGAINST the teachings of the founder of the language, which pretty much proves it’s not a cult, or they would be following “his ways” to the letter. Have a look at the Esper’ language if you get the time and have the curiosity. I’m hoping that some day the Esperanto community will realize that it is probably their best bet of seeing Dr. Zamenhof’s dreams of a universal second language realized in their lifetimes, and that promoting Esper’ would actually result in a huge increase in the popularity of Esperanto as it is more well established, currently has more speakers, and already has a reasonable level of recognition, not to mention all the literature already written in it and translated into it… and learning Esper’ is the probably fastest way to learn Esperanto. Just as learning Esperanto before studying another language has been shown to GREATLY INCREASE thespeed at which the other language can be learned, the same would be true of the Esper’ language since it is built around the concepts which cause Esperanto to have such an effect, but I have found that people who have learned either language understand the other right away, because they are so close to identical. For example, the Esperanto phrase “la bela ruĝa pomo”, for lack of the letter “ĝ” on most keyboards, (including mine) and lack of any installed keyboard layout that allows it to be easily typed (also the case here), is also typed in Esperanto by different Esperantists with different prefered workarounds as “la bela rugha pomo”, or “la bela rugxa pomo”, or “la bela rug^a pomo”, or “la bela ru^ga pomo”, or “la bela rug’a pomo”, or “la bela ru’ga pomo”, so when they see the Esper’ phrase “la’ bel’a rudj’a pom’o”, it tends not to throw most of them off the slightest bit. In the Esper’ language there is no need for such workarounds, and the apostrophe is optional, but adds clarification as to where the “word ending” begins, or if the apostrophe is on the end, then it means the word ending has been dropped (just as it means in Esperanto) or that there was no word ending in the first place, which is common in Esperanto for certain common words such as prepositions or the definite article “la”, but never clearly marked as such… which is fine for a fluent speaker of the language but an inconvenience to a newbie.
Donald Arthur Kronos