Everything about Esperantido totally explained
Esperantido is the term used within the
Esperanto and
constructed language communities to describe a language project based on or inspired by Esperanto.
Esperantido originally referred to the language of that name, which later came to be known as
Ido. The word
Esperantido is derived from
Esperanto plus the suffix
-ido (a descendant). Thus
Esperantido literally means "an offspring of Esperanto".
Esperanto reforms
A number of esperantidos have been created to address a number of perceived flaws or weaknesses of Esperanto, or of other esperantidos.
Zamenhof himself proposed
in 1894 several changes in the language.
The Esperantists of the time rejected them, however.
It has been suggested that Zamenhof made the changes very radical to assure their rejection and reinforce the established version.
Ido, the foremost of the esperantidos, sought to bring Esperanto into closer alignment with Western European expectations of an ideal language, based on familiarity with
French,
English, and
Italian. Reforms included changing the spelling by removing non-
Roman letters such as
ĉ and re-introducing the
k/q dichotomy; removing a couple of the more obscure phonemic contrasts (one of which, [x], has been effectively removed from standard Esperanto); ending the infinitives in
-r and the plurals in
-i like Italian; eliminating adjectival agreement, and removing the need for the accusative case by setting up a fixed default word order; reducing the amount of inherent gender in the vocabulary, providing a masculine suffix and an
epicene third-person singular pronoun; replacing the pronouns and correlatives with forms more similar to the
Romance languages; adding new roots where Esperanto uses the
antonymic prefix
mal-; replacing much of Esperanto's other regular derivation with separate roots, which are thought to be easier for Westerners to remember; and replacing much of the Germanic and Slavic vocabulary with Romance forms, such as
navo for English-derived
ŝipo. An example of an Ido
Pater noster is given below.
Praktika Esperanto was inspired by Ido, but had less sweeping goals: Making the verb endings (-as, -is, -os, -us) more easily differentiated in normal speech, removing non-Roman letters whenever practical; and adding new roots where Esperanto added
mal- to another word.
went in another direction. Not only was the morphology changed, but the phonology was also overhauled to make it more accessible. The consonantal phonemes are limited to fourteen found in 95% of natural languages, and the only allowed
consonant clusters are
nasal+
plosive. (Thus the
esepera in its name, from Esperanto "espera".) It was created to be taught to those who are monolingual in one language with a restricted sound set.
Most esperantidos attempt to bring the language closer to a particular ethnic language or region. One of the very few that instead aims to make it more universal is
Bonjang
, which takes much of its vocabulary from
Malay,
Filipino,
Mandarin, and
Swahili. It is difficult to recognize that the language is even related to Esperanto. For example,
Ya yotang ginzim umba vampun yo mungkeng kasum, |
is, in Esperanto,
La kato granda ĉasas rapide la muson malgrandan, |
(The large cat quickly chases the small mouse).
One of the more interesting esperantidos, grammatically, is
Universal. It adds a
schwa to break up consonant clusters, marks the accusative case with a nasal vowel, has
inclusive and exclusive pronouns, uses partial
reduplication for the plural (
tablo "table",
tatablo "tables"), and inversion for
antonyms (
mega "big",
gema "little";
donu "give",
nodu "receive";
tela "far",
leta "near"). Inversion can be seen in,
al gefinu o fargu kaj la egnifu o grafu |
he finished reading [lit.'to read'] and she started to write |
The antonyms are
al "he" and
la "she" (compare
li "s/he"), the
ge- (completive) and
eg- (inchoative)
aspects,
fin- "to finish" and
nif- "to begin", and
graf- "to write" and
farg- "to read".
The
Universal reduplicated plural and inverted antonyms are reminiscent of the musical language
Solresol.
While most esperantidos aim to simplify Esperanto,
Poliespo ("
polysynthetic Esperanto") makes it considerably more complex. Besides the polysynthetic morphology, it incorporates much of the phonology and vocabulary of the
Cherokee language. It has fourteen vowels, six of them
nasalized, and three
tones.
Esperanto specializations
There are various projects to adapt Esperanto to specialized uses.
Esperanto de DLT is one; it was created to be an interlanguage of
machine translation.
Baza is a proposal to limit Esperanto to a vocabulary of only some 400 words as an interlanguage between the various esperantidos, much as
Basic English sought to limit English to 850 words.
Esperant'
There are also extensions of Esperanto which are created for amusement.
One such style, called
Esperant’, is rumoured to have been started in a chat room, but it's never seen. Like other
Idos, information on the idiom is rare although some aspects of its elision are adopted by some esperantists in day-to-day conversation. These features of
Esperant' don't go against standard Esperanto grammatical forms and are widely understood, but others are less logical and make communication slow and disjointed.
Sentence structure
- Subject - 'O' ending is removed. Knabo becomes knab'.
- Plural - 'Oj' ending is removed and replaced with the suffix 'aro' (collection), which changes to ar'. Knaboj becomes knabar'.
- Adjectives - 'A' or 'aj' endings removed and adjectives are combined with the noun they describe. Bela knabino becomes belknabin'.
- Direct object - '-n' ending is removed and 'je' is placed before the word.
- Verbs - Verbal ending removed and used as an action-noun with 'o' ending, which is also removed.
- The verbal ending is moved to the preposition in the sentence, which then acts as a verb. If there's no preposition in the sentence, 'jen' behold is used.
Example: Some boys love the pretty girl.
Esperanto Knab
oj am
as la bel
an knabin
on.
Esperant'
Jenas am
' de knab
ar' je la belknabin
'.
Literally Behold
the love of boys to the pretty-girl.
An example of an Esperant’
Pater noster is given below.
Esperantidos to add variety to Esperanto
Esperanto has little in the way of the
slang,
dialectical variation, or
archaisms found in natural languages. Several authors have felt a need for such variation, either for effect in original literature or to translate such variation in national literature.
Proto-Esperanto would theoretically fulfill the need for archaism, but too little survives for it to be used extensively.
In 1931
Kalman Kalocsay published a translation of the
Funeral Sermon and Prayer, the first Hungarian text (12th century), in which he created fictitious archaic forms as though Esperanto were a Romance language deriving from
Vulgar Latin.
Manuel Halvelik went further in 1969 with a book on
Arcaicam Esperantom, where he laid out the grammar of a fictitious ancestor of modern Esperanto. It echos Proto-Esperanto in a more complex set of inflections, including
dative and
genitive cases ending in
-d and
-es and separate verbal inflections for person and number, as well as "retention" of
digraphs such as
ph and
tz, writing
c for [k], and the use of the letters
q,
y,
w.
Havelik also created ("Popular Idiom") to play the role of a substandard
register of Esperanto that, among other things, does away with much of Esperanto's inflectional system.
Samples of Ido, Esperant', Arcaicam Esperantom, and Popido
The Esperanto
Pater noster follows, compared to the Ido,
Esperant’ and
Arcaicam Esperantom versions. A phrase in
Popido is listed below.
| | Esperanto |
| Arcaicam Esperantom |
|---|
|
Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo,
sanktigata estu via nomo.
Venu via regno,
fariĝu via volo,
kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero.
Nian panon ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ.
Kaj pardonu al ni niajn ŝuldojn,
kiel ankaŭ ni pardonas al niaj ŝuldantoj.
Kaj ne konduku nin en tenton,
sed liberigu nin de la malbono.
|
|
Patrom noses, cuyu estas en chielom,
Estu sanctigitam Tues nomom.
Venu Tues regnom,
plenumighu Tues volom,
cuyel en chielo, ityel ankez sur terom.
Panon noses cheyutagan donu nosod hodiez.
Cay pardonu nosod nies shuldoyn,
cuyel ankez nos pardonaims shuldantoyd noses.
Cay ne conducu nosoyn en tenton,
sed liberigu nosoyn malbones.
|
| Ido | | Esperant’ |
|
Patro nia, qua esas en la cielo,
tua nomo santigesez;
tua regno advenez;
tua volo facesez
quale en la cielo tale anke sur la tero.
Donez a ni cadie l'omnidiala pano,
e pardonez a ni nia ofensi,
quale anke ni pardonas a nia ofensanti,
e ne duktez ni aden la tento,
ma liberigez ni del malajo.
|
|
Nipatr’, kies est’ ĉielas,
iĝu via nom’ sankt’.
Viu la regnalven’.
Iĝu via la volfar’,
kielas en la ĉiel’, tiel anku surtere.
Hodiu ĉiutagpandon’ nin.
Kaju la pardon’ al niofend’,
kiel ankas nipardon’ al ofendintar’ nia.
Kaju nea nia konduk’ entent’,
sedu nia la liberig’ de l’ malbon’.
|
Sample of » redonu al tu vir si pistol
which in standard Esperanto would be,
» redonu al tiu viro sian pafilon
(give that man back his gun)
Further Information
Get more info on 'Esperantido'.
|
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