Esperanto Etymology

Esperanto Etymology

Esperanto vocabulary and grammatical forms derive primarily from the Romance languages, with lesser contributions from Germanic. The language occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" constructed languages such as Interlingua, which borrow words en masse from their source languages with little internal derivation, and a priori conlangs such as Solresol, in which the words have no historical connection to other languages. In Esperanto, root words are borrowed and retain much of the form of their source language, whether the phonetic form (eks- from international ex-, vualo from French voile) or orthographic form (teamo and boato from English team and boat, soifo from French soif). However, each root can then form dozens of derivations which may bear little resemblance to equivalent words in the source languages, such as registaro (government), which is derived from the Latinate root reg (to rule) but has a morphology closer to German or Russian.