logixoul:
studento  studanto

Not equivalent. This is why "studento" was introduced by Zamenhof himself. Erinja pointed out that "studento" is reserved for university students, but in any case, "studanto" means who who is, at this time, studying. One wants to be able to say "Kelkaj studentoj ne estis studentaj." However, just as we have a difference between "laborantoj" and "laboristoj", one could replace "studentoj" with "studistoj."

vestoj  korpingoj *

To me, "korpingo" suggests a coffin.

neologismo arhxaikindo

I'd suggest "vortnovaĵo".

komenco  eko

Yes, I already see this and use it myself fairly often.

fino  maleko

That works.

individuo  ulo

Not equivalent. An "individuo" can be an individual anything, not just a person. "Ulo" is always a person. Maybe "unaĵo" would work better.

vera  reala *

"Vera" is a property of sentences and statements. "Reala" might be applied to sentences and statements, but means something else. I might say "'The moon is made of green cheese' is a real English sentence," but I'd never say it's a true one.

preni  maldoni

No good. "Maldoni" could mean "take," "receive", or even "steal."

parto  ero *

No, because "ero" actually means a unit or element of something, not just a part. It suggests a part that is, in some sense, already identifiable or detachable. Suppose my dog eats part of the birthday cake and leaves part of it on the table. It wouldn't be correct to say that he left "kukeron", which would imply an actual slice or block of cake that has been cut, rather than whatever fragment the dog left behind.

legi  malskribi

"Malskribi" could as easily mean "erase."

lasta  malunua

No. You could replace "fina" with "malunua" but "lasta" means "most recent." For example, when speaking of a future event, I can talk about what my "finaj vortoj" might be, but not my "lastaj vortoj," which would mean my most recent words at the time of utterance.

trista  malgxoja

Yes, "trista" is a neologism that is used mainly by belletrists anyway.

ambigua  plursenca

Or "plursignifa".

aktoro  aktoristo

How about "rolisto"?

signifo  senco

I'd keep "signifo" and the very "signifi".

distingo  malsameco

"Distingo" is the upshot of the verb "distingi". We want to be able to say "Don't make a distinction without a difference."

diferenco  malsameco

Why not just "malsamo"?

redaktoro  redaktisto

Definitely. And while you're at it, replace "redakcio" with "redaktistaro".

intervjuo  interparolo

Hmmmm...."interparolo" is very general, and if it replaces anything it would be "konversacio."

Interesting list, though.

T0dd:

diferenco malsameco

Why not just "malsamo"?

Well, I suppose it is a semantic point, but two things which are considered to be "sama" are the same. There is no particular quality ("eco") that makes them the same. They just are the same.

However, when one wants to point out that two things are similar but different, then there must be something that makes them different. Thus the -ec- suffix.

So malsamo doesn't quite equate to difference. Malsamo should mean something more like "an opposite" I suppose. But it appears that mala aleady means that anyway.

Nick

(Of course this gets into more philosophic territory. Two golf balls are normally considered to be the same. But they are two different objects. They do not and cannot occupy the same space at the same time. So even they are not really the same, a true identity. Never the less, 'same' works as a concept for every day life)

nw2394:

T0dd:

diferenco malsameco

Why not just "malsamo"?

Well, I suppose it is a semantic point, but two things which are considered to be "sama" are the same. There is no particular quality ("eco") that makes them the same. They just are the same.

However, when one wants to point out that two things are similar but different, then there must be something that makes them different. Thus the -ec- suffix.

This actually flags another possible vocabulary reduction. "sama" and "identa". There are, of course, two distinct senses of "same" (or "identical"). There is so-called "numerical" sameness or identity, as in "Clark Kent and Superman are the same person," and there's so-called "qualitative" sameness, which simply means exactly similar.

You can't talk about two things being numerically the same, because that contradicts there being *two* things. In any case, the word "sama" works for both kinds of sameness. If you say "A samas al B," then you either mean that A and B are two names for one and the same thing, or that A and B are two things that are exactly alike.

I don't think the use or the -ec- ending has anything to do with which meaning is intended.

The Esperanto idea of "neceso kaj suficxo" is to use only as many affixes as are necessary and sufficient to get the meaning across. When you have a word whose root is adjectival, such as "blua", and you want to use it as a noun, you probably need to use "blueco" if you're talking about blueness, whereas if you're saying that this blue is brighter than that blue, you'd just use "bluo".

So, the way I read it, "malsamo" means simply "a difference," whereas "malsameco" means "differentness" in general.

Would it have worked without having "sama" at all? As in maybe

malo = an opposite
mali = to oppose
mala = opposite
male = oppositely, in an opposing manner

malmala = same

maleco = a difference
malmaleco = a similarity

Maybe... It is too late an night here.

I don't think I want to invent a whole new competitor to Esperanto even if this was some kind of better way of doing it.

Interesting discussion. I figured maybe Mondlango might have been better (before I took up either it or Esperanto). Then I looked for who is actually using it and I figured Esperanto was being far more widely used - so I went with the majority.

Some of these other, various alternatives to Esperanto may, in some cases, have been better. But they don't appear to be better enough to make many want to take them up.

Nick

nw2394:Some of these other, various alternatives to Esperanto may, in some cases, have been better. But they don't appear to be better enough to make many want to take them up.

Some of the others do indeed have some features that I do like. But the biggest problem with planned languages - and somehow Zamenhof seemed to know this, even though there was little experience at that time with such constructions - is knowing when to stop planning. Knowing when to stop tinkering. Knowing when to quit coming up with yet another new idea for "improvement" and then changing the language once again. Putting out the Fundamento and then saying "You all own the language equally, but THIS you cannot change" was brilliant on his part, and is probably the one decision he made that kept Esperanto alive when its competitor languages were failing.

Ido, loglan, and a whole pile o' others. The biggest problem with learning them back in the day was that you were forced to stand on constantly shifting ground. Why bother learning something when at any time what you've just committed to memory might be thrown out because of another "improvement". From what I've read, the tinkering was unceasing with these languages. Learning languages is hard enough without having the grammar suddenly up and change on you without warning. Who wants to learn something like that? Well... I think we know the answer: very few.

Esperanto may have its faults, but one of its star features is that THE RULES DON'T CHANGE. New words might come and go, but the rules for stringing them together are rock-solid. So, even Esperanto's faults are guaranteed to remain consistent (or, at least, remain consistently THERE), which lets you just memorize any idiosyncrasies and be done with it.

On the whole, not a bad way to run a language.

Each Esperantist has the personal choice whether to use certain roots that may be seen as superfluous. It's the speaker base as a whole that "decides" which words thrive and which ones fade away. Anyone who prefers not to use "komenci" can use "eki" and will be understood. Likewise, it's the whole Esperantistaro that decides whether a word shall change meaning. The word "ŝati," which was in the Fundamento, is now universally used to mean "like," even that that's not what it originally meant. And the eventual adoption of "komputilo" for "computer" required a change in the definition of "komputi".

Personally, I am inclined to minimize the number of roots I use, in order to keep the language as streamlined as possible for non-Western learners. But I don't make a fetish of it. I've used the word "neologismo," for example, but after thinking of "vortnovaĵo" earlier in this thread, I think that's what I'll use from now on.

Todd

trojo:
Well, it would be nice if you could tell if something is a neologism based on the vortaro. Unfortunately, the vortaro not only includes many unofficial and obviously completely pointless neologisms (e.g. "uesto") alongside the official word that means exactly the same thing (without even indicating which of these words should be used) it also excludes several Fundamento roots altogether (e.g. abituriento, burlesko) in both the Angla and Pilger versions.

Perhaps more Lernu-users would take the Fundamento more seriously if Lernu itself took it a bit more seriously.

I resent this somewhat. The lernu! team has worked very, very hard on this website, and most of the work was on a volunteer basis. They did not create the dictionaries from scratch - they got dictionaries from elsewhere. If you have a problem with a definition you find in the dictionary - the lernu! team freely admits there are problems - I suggest you write to the team through the comments link found on every single page. I can assure you that these comments are taken very seriously, and we usually respond one way or the other - usually through correcting the error someone is commenting on - within a day or two. It is massively unfair to suggest that lernu! doesn't take the Fundamento seriously. Just because the dictionary contains some questionable words and poor definitions doesn't mean that the site doesn't care about the Fundamento. It means that they don't have the many full-time employees that would be required to write a dictionary from scratch, or the intellectual property rights to type in one of the better paper dictionaries (not to mention the manpower to do this).

And I would suggest that if we included in the dictionary only words from the Fundamento, you'd be rather unhappy with the contents - these words are only a percentage of modern Esperanto usage, and the goal of the site is to help students learn modern, grammatically correct Esperanto - which includes many words that Zamenhof never dreamed of, whether they are words that were later made official, or words for things that didn't exist in Zamenhof's time, or whatever.

I find the Lernu vortaro perfectly sufficient for most ordinary needs. I do admit that it has steered me wrong on a few occasions, but really that isn't that big of a deal. Everything could always use some improvement. I imagine that over time it will get better and better.

I'm just glad that Lernu is here at all, and my thanks go out to everyone who has worked so hard to make this a wonderful learning environment.

erinja:I resent this somewhat....

Oh, Erinja, most of us love you and the team really. Pretty kiss kiss. Please don't be mad at us.

erinja:I resent this somewhat. The lernu! team has worked very, very hard on this website, and most of the work was on a volunteer basis. They did not create the dictionaries from scratch - they got dictionaries from elsewhere. If you have a problem with a definition you find in the dictionary - the lernu! team freely admits there are problems - I suggest you write to the team through the comments link found on every single page. I can assure you that these comments are taken very seriously, and we usually respond one way or the other - usually through correcting the error someone is commenting on - within a day or two.

Very true. There are currently 15694 words in the database for the English dictionary. As if that wasn't enough to handle, that is only one-third of the words we wish to have translations for in the fullness of time.

Just to clarify a little point: uesto and eosto are not pointless neologisms, but specialised geographical/directional terms introduced because oriento and okcidento share the same initial letter; in abbreviations, it's good practice to use E for oriento and U for okcidento (on a compass etc). They are, of course, never used in everyday speech. Note too that eosto/uesto refer solely to directions, whereas oriento/okcidento can also be used to refer to locations or regions.