erinja:There is no fixed set of languages that must have a word for it to be incorporated using the 15th rule.

The set may not be as rigid as in Interlingua, but there certainly are conventions (if not rules) to bring a word into Esperanto. ketab (libro) is an international word. It is used from Malaysia to Kenya and Centra Asia and North Africa in more than a dozen (including such giants as Arabic, Persian, Hindi/Urdu, Swahili, Indonesian) languages. It is still not a part of Esperanto because rules/convention only permit(s_ those words that are found in European (chiefly Latin, Greek, English, French, German and Russian) languages.

erinja: Just because a word exists, for example, in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, I wouldn't add it.

You may not but that doesn't speak of the community at large and how things work in Esperanto. It is a bitter truth that if Esperanto needs a new word it will almost always look for it in the above mentioned six languages.

A Chinese, Japanese, Hindi/Urdu, Arabic word will almost never make it into Esperanto unless it's already found in some form in one or more of the six languages.

I have a suggestion for an idiom "appeari kiam pilkon-to mean to be bald. I think to that aviso would be a better word for bird

Have a look at the blog of Andreas Kueck. There are scientific studies on internationality (e.g. his PhD), and not every wheel has to be reinvented in lernu.

Breto:"Telephone", I believe, is one of those words we consider to be "international". I'm pretty sure this word is composed entirely of roots from Latin...which would be one single language. (Actually, the P-H at the beginning probably means Greek is involved, but work with me here.)

You need to write those sentences in reverse, Breto The word telephone is a portmanteau combining the Greek tele with French phone (originally fame in Old French).

We don't consider it international on the simple basis that Latin or Greek words are automatically considered as such, but because several other languages (which happened to be the ones that Zamenhof was familiar with) use that particular word.

I suspect we're now at the point that Esperanto covers most of its bases and so a debate about whether to use the word common to the European language families or the one known to some other families is moot - when Esperanto's vocabulary was drawn up Zamenhof and thereafter Waringhien and the others were only really familiar with the European families (plus the odd one-off such as Hebrew), and so the vocabulary is derived from words that are common to the Germanic and Romance families.

I get the impression that there's little need for debate or rules about which language families should share a word for it to be considered international and imported. After all, new phenomena strike me as having a commonly recognisable name internationally (iPod) or can be derived using Esperanto's extant wordstock (MP3-ludilo). If I invented some, um, machine to turn me yellow and blue and called it a, um, timmit and the rest of the world for some reason loved the machine, it'd probably be called a variety of timmit in other languages and would be imported into Esperanto as a timito, on the basis of being an international word.

As far as things like fadeno in the senses of piece of thread and a series of messages on a forum are concerned, I don't really see the problem. Metaphorically, one could see a link, in that the message series is something that runs and needs to be followed. (I believe the French use un fil in this sense too, so it's not just the English-speakers.)

If it were something totally unrelated but somebody took the approach that "it's the same word for both in English so we'll use just one word for both", then I would absolutely agree that this is inappropriate, for instance, if Esperanto ungo were actually najlo on the basis that English uses nail for both things. (Ungo = nail on a finger or toe; najlo = nail for carpentry etc.) But fadeno for a message-board thread is, in my opinion, not one of those cases.

This is not a rule about international words, but in the early days Zamenhof advised that if you couldn't find a word for something in Esperanto, then you should borrow it from French - the international language at that time. A quite logical position.

Since English has now usurped that role, we might, in the spirit of Zamenhof's advice, not be too embarrassed now about importing words from English into Esperanto. Even the French have no compunction about borrowing from English nowadays.

The French for a less energetic dance (more romantic and with bodies touching) in a night club is 'un slow'. Such fun! And for a cry of exultation at some success the French say 'Yes!'

brw1:I have a suggestion for an idiom "appeari kiam pilkon-to mean to be bald.

You might want to learn the basics of the language prior to suggesting amendments. Aperi doesn't mean "appear" in the sense you're thinking of, kiam is entirely the wrong word to use, and there's no reason for an n on pilko.

If you didn't want to use the word kalva for bald then there's a perfectly common term in use using the existing vocabularly: senhara, which we naturally take to refer to the head but should you ever need to specify the whole body could be prefixed with tutkorpe.

I think to that aviso would be a better word for bird

On this, though, I agree! (Except for aviso already having a meaning.) Anything would be better than birdo! Oh, how I cringed when my father-in-law picked up an old picture dictionary and joyously exclaimed "bird-oh nest-oh"

sudanglo:No Chainy, if English and American share the same word that doesn't mean it is international in rule 15 terms, however many words that fall in this category happen to be internationally recognizable, because so many people are learning English (not the Americans however, (smile)).

That's because we don't need English. There are over 300 million of us who speak American and we get along just fine! Breakfast cereal! (we have a breakfast cereal named Cheerios, hehehehe)

Timtim:

Breto:"Telephone", I believe, is one of those words we consider to be "international". I'm pretty sure this word is composed entirely of roots from Latin...which would be one single language. (Actually, the P-H at the beginning probably means Greek is involved, but work with me here.)

You need to write those sentences in reverse, Breto The word telephone is a portmanteau combining the Greek tele with French phone (originally fame in Old French).

Whoops. I suppose that's what I get for making assumptions instead of looking things up first. Thank you for correcting me. I'm pretty sure the point I made afterward remains valid, though.

Timtim:

brw1:I think to that aviso would be a better word for bird

On this, though, I agree! (Except for aviso already having a meaning.) Anything would be better than birdo! Oh, how I cringed when my father-in-law picked up an old picture dictionary and joyously exclaimed "bird-oh nest-oh"

Yeah, birdo messes with me too. Admittedly, all the simple words that are transparently English words with an -o at the end feel weird to me (elfo comes to mind), but birdo sticks out even moreso for me, because it always sounds like "beard-o" to my ears. I have to imagine there are similar oddities for speakers of other languages, though, so I just try to grin bear it...and be more specific when discussing birds. Words like pasero and kolombo don't grate the same way in my ear.

Demian:

erinja:There is no fixed set of languages that must have a word for it to be incorporated using the 15th rule.

The set may not be as rigid as in Interlingua, but there certainly are conventions (if not rules) to bring a word into Esperanto. ketab (libro) is an international word. It is used from Malaysia to Kenya and Centra Asia and North Africa in more than a dozen (including such giants as Arabic, Persian, Hindi/Urdu, Swahili, Indonesian) languages. It is still not a part of Esperanto because rules/convention only permit(s_ those words that are found in European (chiefly Latin, Greek, English, French, German and Russian) languages.

It would obviously be too late to import it now, because "libro" is already in Esperanto. You wouldn't bring in a loanword for something that we already have a word for.

This would also be an instance where we look at what people who don't speak a language are likely to recognize. The English word "book" is obviously not related to the libr/ root, but we as English speakers recognize it because of cognates like "library". If for some reason Esperanto had no word whatsoever for "book", then something like "ketabo" might have a chance at acceptance.

I've heard of a word "haŝioj" for chopsticks. It's a loanword from Japanese. There's no rule that says that loanwords have to come from a European language. "Bonzo" is another word from Japanese, and also "goo".

Bemused:Thanks everyone for your input.
Will go with English, French, and German, and ignore the Americans who pretend to speak English, but actually speak a different language by assigning different meanings to English words.

I often hear that we Americans and the British are one people divided by a common language.