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Esperanto Root Origins

av BoriQa, 24 oktober 2013

Meddelanden: 15

Språk: English

BoriQa (Visa profilen) 24 oktober 2013 11:43:48

Sometimes I wonder of the origins of some Esperanto roots. I don't want to question the roots, I just like from pure curiosity to understand why some of the Esperanto roots are the way are.

For instance: akvo (water)

Akvo is so unlike the word "water" in the original languages Zamenhof mainly borrowed roots from:

French: eau
German: Wasser
Polish: woda
Russian and Hebrew: (don't know the Latinized equivalent words)

and sometimes,
Latin: aqua

In this case it's Latin that is the prototype root for "akvo".

Q replaced by K, V replaces the U, and the O standard ending is used: akvo!

I do wonder why Zamenhof didn't use Ŭ for the U, and use akŭo for water instead.

But it seems Zahemhof had a preference to replace the W sound for the U in "aqua", with a V, as in Vaŝingtono (Washington).

Fenris_kcf (Visa profilen) 24 oktober 2013 11:58:20

French isn't the only Romanic source-language for Esperanto-roots. Many are taken from Italian or directly from Latin, as in the case "akvo".

Regarding "kv" vs "kŭ": It seems Zamenhof just wanted to use ŭ only for diphtongs. Why so? Dunno.

michaleo (Visa profilen) 24 oktober 2013 17:22:03

BoriQa:In this case it's Latin that is the prototype root for "akvo".

Q replaced by K, V replaces the U, and the O standard ending is used: akvo!

I do wonder why Zamenhof didn't use Ŭ for the U, and use akŭo for water instead.

But it seems Zahemhof had a preference to replace the W sound for the U in "aqua", with a V, as in Vaŝingtono (Washington).
Actually, there are many variants of Latin pronunciation. It seems that he changed spelling of words so that it suited his way of pronunciation which was probably traditional Polish pronunciation of Latin. Polish name of the city is Waszyngton (pronounced almost like /Vaŝington/) but in Polish words the phoneme /ŭ/ can be used more freely.

Nile (Visa profilen) 24 oktober 2013 21:30:03

The ŭo can make a w sound or a non-syllabic u sound.
Zamenhof avoided using the "w" sound in syllable onsets, preferring to replace them with vees, maybe to make German and Russian speakers more comfortable.

robbkvasnak (Visa profilen) 24 oktober 2013 21:52:39

There are several dictionaries of Esperanto etymology - I wish that I had one - maybe there is one online. (Etymology is the study of words' origins).

Ondo (Visa profilen) 25 oktober 2013 05:19:18

robbkvasnak:There are several dictionaries of Esperanto etymology - I wish that I had one - maybe there is one online.
I don't know of any good online sources.

Have a look at the page with "akvo" in Vilborg's Etimologia vortaro de Esperanto. You can see there are reasons for having the word in the form "akvo" in Esperanto.

Fenris_kcf (Visa profilen) 25 oktober 2013 08:58:28

Ondo:
robbkvasnak:There are several dictionaries of Esperanto etymology - I wish that I had one - maybe there is one online.
I don't know of any good online sources.
One can use EoBot's ".etim"-command in the IRC-Channel ##esperanto on Freenode. Dunno where it takes its information about the words etymologies.

EDIT: On ".etim akvo" it responds "akvo = Ita. acqua, Lat. aqua"

fajrkapo (Visa profilen) 25 oktober 2013 09:23:02

Speaking about akvo I´d like to know what means, or why they put aqua in lots of product, when you look at their ingredients: aqua, ktp, instead of water. (I saw that at least in Spain in the english part of ingredients in many products, mainly creams and similar).

tommjames (Visa profilen) 25 oktober 2013 10:00:44

fenris_kcf:Dunno where it takes its information about the words etymologies.
It uses the Esperanta Vortaro de Etimologio, by Andras Rajki. You can download the file here.

erinja (Visa profilen) 25 oktober 2013 13:48:50

fajrkapo:Speaking about akvo I´d like to know what means, or why they put aqua in lots of product, when you look at their ingredients: aqua, ktp, instead of water. (I saw that at least in Spain in the english part of ingredients in many products, mainly creams and similar).
I think that they do that so they can keep the same list of ingredients for multiple languages of the bottle. I also see it on shampoos here, even if the bottle is labeled in French and English, there is only one ingredient list.

...or else they're just trying to make it sound fancy, so the user doesn't say "What, I'm paying $15 for this thing that is mostly water???"

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