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Has there ever been a break-down of the languages loan words are borrowed from

de FoxtrotUniform, 8 de abril de 2016

Aportes: 24

Idioma: English

FoxtrotUniform (Mostrar perfil) 8 de abril de 2016 00:44:49

It seems to me that the lion's share of Esperanto words are from English. What percentage of words come from English, French, Spanish, Greek, etc. I was reading in my study notes in my Bible, about a translation issue an I noticed the Greek word for AND is KAI. I'm guessing it's pronounced exactly like KAJ

Evildela (Mostrar perfil) 8 de abril de 2016 01:13:12

FoxtrotUniform:It seems to me that the lion's share of Esperanto words are from English. What percentage of words come from English, French, Spanish, Greek, etc. I was reading in my study notes in my Bible, about a translation issue an I noticed the Greek word for AND is KAI. I'm guessing it's pronounced exactly like KAJ
The original vocab of Esperanto is about two-thirds Romance and one-third Germanic. For an indepth look check out this articleEsperanto etymology

erinja (Mostrar perfil) 8 de abril de 2016 04:10:26

There are whole books on this topic! But English is definitely not the biggest source language. You may have gotten that impression based on the word choices from a particular course; sometimes courses choose vocabulary that is more likely to be recognizable to the student, to make it easier to focus on grammar by teaching words that are easy to remember.

This is likely why the first Esperanto course I did taught "limonado" (lemonade) as quite an early word, though this is a word I seldom use in Esperanto, or sentences like "Birdo kaptas insekton".

FoxtrotUniform (Mostrar perfil) 8 de abril de 2016 11:00:56

erinja: You may have gotten that impression based on the word choices from a particular course; sometimes courses choose vocabulary that is more likely to be recognizable to the student, to make it easier to focus on grammar by teaching words that are easy to remember.
Even when there isn't a direct English word to hook the Esperanto word to, there is often an English word kinda related to the Esperanto word.

Helpu min, mi petas.

Helpu -- help
Min. --- me
Petas -- petition

Then there's the vocab I can hook up to Spanish (even though apparently Esperanto didn't borrow from Spanish).

Mi estas aŭtovendisto.

Mi English\Spanish me
Estas Spanish estar
Aŭto- English/Spanish automobil
Vend- Spansis vender. English Vendor
Isto English ist as in journalist etc.

erinja (Mostrar perfil) 8 de abril de 2016 11:36:20

FoxtrotUniform:Even when there isn't a direct English word to hook the Esperanto word to, there is often an English word kinda related to the Esperanto word.
Only because English has a lot of root words from Romance and Germanic vocabulary, if you dig deeply enough into the vocabulary. There were very few drawn directly from English.

For example, "fenestro" clearly comes from a Latin root (fenestra), and Latin also gave its root to some other languages (Fenster, fenêtre). English has a word "defenestrate", but you'd be hard-pressed to say that "fenestro" comes from English. It would be more correct to say that Esperanto got it from Latin via French and German.

Foxtrot Uniform:Then there's the vocab I can hook up to Spanish (even though apparently Esperanto didn't borrow from Spanish).
Didn't borrow at all? That would be a very bold statement. Esperanto even has words from Japanese and Sami, it certainly has words from Spanish.

In most cases, you can't say "It came from this language". Esperanto words are frequently a compromise between forms used in multiple languages, and Spanish certainly would have been taken into account.

Mustelvulpo (Mostrar perfil) 8 de abril de 2016 13:08:10

FoxtrotUniform:Even when there isn't a direct English word to hook the Esperanto word to, there is often an English word kinda related to the Esperanto word.
I believe that this sentence could be given in fill in the blanks form: "Even when there isn't a direct ___________ word to hook the Esperanto word to, there is often a(n) ____________ word kinda related to the Esperanto word."

The speaker of any of the European-based languages could fill in the blanks with the name of his or her own language and the statement would still be valid.

tyroncs (Mostrar perfil) 8 de abril de 2016 14:13:30

nornen (Mostrar perfil) 8 de abril de 2016 18:55:24

Mustelvulpo:
FoxtrotUniform:Even when there isn't a direct English word to hook the Esperanto word to, there is often an English word kinda related to the Esperanto word.
I believe that this sentence could be given in fill in the blanks form: "Even when there isn't a direct ___________ word to hook the Esperanto word to, there is often a(n) ____________ word kinda related to the Esperanto word."

The speaker of any of the European-based languages could fill in the blanks with the name of his or her own language and the statement would still be valid.
This might be true for most indo-european languages, however English still has one advantage: Starting as a germanic language, since the time of Middle English the language has adopted massively romance vocbulary. So today there are both many germanic and many romance words in English, which isn't necessarily true for other germanic language. So while a Spanish speaker can easily learn the romance roots in Esperanto, and a German speaker can easily learn the germanic roots in Esperanto, an English speak can quite often learn with ease both germanic and romance roots.
Take for instance an English speaker, a German speaker (almost purely germanic) and a Spanish speaker (almost purely romance):

forgesi (germanic):
english: forget (win)
german: vergessen (win)
spanish: olvidar (fail)

trinki (germanic):
english: drink (win)
german: trinken (win)
spanish: beber (fail)

memoro (romance):
english: memory (win)
german: Gedächtnis (fail)
spanish: memoria (win)

avaro (romance):
english: avarice (win)
german: Habgier (fail)
spanish: avaricia (win)

Those four example are without doubt a biased sample, but I suspect that if we did the same analysis with the Universala Vortaro[1] the outcome would still be in favour of English.

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[1] English knows both "universal" and "word".

nornen (Mostrar perfil) 8 de abril de 2016 19:10:05

Here are the actual numbers according to this site Roch kindly linked:

[('Fre.', 2369), ('Eng.', 2135), ('Ita.', 2005), ('Ger.', 1610), ('Lat.', 1369), ('Rus.', 1276), ('Lit.', 1236), ('Pol.', 845), ('Yid.', 285), ('Gre.', 13), ('Spa.', 6), ('Dut.', 3), ('Fra.', 1)]

However the source is quite inaccurate. For example "viruso = Lit. virusas, Lat. virus", omitting Eng. virus, Ger. Virus, etc, etc. That only 6 words have Spanish cognates is hard to believe.

EDIT: Ignore the numbers I posted. The source is just a haphazard list which omits very, very many cognates.

RiotNrrd (Mostrar perfil) 8 de abril de 2016 20:43:49

I have nothing other than intuition to back me up, but I've always had the feeling that English was a little luckier than others when it came to Esperanto, for exactly the reasons nornen gives.

Personally, I blame the Normans.

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