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A question of morphology

door OssAhmad, 11 januari 2022

Berichten: 3

Taal: English

OssAhmad (Profiel tonen) 11 januari 2022 09:49:53

Hello, I'm very puzzled by how the suffix -phile is translated to Esperanto. I've looked for words that end in -phile but dictionary shows no result, and also I can't find any words that end with -phile in Esperanto.
so can someone please translate this words to Esperanto for me, and maybe explain the morphology as well?
pedophile
necrophile
hydrophile
lypophile
pluviophile
and so forth...

sudanglo (Profiel tonen) 11 januari 2022 15:30:13

There is a general rule in Esperanto that international words (ie words that have a similar form in most European languages) can just be adopted to Esperanto (with appropriate spelling changes)

So necrophilia would become nekrofilio, paedphilia would become pedofilio.

However I would hesitate to use the suffix -filo for the person, (filo means son) and I think most Esperantists would want to construct a word with -ulo or -emulo.(person or person having a certain tendency) They might even want to avoid any derivation from the international forms and create a totally Esperanto compound word.

But kadavro-sekskuniĝemulo, for necrophiliac is a bit of a mouthful and they might prefer nekrofiliulo.

However with other words that end in phile the solution might be simpler, So for example pluviophile might become pluvo-amanto. Pluvo is the Esperanto word for rain and amanto used as a suffix is someone who likes something. Bibliophile, to take another example, could be come libro-amanto.

Metsis (Profiel tonen) 12 januari 2022 08:36:07

The rule Sudanglo refers to is the 15th rule of Esperanto which says

❞The so-called „foreign” words, i. e. words which the greater number of languages have derived from the same source, undergo no change in the international language, beyond conforming to its system of orthography. ― Such is the rule with regard to primary words, derivatives are better formed (from the primary word) according to the rules of the international grammar, e. g. teatr'o, „theatre”, but teatr'a, „theatrical”, (not teatrical'a), etc.❞

This has been criticised in the recent years because what Zamenhof meant with "the same source" was Latin and Classical Greek and "the greater number of languages" was understood to be limited to the European branch of the Indoeuropean languages. This leaves out such languages as for instance Chineses*, Arabics*, Malay and Swahili, with speakers who make more than half of the people on this planet, and none of them is European-IE.

So there is a trend among Esperantists to derive new words from the existing ones using the affix system and if new words are really needed these should be from somewhere else than from that European-IE group. This essentially renders the 15th rule inactive or at least "the same source" gets reinterpreted. Read more in Libera folio's article Ĉu la 15-a regulo forvelkas?

Coming back to the original question. The Greek originating word pedophilia is a compound word where philia or φιλία means love, so a practitioner of such activity is amanto. Why not then
 
  • pedophile : infanamanto
  • necrophile : kadavroamanto
*: Yes, both are essentially language families with multiple languages.

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