The CEED is in some senses the best book of its kind, but it's important to be careful with it.

It's true that Benson does make up his own words and put them in. These words are mostly marked as such, so they are easy to avoid. The MIT club used to refer to those words as "bensonaĵoj". This is not necessarily a bad thing, because some of these words are technical terms that provide necessary differentiation between two similar words.

One example: I think the CEED has the word "pesaĥo" in it, as a word for Passover. The traditional Esperanto word for Passover is "juda pasko"; the Esperanto word for Easter is "pasko". You can see why a person would want to differentiate clearly between Easter and Passover. Also, since "pasko" is derived from the hebrew word "pesaĥ", it seems weird to say "juda pasko" for Passover and "pasko" for Easter, when really it should be "pasko" for Passover and "kristana pasko" for Easter. You can avoid this trouble entirely by leaving "pasko" to the Christians and going with "pesaĥo" for the Jewish holiday. It makes sense because pesaĥo is based on the Hebrew name of the holiday (פסח - pronounced Pesaĥ), and many Jews call Passover "Pesaĥ" anyway, even in their native language.

My main problem with the CEED is that it teaches some words that are not necessarily commonly used, without giving some sort of indicator that these words are seldom used. A beginner doesn't have the experience with the language to help distinguish between words that everyone is likely to understand, and words that only other readers of the CEED are likely to understand.

So by all means, use the CEED. But if you notice that if the CEED teaches you one word, and everyone you talk to seems to use another, maybe you'd better switch words.

I'm in agreement with Erinja. I use the CEED a lot, and generally I am pretty happy with it. However, I have found at least one error in it (it listed a verb as intransitive that every other source I have lists as transitive - unfortunately, I don't remember specifically which word that is, now).

He does coin some of his own words, but, as Erinja notes, they are marked as such. I don't trust it 100% (due to finding the error noted above), but since I've been studying Esperanto for over three years now, I am familiar enough with the common words to have a feeling as to when to use his suggestions and when to look elsewhere for a more commonly accepted word. Generally I'm just looking up a word that I've forgotten, rather than a new word, and in that regard it is very helpful.

jawq81:You can "kill" someone in battle. That isn't "murder".
You can "kill" someone in self-defense, or to save the life of someone else. Again, that isn't considered "murder". Murder is a capital offense and if found guilty, you can spend the rest of your life in prison.

I don't like murdi, because although I like the distinction between 'murder' and 'killing', 'murdi' is non-Fundamental. Although there is some virtue in certain non-Fundamental words, it's so much easier to get the difference in connotation by making a compound word that changes the connotation, rather than importing a whole new root. Fimortigi, seems to me to match up with murder. For murder as a crime, you could say 'neleĝe mortigi' or 'krime mortigi', one doesn't always need a one-to-one word conversion between languages.

edit: Apparently, 'murdi' is part of the Akademia Vortaro, as of 4oa...

I understand what you are saying although you might like "murdo" better if you were writing a murder mystery.

Anyway, the following uses of "mortigi" would alter the circumstances from a simple killing to a murder, whether it was accidental or deliberate.

La krimulo rabis la domon kaj mortigis la virinon kaj ŝia filon. = The criminal robbed the house and killed the woman and her son.

La ŝtelisto akcidente mortigis la proprietulon de la domo kiam li rompis la fenestron kaj kontraŭleĝe eniris la domon. = The thief accidently killed the owner of the house when he broke the window and illegally entered the house.

Whoops! That should have been "la virinon kaj sian filon", ĉu ne?

Hmm, I like fimortigo as an alternative for murdo.

If the thief killed "la virinon kaj sian filon", that means that the thief killed the woman and his own son (the thief's son).

If the thief killed "la virinon kaj sxian filon", then the thief killed the woman and the woman's son.

"Si" always refers back to the subject of the sentence; the subject is the thief in this case, since the thief is doing the breaking and entering and killing.

Do you know, erinja, this isn't a very difficult grammatical concept to grasp, but I sure do make a hard job of it. Just when I think I've got it, I prove publically that I haven't got it. I'll surprise you some day and get it right.

Thanks anyway.

What's with your morbid interests, that two of the topics on top are 'morti' and 'mortigo'?

Dunno, Rogir. I have to take responsibility for the "mortigo" topic since I thought the Lernu! vortaro gave the wrong definition, but I had nothing to do with the "morti" thread.