Geo, I have no idea whether 'astronomio' is a difficult word for a Chinese speaker, as I have no idea whether 'stelo' is a difficult word or for that matter 'scienco'.

However I am very clear on the point that astronomio has an established usage in Esperanto, so that stelscienco naturally suggests a subfako of astronomio concerned just with the physics of those objects and not with, for example, cosmological questions. If hear 'stelscienco' I immediately imagine that the speaker is trying to express a different idea, or has a reason for avoiding 'astronomio'.

Anyway, Esperanto is a European language and its growth over the last 100 years has been nurtured in a European environment. To start changing it now to make it easier for the Chinese or the Japanese would require a drastic revision of the language and undermine all the progress that has been so laboriously and painstakingly made.

Esperanto may have started out with a view to it becoming the new lingua franca, but realistically its role today has to be different.

However, to be an effective komunikilo, as the Esperantists have well understood during the whole of its history, you can't hogtie it with a pathetically limited root stock. Compare a dictionary from the 1920's with one today to see what has happened.

Esperanto whatever the size of its root stock will, because of it structure and the tradition of avoidance of idiom, always be easier to learn than national languages which are cluttered with historical debris.

Adding some roots for a more nuanced expression won't change that.

Even Claude Piron, who was a great supporter of the idea that you can express everything with, say, 500 basic roots, said that it would be necessary to introduce new words to make Esperanto e.g. a working language for the U.N. or the European Union. The same has been done with Chinese. This may mean the introduction of new roots or the definition of a special meaning for composed words in certain contexts.

The great thing about Esperanto is that you can use it much more synthetically than any national language. If you don't know astronomio, you might find an expression like stelsciencisto by yourself and be understood.

Esperanto provides both a way to express many things with a limited number of roots and special vocabulary for precise scientific expression. And this is not a problem: We know that even in our mother language we sometimes feel like hearing "Latin" when two "fakuloj" speak about their topic. Computer scientists would say that Esperanto in this regard is "well scalable".

S-ro Pohli is quite right. And it isn't just in the field of more precise scientific expression, that Esperanto may need to add to its root stock.

If, one day, Esperanto ever came close to fulfilling its original purpose, then many TV programme imports would need to be dubbed or subtitled in Esperanto.

So finding terms to translate Star Trek is not such an esoteric thing. And, by the way, 'frontiero' in the sense of the division between known and unknown territory, or the edge of the civilised world, would be readily understood in context by many Europeans - speakers of English and romance languages.

At the time when Esperanto started out, it was naturally to give extra weight to borrowings from Latin and French. Given the international position of English today, a borrowing from English, the de facto lingua franca, would not seem to break with tradition.

Does S-ro Geo, I wonder, think that everything of exceptional size in Esperanto should be granda and that there is no place for kolosa or enorma, or even astronomia.

How much more expressive it is to speak of the astronomiaj ŝuldoj/pruntoj of certain banks than stelsciencaj.

sudanglo:Does S-ro Geo, I wonder, think that everything of exceptional size in Esperanto should be granda and that there is no place for kolosa or enorma, or even astronomia.

How much more expressive it is to speak of the astronomiaj ŝuldoj/pruntoj of certain banks than stelsciencaj.

S-ro Sudanglo. What I think is my own business and you have no means to know anything about it. I have never said what you suggest. I only noted that introducing ADDITIONAL words, where existing ones are good enough, is no good for language and makes it only difficult for a learner. If you like, you can use frontiero, but it not offical. If you'll find followers and the word will settle in - ok, we'll have new Esperanto root. But until then any discussion is pointless.

sudanglo:How much more expressive it is to speak of the astronomiaj ŝuldoj/pruntoj of certain banks than stelsciencaj

Here you are using "astronomia" figuratively, can't you see that? Originally ASTRONOMIA (gr. ἀστρονομία) meant the science of stars. How can it be connected with banks if not by a metaphor?

Unfortunately for lovers of the word "astronomio", I'm sorry, it's freaking useless. It's not like it's even one of those "mal" words like "malbona" and "maldekstra" where an additional seperate word may be more easily comprehended in noisy environments. English and French I know have a habit of importing words for the stupidest of reasons, mostly because word-creation in these languages is pretty poor (I blame French for giving that habit to English ), but Esperanto doesn't really need that. "Astronomio" is a useless neologism.

Once again, there is no extra shade in meaning that astronomio has that stelscienco astroscienco hasn't. It's like freedom/liberty in English, they mean the exact thing, they just look different. I'm not saying that we should now go burn all books with that word, but it's not a beneficial word, and would only bring confusion to learners.

*I believe that "astro" is actually in Esperanto meaning "heavenly body (stars, planets, galaxies, spacerock, etc)", thus "astroscienco" would be a better translation of astronomy. Stelscienco is too specific after all.

Sudanglo:Geo, I have no idea whether 'astronomio' is a difficult word for a Chinese speaker, as I have no idea whether 'stelo' is a difficult word or for that matter 'scienco'.

Lets say in your early days of learning a language you learnt that "star" was "jong" and "science" was "flagga". Then, much later in your days of learning that language you come across two words in two seperate texts, "jongflagga" and "skoddelyatch". You've never seen anything like the second word, and there aren't any basic radicals in this language that correspond to "skoddel" or "yatch". Which one would you immediately recognise as "astronomy" then?

"astronomio" would have the same effect on anyone who speaks a language with no relation to the European Sprachbund, if they didn't know the non-EO root "nomio". Luckily, here they can guess what "astro" means. But say we brought in "gastronomio", then we have a bit of a problem. Gastronomio? Gastropod? nomio? (that said, gastronomio is somewhat dispatched to its etymological roots, and an EO translation may prove to long or cumbersome - I know nothing about gastronomy though unlike astronomy so please forgive me if I got that wrong).

Don't misunderstand my position. I think EO needs some new words for some concepts, ESPECIALLY those blasted unbalanced mal-pairs. But do we really need all these new words? Or is this the same as reĝlando, where we are simply perceiving EO as looking silly by having words and conventions that English looks down on? If that's the worry then that's what the more naturalistic Ido is for, not the more trade-argotty-pidginy Esperanto with its arbitrary derivations from various european languages.

Sorry to correct you Ceiger, but 'astronomio' far from being a neologism was registered in the Unua Aldono al La Universal Vortaro in 1909. And it rightfully takes it place in Esperanto under rule 15.

there is no extra shade in meaning that astronomio has that stelscienco astroscienco hasn't.

. Again, not right. Look in NPIV under astronomio and you will find one of the meanings of astronomia to be very large. As far as I am aware astroscienca doesn't and probably couldn't carry this meaning.

sudanglo:Sorry to correct you Ceiger, but 'astronomio' far from being a neologism was registered in the Unua Aldono al La Universal Vortaro in 1909. And it rightfully takes it place in Esperanto under rule 15.

there is no extra shade in meaning that astronomio has that stelscienco astroscienco hasn't.

. Again, not right. Look in NPIV under astronomio and you will find one of the meanings of astronomia to be very large. As far as I am aware astroscienca doesn't and probably couldn't carry this meaning.

The fact remains that astronomio is not really necessary in Esperanto, and I still regard it as a neologismo by the nature of its derivation, even if it's the oldest word in Esperanto. It's clearly taken from greek when it's not needed.

I don't know what these additional meanings of "astronomia", but if they're what I think they are (astronomical in terms of size), then I would regard them as "evitindaj" , since "astronomia" to non-Europeans would mean, literally, "related to the science of astral bodies". There is no visible evidence to a non-European whether such metaphorical usage refers to size, radiation levels, heat, intensity or power.

Even IF one can get away with using "astronomia" metaphorically, how come that's not possible with "astroscienca", hey? Even if the PIV or Zamenhoff said that "astronomia" can mean X Y or Z in addition to its core meaning, that's just a description of possible uses seen in regards to "astronomi-". It's not a rule saying that "astronomi-" can only have those meanings.

Given the etymology of "astronomio" and its meaning, this preference for it above "astroscienco" appears as if it is purely arbitrary. "Astrology" though, may be harder to translate into Esperanto, since it is unique and doesn't belong entirely to science nor the occult, and astropseudoscience gives the wrong connotation, and thus more worthy of its own word.

Also, how can I to look up stuff in the nova plena ilustrita vortaro? Is there a web interface for it? I can't find one, so unfortunately I still can't argue anything properly about its definitions of "astronomi-" since I haven't a physical copy

sudanglo:Sorry to correct you Ceiger, but 'astronomio' far from being a neologism was registered in the Unua Aldono al La Universal Vortaro in 1909. And it rightfully takes it place in Esperanto under rule 15.

there is no extra shade in meaning that astronomio has that stelscienco astroscienco hasn't.

. Again, not right. Look in NPIV under astronomio and you will find one of the meanings of astronomia to be very large. As far as I am aware astroscienca doesn't and probably couldn't carry this meaning.

Again let's suppose I am Chinese. I see the sentence:

astronomiaj sxuldoj

and I figure out this is something like big, huge, colossal. OK. I acquired a new word. Then I see:

astronomio estas interesa.

What could I think? Hugeness is interesting?

Then I see:

li estas astronomo

Again, is he a giant?

By introducing "astronomia" to Esperanto with its other meanings we lose logical power of the language. Esperanto is damaged a bit. The word was not necessary. It is illogical to "astronomio". It adds to learning burden due to its irregularity. It makes Esperanto look like a natural language, like English, where words do not follow logic, where there are thousands of small exceptions which must be learnt one by one. If I can not trust my mind, then what do I need Esperanto for?

Ceiger, maybe your wish will be granted. You might like to read in this link about a project to put PIV on the net.

Peronally, I find it a bit odd that you and Geo are so concerned with imagined difficulties that might be experienced by non-European leaners when there appears to very little liklihood in the immediate future that the European institutions will take Esperanto seriously.

If Esperanto can't succeed in Europe then you can forget about its global role. Actually, the whole idea of arguing for an acceptance of Esperanto as an interlingvo seems to me to be a dead end.

The only way forward that I can see to create a really useful number of speakers is to argue for Esperanto to be taught in the schools for its educational value.

When there are truly millions of speakers, it might be profitable to return to its original raison d'être.

In the meantime it remains a fascinating and unique experiment in the world's linguistic development as the only artificial language that can be taken seriously as being able to come close to the functionality of the national languages. A functionality which must include the figurative extension of meaning.

I would be curious to know of a European language that does not have a form cognate with astronomio and in which the word has not been metaphorically extended in its adjectival realisation.

sudanglo:
Peronally, I find it a bit odd that you and Geo are so concerned with imagined difficulties that might be experienced by non-European leaners when there appears to very little liklihood in the immediate future that the European institutions will take Esperanto seriously.

"Astronomio" was just a simple example of what happens if we introduce foreign words with double meaning into Esperanto. One such a word is not a problem. But think, what is going to happen if this process continues over a century - you'll get a totally different language. The simplicity will be lost. Esperanto will become illogical like any other natural language - then why should it be needed? I love the logic of the language. I know some other languages too, German, Spanish, Russian, Italian. But none of them is even close to Esperanto. You say that English has over 1000000 word. And I say - what for? Who is going to learn even a tiny bit of this huge amount of words? How many words has Esperanto? Only about 15000 roots (if we count the unofficial roots as well). But due to the expressive power of the language we can create almost infinite number of words - something that English (or any other natural language) is not capable of. Of course, there are compound words in English, but they are not regular. English prefer a new word where a compound would be more logical. The same process has been found in Esperanto and it spoiled the language. It has made it illogical where it should be logical - as with "astronomio".