ESPERANTO.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18615, 17 November 1928, Page 28 (Supplement)

ESPERANTO.

ITS GRAMMAR. (Written for the “Star” by the Honorary Secretary of the Christchurch Esperanto Society.) As T settle down to write these notes, I receive the following request on a picture postcard from the tiny town of Millerovo in the Russian Caucasus. “All estas Rusa Esperantisto” (“I am a Russian Esperantist”) “kaj deziras kun vi korespondadi” (“and wish to correspond with you”) “lau temoj kiuj interesas vin” (“on themes that interest you”). “Ali deziras ankau korespondi per illustritaj pos’tkartoj.” (“I wish to correspond also by means of illustrated postcards”). Here is a chance for some of the readers of this "column to put Esperanto to a practical test. Let them get the Edinburgh Esperanto “Pocket Dictionary,” price one shilling, and then, with the aid of what has already been written down in this column during the last few weeks, write to this Russian sending him a picture postcard of Christchurch. I prophesy that the Russian will have no difficulty in making out what “Star” readers wish to convey to him, and that they will find a fresh interest in life. Last week we left over some twentythree Esperanto suffixes. We had better take a few of them straight off, otherwise a mental dyspepsia may result from too great a dose of them taken all at once. More Suffixes. The word “mos'to” (already used) (is grouped wuth the suffixes. It is a polite form of address. Thus in addressing Duke (“Duko”) Mussolini, one would say, “via duka mos’to,” or in addressing an editor (“redaktoro”), “via redaktora mos’to.” The suffix “et” is the opposite of the suffix “eg,” and denotes diminution of degree. Thus “granda” is “great”, “grandega” is “huge”, while “malgranda” is “small”, and “malgrandeta” is “tiny”. The three suffixes “ej”, “ing” and “uj” are similar, but different; the first denotes “place where”, the second, “that which holds one object,” while the third means “that which holds or bears more objects than one”. Sounds complicated? But look. “Cigaredo” is “cigarette”; I “cigaredejo” is “a place where cigarettes are stored”; while “cigaredingo” is a “cigarette holder” and “cigaredujo” is a “cigarette case”. Three numeral suffixes are seen in “du-obl-a”, “double”; “du-on-o”, “half”; and “du-op-e”, “by twos”. The English suffix “able” is readily seen in “tra-vid-ebl-a”, “able to be seen through”, i.e.. “transparent”. A very useful suffix is “il”, denoting the “instrument by which a thing is done”. Thus “presi” means “to print”, and “presilo” is a “printing press”. The suffix “edz” denotes a “married person”, as may be seen in “lav-ist-in-edz-o”, that is “the husband (edzo) of a female (in) person who washes ((lavisto’)”, i.e., “a washerwoman's husband”. But I suppose some of my readers are getting sleepy over these suffixes, so I had better wake them up with a ghost story. Ghost Story. Du homoj vojag'is per ekspresvagonaro. “Mi ne kredas je fantomoj” diris unu. “Efektive” diris la alia kaj malaperis; which being interpreted means: Two men were travelling by express-train. “1 don’t believe in ghosts,” said one. “Don’t you!” said the other and vanished. In the above story there is a tiny word of two letters which lazy Esperantists find very handy. When you do not quite know the particular meaning of a preposition, you use this convenient word. “I don’t believe in ghosts”. What does the preposition “in” mean? Does it mean “in”? Or what does it mean? You reply “Don’t know”. Well, translate it by “je”. But just as the student at Cambridge is warned not to notify his tutor -more than once in a single term that he must go to London to attend the funeral of the same old aunt, so it looks bad if the word “je” appears more than once in the same paragraph. There is a similar noun suffix which says to the reader, “The person who used me did not know quite what to write but he knows that you, having more brains' than lie, will, of course, know' what is in his mind.” This suffix is “um”. “Kolo” is “neck”, and a “collar” is “kol-umo”; “varma” is warm”. “malvarma” is "cold”, and “malvarm-umi” is “to catch a cold”. Avoiding Ambiguity. But enough of suffixes. Let me pass on to point out two examples of how Esperanto avoids a lack of clearness which is found in English'. If I say “Tommy the lion ate”, are you sure who ate whom? Did Tommy eat the lion, or did the lion get the dinner? There is no ambiguity in Esperanto. “Tome’jo la leonon mang’is” makes Tommy the diner, while “Tomc'jon la leono mang’is” hands the operation over to the lion. No ambiguity, in spite of the unusual order of words. Again take the sentence “Mr Brown said to Mr White that although they did not both belong to the same church, they had both been doing the Lord’s work, he (Mr White) in his (Mr White’s) way and he (Mr Brown) in His (the Lord's).” To avoid the ambiguity connected with the word “his”, the person concerned must be added in brackets in English; in Esperanto we use “sia” when “his”, “her” or “its” refers to the subject of its own clause, and “lia” when it does not, thus making the meaning clearer. I conclude with the shortest lion story I know. “Tomc'jo renkontris leonon” (“Tommy met a lion”). “‘Aha!’ d’iris la leono” (“Aha!” said the lion). (To be concluded next Saturday.) j