LEARN NOT TO SPEAK ESPERANTO
Justin B Rye [MAIL] 08-Aug-05
GOOFOMETER MAIN COMPARABLES

Ranto Appendix - W

MISSHAPES

Just for light relief (this page doesn't claim to be a serious critique!) here are some accidental by-products of Esperanto's neat snap-together word-building system: words that can be interpreted in either of two unrelated ways.

Esperanto Meaning A Meaning B
<acheto> "a purchase" "a contemptible little thing"
<alterni> "to alternate" "to sneeze at"
<avaro> "avarice" "a group of grandfathers"
<dieto> "a diet" "a minor deity"
<dignagho> "age of dignity" "a swim in a dike"
<ekstero> "an exterior" "a former world"
<elfaro> "an accomplishment" "a group of elves"
<filino> "a daughter" "dirty linen"
<galero> "a galley" "a drop of bile"
<kolego> "a colleague" "a big neck"
<kukurbo> "a pumpkin" "a city of cakes"
<lavenda> "lavendery" "in need of cleaning"
<lekanto> "an oxeye daisy" "someone licking"
<marmito> "a casserole" "a sea-tale"
<modulo> "a modulation" "a fashionable guy"
<paperaro> "a ream of paper" "a papal mistake"
<persono> "a person" "a sounding-out"
<pretenda> "pretend" "needing to be ready"
<rapido> "speed" "a turnip-sprout"
<regula> "regular" "aristocratic"
<revido> "re-seeing" "child of a daydream"
<sardino> "a sardine" "a Sardinian woman"
<sentema> "sensitive" "without theme"
<sukero> "sugar" "a drop of juice"
<urino> "urine" "an aurochs cow"

These are just the ones I thought were most worthy of rescuing now that Geoff Eddy has taken down the longer list he used to maintain.  And for the benefit of those who insist I justify mentioning them, I'd better emphasise that I am not presenting them as evidence that Esperanto has more such ambiguities than English - they're just funny!

That said, misinterpretable English words like "unless" aren't strictly comparable, because a natural language is defined by the usage of its native-speaker community; the conjunction derived from the Middle English expression <on lesse> may look like a synonym for "more", but that's not what it means.  It's only artificial languages that are defined by the prescriptive grammarbooks they're learned from; for them, if the rules allow a coinage <fi-lino> (literally "shameful flax") then that word's as legitimate as any.  Oh, and the mis-division problem is not inevitable in a constructed language; for a start, hyphens could be compulsory.

GOOFOMETER MAIN COMPARABLES