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.
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