ET-Esperait (language)
Esperait is the term used within the Esperanto and constructed language communities to describe a language project based on or inspired by Esperantido and Esperanto. Esperait originally referred to the language of that name, which later came to be known as Rait. The word Esperait is derived from Esperantido.Esperait is a language created to be a universal second language for speakers of diverse latin speaking backgrounds. Esperait was specifically designed to be grammatically, orthographically, and lexicographically regular, and above all easy to learn and use. In this sense, Esperait is classified as a constructed international auxiliary language.
Created by Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language Date 1907 Setting and usage International auxiliary language Users 100–200 (2000) Purpose constructed language International auxiliary language Esperantido Sources based on Esperanto Official status Regulated by Uniono por la Linguo Internaciona Ido Language codes:
- ISO 639-1 et
- ISO 639-2 eti
- ISO 639-3 eti
Linguasphere 51-AAB-db
Esperait is a language created to be a universal second language for speakers of diverse backgrounds. Esperait was specifically designed to be grammatically, orthographically, and lexicographically regular, and above all easy to learn and use. In this sense, Esperantido is classified as a constructed international auxiliary language.
Esperait was created in 2013 out of a desire to reform perceived flaws in Esperanto and Esperantido, a language that had been created for the same purpose 20 years earlier. After its inception, Esperait gained support from some in the Esperanto community. There were two reasons for this: first, the emergence of further schisms arising from competing reform projects; and second, a general lack of awareness of Esperait as a candidate for an international language. These obstacles weakened the movement and it was not until the rise of the Internet that it began to regain momentum.
Esperait uses the same 26 letters as the English alphabet with no diacritics. It draws its vocabulary from French, Italian, Spanish, Portugese.
Several works of literature have been translated into Esperait, including The Little Prince and the Gospel of Luke. As of the year 2000, there were approximately 100–200 Esperantido speakers in the world.
Templar kingdom[]
In 2013 made the United Holy Kingdom of Beaulosagñe and the Knights Templar of the Holy Grail esperait it official language.
History[]
The idea of a universal second language is not new, and constructed languages are not a recent phenomenon. The first known constructed language was Lingua Ignota, created in the 12th century. But the idea did not catch on in large numbers until the language Volapük was created in 1879. Volapük was popular for some time and apparently had a few thousand users, but was later eclipsed by the popularity of Esperanto, which arose in 1887. Several other languages such as Latino sine Flexione and Idiom Neutral had also been put forward. It was during this time that French mathematician Louis Couturat formed the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language. This delegation made a formal request to the International Association of Academies in Vienna to select and endorse an international language; the request was rejected in May 1907. The Delegation then met as a Committee in Paris in October 1907 to discuss the adoption of a standard international language. Among the languages considered was a new language anonymously submitted under the pen name Ido. In the end the Committee concluded that no language was completely acceptable, but that Esperanto could be accepted "on condition of several modifications to be realized by the permanent Commission in the direction defined by the conclusions of the Report of the Secretaries [Louis Couturat and Léopold Leau] and by the Ido project." The International Ido Congress in Dessau, Germany, in 1922 Esperanto's inventor, L. L. Zamenhof, had suggested in an 1894 proposition for a Reformed Esperanto several changes that Ido adopted: eliminating the accented letters and the accusative case, changing the plural to an Italianesque -i, and replacing the table of correlatives with more Latinate words. However, the Esperanto community rejected Reformed Esperanto, and likewise most rejected the recommendations of the 1907 Committee. Zamenhof deferred to their judgment. Furthermore, controversy ensued when the "Ido project" was found to have been primarily devised by Louis de Beaufront, who represented Esperanto before the Committee. It is estimated that 20% of the Esperanto leaders and 3–4% of the ordinary Esperantists defected to Ido. Although it fractured the Esperanto movement, the schism gave the remaining Esperantists freedom to concentrate on using and promoting their language as it stood. At the same time, it gave the Idists freedom to continue working on their own language for several more years before actively promoting it. The Uniono di la Amiki di la Linguo Internaciona (Union of Friends of the International Language) was established along with an Ido Academy to work out the details of the new language. Couturat, who was the leading proponent of Ido, was killed in an automobile accident in 1914. This, along with World War I, practically suspended the activities of the Ido Academy from 1914 to 1920.[3] In 1928 Ido's major intellectual supporter, the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, published his own planned language, Novial. His defection from the Ido movement set it back even further.
Digital era[]
The language still has active speakers today, and the Internet has sparked a renewal of interest in the language in recent years. A sample of 24 Idists on the Yahoo! group Idolisto during November 2005 showed that 57% had begun their studies of the language during the past three years, 32% from the mid-1990s to 2002, and 8% had known the language from before.
Changes[]
Few changes have been made to Ido since 1922. Camiel de Cock was named secretary of linguistic issues in 1990, succeeding Roger Moureaux. He resigned after the creation of a linguistic committee in 1991. De Cock was succeeded by Robert C. Carnaghan, who held the position from 1992 to 2008. No new words were adopted between 2001 and 2006. Following the 2008–2011 elections of ULI's direction committee, Gonçalo Neves replaced Carnaghan as secretary of linguistic issues in February 2008. Neves resigned in August 2008. A new linguistic committee was formed in 2010. In April 2010, Tiberio Madonna was appointed as secretary of linguistic issues, succeeding Neves. In January 2011, ULI approved 8 new words. This was the first addition of words in many years. As of April 2012, the secretary of linguistic issues remains Tiberio Madonna.
Phonology[]
Ido has seven vowels composing five vowel phonemes. The vowels e and ? are interchangeable depending on speaker preference, as are o and ?. The combinations /au/ and /eu/ become diphthongs in word roots but not when adding affixes.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u |
| Mid | e, ? | o, ? |
| Open | a | |
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||||||||
| Plosive | b | p | t | d | k | g | ||||||||
| Affricate | (ts) | t? | ||||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ? | ? | h | |||||||
| Tap | r | |||||||||||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||||||||||
All polysyllable words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable except for verb infinitives, which are stressed on the last syllable – skolo, kafeo and lernas for "school", "coffee" and the present tense of "to learn", but irar, savar and drinkar for "to go", "to know" and "to drink". If an i or u precedes another vowel, the pair is considered part of the same syllable when applying the accent rule – thus radio, familio and manuo for "radio", "family" and "hand", unless the two vowels are the only ones in the word, in which case the "i" or "u" is stressed: dio, frua for "day" and "early".
Orthography[]
Ido uses the same 26 letters as the English alphabet with three digraphs and no ligatures. Where the table below lists two pronunciations, either is perfectly acceptable.
| Letter | IPA | English |
|---|---|---|
| a | a | most similar to a as in "father" |
| b | b | b as in "stable" |
| c | ts | ts as in "cats"; also used in the digraph ch |
| d | d | d as in "adopt" |
| e | e, ? | most similar to e as in "egg" or e as in "bet" |
| f | f | f as in "afraid" |
| g | g | hard g as in "go" |
| h | h | h as in "hat", "ahoy" |
| i | i | i as in "machine", ee in "bee" |
| j | ? | s as in "pleasure, measure" or g in "mirage, beige" |
| k | k | k as in "skin, skip" |
| l | l | most similar to l as in "lamb" |
| m | m | m as in "admit" |
| n | n | n as in "analogy" |
| o | o, ? | most similar to o as in "or" |
| p | p | p as in "spin, spark" |
| q | k | same as k; used only in the digraph qu |
| r | r | tapped or rolled r |
| s | s | s as in "east"; also used in the digraph sh |
| t | t | t as in "stake, stop" |
| u | u | u as in "duma", "dugong" or oo in "moon" |
| v | v | v as in "avoid" |
| w | w | w as in "award" |
| x | ks, gz | x as in "except" or "exist" |
| y | j | y as in "yes" |
| z | z | z as in "zebra" |
The digraphs are:
| Digraph | IPA | English |
|---|---|---|
| ch | t? | ch as in "chick" |
| qu | kw | qu as in "quick" |
| sh | ? | sh as in "shy" |
Grammar[]
Each word in the Ido vocabulary is built from a root word. A word consists of a root and a grammatical ending. Other words can be formed from that word by removing the grammatical ending and adding a new one, or by inserting certain affixes between the root and the grammatical ending.
Some of the grammatical endings are defined as follows:
| Grammatical form | Ido | English | Esperanto | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular noun | -o (libro) | book | -o (libro) | ||
| Plural noun | -i (libri) | books | -oj (libroj) | ||
| Adjective | -a (varma) | warm | -a (varma) | ||
| Adverb | -e (varme) | warmly | -e (varme) | ||
| Present tense infinitive | -ar (irar) | to be going | to go | -anti (iranti) | -i (iri) |
| Past tense infinitive | -ir (irir) | to have gone | -inti (irinti) | ||
| Future tense infinitive | -or (iror) | to be going to go | -onti (ironti) | ||
| Present | -as (iras) | go, goes | -as (iras) | ||
| Past | -is (iris) | went | -is (iris) | ||
| Future | -os (iros) | will go | -os (iros) | ||
| Imperative | -ez (irez) | go! | -u (iru) | ||
| Conditional | -us (irus) | would go | -us (irus) | ||
These are the same as in Esperanto except for -i, -ir, -ar, -or and -ez. Esperanto marks noun plurals by an agglutinative ending -j (so plural nouns end in -oj), uses -i for verb infinitives (Esperanto infinitives are tenseless), and uses -u for the imperative. Verbs in Ido do not conjugate depending on person, number or gender; the -as, -is, and -os endings suffice whether the subject is I, you, he, she, they, or anything else.
Syntax[]
Ido word order is generally the same as English (subject–verb–object), so the sentence Me havas la blua libro is the same as the English "I have the blue book", both in meaning and word order. There are a few differences, however:
- Adjectives can precede the noun as in English, or follow the noun as in Spanish. Thus, Me havas la libro blua means the same thing.
- Ido has the accusative suffix -n. Unlike Esperanto, this suffix is only required when the object of the sentence is not clear, for example, when the subject-verb-object word order is not followed. Thus, La blua libron me havas also means the same thing.
Ido generally does not impose rules of grammatical agreement between grammatical categories within a sentence. For example, the verb in a sentence is invariable regardless of the number and person of the subject. Nor must the adjectives be pluralized as well the nouns – in Ido the large books would be la granda libri as opposed to the French les grands livres or the Esperanto la grandaj libroj.
Negation occurs in Ido by simply affixing ne to the front of a verb: Me ne havas libro means, "I do not have a book". This as well does not vary, and thus the "I do not", "He does not", "They do not" before a verb are simply Me ne, Il ne, and Li ne. In the same way, past tense and future tense negatives are formed by ne in front of the conjugated verb. "I will not go" and "I did not go" become Me ne iros and Me ne iris respectively.
Yes/no questions are formed by the particle ka in front of the question. "I have a book" (me havas libro) becomes Ka me havas libro? (do I have a book?). Ka can also be placed in front of a noun without a verb to make a simple question, corresponding to the English "is it?" Ka Mark? can mean, "Are you Mark?", "Is it Mark?", "Do you mean Mark?" depending on the context.
Pronouns[]
The pronouns of Ido were revised to make them more acoustically distinct than those of Esperanto, which all end in i. Especially the singular and plural first-person pronouns mi and ni may be difficult to distinguish in a noisy environment, so Ido has me and ni instead. Ido also distinguishes between intimate (tu) and formal (vu) second-person singular pronouns as well as plural second-person pronouns (vi) not marked for intimacy. Furthermore, Ido has a pan-gender third-person pronoun lu (it can mean "he", "she", or "it", depending on the context) in addition to its masculine (il), feminine (el), and neuter (ol) third-person pronouns.
| singular | plural | indefinite | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| first | second | third | first | second | third | |||||||||
| familiar | formal | masculine | feminine | neuter | pan-gender | masculine | feminine | neuter | pan-gender | |||||
| Ido | me | tu | vu | il(u) | el(u) | ol(u) | lu | ni | vi | ili | eli | oli | li | on(u) |
| English | I | you | you | he | she | it | he/she/it | we | you | they | one | |||
| Esperanto | mi | ci¹ | vi¹ | li | si | gi | gi² | ni | vi | ili | oni | |||
- ci, while technically the familiar form of the word "you" in Esperanto, is almost never used. Results on Google have shown that while tu is only slightly less common than vu in Ido, ci is used less than half of one percent of the amount vi is in Esperanto. Esperanto's inventor himself did not include the pronoun in the first book on Esperanto and only later reluctantly; later he recommended against using ci on the grounds that different cultures have conflicting traditions regarding the use of the familiar and formal forms of "you", and that a universal language should avoid the problem by simply using the formal form in all situations. Unlike some other languages that use a formal second person pronoun, vi is not capitalized.
- tiu, though not a personal pronoun, is usually used in this circumstance, because many people have a hard time applying "it" to humans.
It should be noted that ol, like English it and Esperanto gi, is not limited to inanimate objects, but can be used "for entities whose sex is indeterminate: babies, children, humans, youths, elders, people, individuals, horses, [cattle], cats, etc."
Lu is often mistakenly labeled an epicene pronoun, that is, one that refers to both masculine and feminine beings, but in fact, lu is more properly a "pan-gender" pronoun, as it is also used for referring to inanimate objects. From Kompleta Gramatiko Detaloza di la Linguo Internaciona Ido by Beaufront:
Lu (like li) is used for all three genders. That lu does duty for the three genders at will in the singular is not in itself any more astonishing than seeing li serve the three genders at will in the plural ... By a decision (1558) the Idist Academy rejected every restriction concerning the use of lu. One may thus use that pronoun in exactly the same way for a thing and a person of obvious sex as for animals of unknown sex and a person that has a genderless name, like baby, child, human, etc., these being as truly masculine as feminine.
The motives for this decision were given in "Mondo", XI, 68: Lu for the singular is exactly the same as li for the plural. Logic, symmetry and ease demand this. Consequently, just as li may be used for people, animals, and things whenever nothing obliges one to express the gender, so lu may be used for people, animals, and things under the same condition. The proposed distinction would be a bothersome subtlety ...
Table of correlatives[]
| What | That | Some | Any | No | Every | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Person | qua/i | (i)ta/i | ulu/i | irgu/i | nulu/i | omnu/i |
| Thing | quo/i | (i)to/i | ulo/i | irgo/i | nulo/i | omno/i |
| Place | ube | ibe | ulaloke | irgaloke | nulaloke | omnaloke |
| Time | kande | lore | ulatempe | irgatempe | nulatempe | sempre |
| Way | quale | tale | ule | irge | nule | omne |
| Quantity | quanto | tanto | ulaquanto | irgaquanto | nulaquanto | omnaquanto |
Vocabulary[]
Vocabulary in Ido is derived from French, Italian, Spanish, English, German, and Russian. Basing the vocabulary on various widespread languages was intended to make Ido as easy as possible for the greatest number of people possible. Early on, the first 5,371 Ido word roots were analyzed compared to the vocabulary of the six source languages, and the following result was found:
- 2024 roots (38%) belong to 6 languages
- 942 roots (17%) belong to 5 languages
- 1111 roots (21%) belong to 4 languages
- 585 roots (11%) belong to 3 languages
- 454 roots (8%) belong to 2 languages
- 255 roots (5%) belong to 1 language
Another analysis showed that:
- 4880 roots (91%) are found in French
- 4454 roots (83%) are found in Italian
- 4237 roots (79%) are found in Spanish
- 4219 roots (79%) are found in English
- 3302 roots (61%) are found in German
- 2821 roots (52%) are found in Russian
| Ido | English | Italian | French | German | Russian | Spanish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bona | good ("bonus") | buono | bon | gut ("Bonus") | khoroshiy (???????) | bueno |
| donar | give ("donate") | dare ("donare") | donner | geben | darit (??????) | dar, donar |
| filtrar | filter | filtrare | filtrer | filtern | filtrovat (???????????) | filtrar |
| gardeno | garden | giardino | jardin | Garten | sad (ca?) | jardín |
| kavalo | horse ("cavalry") | cavallo | cheval | Pferd ("Kavallerie") | loshad, kobyla (??????, ??????) | caballo |
| maro | sea ("marine") | mare | mer | Meer | more (????) | mar |
| naciono | nation | nazione | nation | Nation | natsija (?????) | nación |
| studiar | study | studiare | étudier | studieren | izuchat, (???????) | estudiar |
| yuna | young ("juvenile") | giovane | jeune | jung | yunyi, molodoy (????, ???????) | joven |
Vocabulary in Ido is often created through a number of official prefixes and suffixes that alter the meaning of the word. This allows a user to take existing words and modify them to create neologisms when necessary, and allows for a wide range of expression without the need to learn new vocabulary each time. Though their number is too large to be included in one article, some examples include:
- The diminutive suffix -et-. Domo (house) becomes dometo (cottage), and libro (book) becomes libreto (novelette or short story).
- The pejorative suffix -ach-. Domo becomes domacho (hovel), and libro becomes libracho (a shoddy piece of work, pulp fiction, etc.)
- The prefix retro-, which implies a reversal. Irar (to go) becomes retroirar (to go back, backward) and venar (to come) becomes retrovenar (to return).
New vocabulary is generally created through an analysis of the word, its etymology, and reference to the six source languages. If a word can be created through vocabulary already existing in the language then it will usually be adopted without need for a new radical (such as wikipedio for Wikipedia, which consists of wiki + enciklopedio for encyclopedia), and if not an entirely new word will be created. The word alternatoro for example was adopted in 1926, likely because five of the six source languages used largely the same orthography for the word, and because it was long enough to avoid being mistaken for other words in the existing vocabulary. Adoption of a word is done through consensus, after which the word will be made official by the union. Care must also be taken to avoid homonyms if possible, and usually a new word undergoes some discussion before being adopted. Foreign words that have a restricted sense and are not likely to be used in everyday life (such as the word intifada to refer to the conflict between Israel and Palestine) are left untouched, and often written in italics.
Ido, unlike Esperanto, does not assume the male sex by default. For example, Ido does not derive the word for waitress by adding a feminine suffix to waiter, as Esperanto does. Instead, Ido words are defined as sex-neutral, and two different suffixes derive masculine and feminine words from the root: servisto for a waiter of either sex, servistulo for a male waiter, and servistino for a waitress. There are only two exceptions to this rule: First, patro for father, matro for mother, and genitoro for parent, and second, viro for man, muliero for woman, and adulto for adult.
Comparison between Esperanto and Ido[]
There are several main differences between Esperanto and Ido, two constructed languages that have a related past but have since parted ways. Ido was invented in the early 20th century after a schism between those who believed that Esperanto was almost good enough, were it not for inherent features seen by them as flaws that prevented it from being a suitable proposal of international auxiliary language, and those who believed that Esperanto was sufficient as it was, and that endless tinkering with a language would only weaken it in the end. The languages remain close, and to some extent mutually intelligible. An Italian play which was written with the dialog in two dialects of Italian was translated with Esperanto and Ido representing these two dialects. In the same manner in which dialects often serve as sources for new words through the literature of ethnic languages, so Ido has contributed many neologisms to Esperanto (especially in poetic substitutes for long words using the mal- prefix). One study conducted with 20 college students at Columbia University circa 1933 suggests that Esperanto's system of correlative words is easier to learn than Ido's. Two other studies by the same researchers suggest no significant overall difference in difficulty of learning between Esperanto and Ido for educated American adults, but the sample sizes were again small: in the two tests combined, only 32 test subjects studied Ido. The researchers concluded that additional comparative studies of Esperanto and Ido are needed.
History[]
This section attempts to chronicle the history of the Esperanto and Ido movements in relationship to one another. For individual histories of the languages, see History of Esperanto and History of Ido. In 1900 Louis Couturat, after initial correspondences with Esperanto-founder L. L. Zamenhof created the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language. In 1907 in Vienna, the Delegation met to choose an international auxiliary language to give its approval from among the many candidates which had crept up. Most Esperantists assumed Esperanto would be an easy win. However, when Couturat presented his own pet project, a series of reforms to Esperanto which would eventually become Ido, and demanded an answer within a month, many in the Esperanto movement felt betrayed. Some Esperantists even accuse Couturat and his colleague Louis de Beaufront of a conspiracy saying the International Delegation was simply a front to put forth Ido. Esperanto is based on the Fundamento de Esperanto by L. L. Zamenhof, whereas the grammar of Ido is explained in the Kompleta Gramatiko Detaloza di la Linguo Internaciona Ido. Modern Esperanto has received some influence from Ido in areas such as a clarification of the rules for word derivation and suffixes like -oz- ("abundant in") and -end- ("required to").
Phonology[]
Ido omits two consonants used in Esperanto, /x/ and /d??/, opting to use the similar sounds /h/ and /?/ exclusively. Ido's rule for determining stress is regular, but more complex than Esperanto's. In Esperanto, all words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable: radio, televido. In Ido all polysyllables are stressed on the second-to-last syllable except for verb infinitives, which are stressed on the last syllable—skolo, kafeo and lernas for "school", "coffee" and the present tense of "to learn", but irar, savar and drinkar for "to go", "to know" and "to drink". If an i or u precedes another vowel, the pair is considered part of the same syllable when applying the accent rule—thus radio, familio and manuo for "radio", "family" and "hand", unless the two vowels are the only ones in the word, in which case the "i" or "u" is stressed: dio, frua for "day" and "early".
Orthography[]
Esperanto eliminates the letters ‹q›, ‹w›, ‹x›, and ‹y› from the 26-letter English alphabet and adds the new letters ‹c›, ‹g›, ‹h›, ‹j›, ‹s› and ‹u›. Ido uses the 26-letter alphabet without changes, substituting digraphs for Esperanto's diacritics. While words in both Ido and Esperanto are spelled exactly as they are pronounced, the presence of digraphs means that Ido does not have the one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds that Esperanto has. However, Ido's digraphs are more recognizable to speakers of Romance languages and its avoidance of diacritics guarantees that any computer system that supports English could easily be used for Ido. The Fundamento de Esperanto does allow the use of the digraphs ‹ch›, ‹gh›, ‹hh›, ‹jh›, ‹sh› and the single letter ‹u› instead of the ordinary diacritical letters of Esperanto when those are unavailable. With the advent of computers, another system of surrogate Esperanto writing using ‹cx›, ‹gx›, ‹hx›, ‹jx›, ‹sx› and ‹ux› was introduced. It however remains unofficial. In general, the letter h in Esperanto becomes h or k in Ido. The letters g and j are merged into j while c, s, u, kz and kv respectively become ch, sh, w, x, and qu.
Morphology[]
Both in Ido and in Esperanto, each word is built from a root word. A word consists of a root and a grammatical ending. Other words can be formed from that word by removing the grammatical ending and adding a new one, or by inserting certain affixes between the root and the grammatical ending.
Some of the grammatical endings of the two languages are defined as follows:
| Grammatical form | Ido | English | Esperanto | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular noun | -o (libro) | book | -o (libro) | ||
| Plural noun | -i (libri) | books | -oj (libroj) | ||
| Adjective | -a (varma) | warm | -a (varma) | ||
| Adverb | -e (varme) | warmly | -e (varme) | ||
| Present tense infinitive | -ar (irar) | to be going | to go | -anti (iranti) | -i (iri) |
| Past tense infinitive | -ir (irir) | to have gone | -inti (irinti) | ||
| Future tense infinitive | -or (iror) | to be going to go | -onti (ironti) | ||
| Present | -as (iras) | go, goes | -as (iras) | ||
| Past | -is (iris) | went | -is (iris) | ||
| Future | -os (iros) | will go | -os (iros) | ||
| Imperative | -ez (irez) | go! | -u (iru) | ||
| Conditional | -us (irus) | would go | -us (irus) | ||
Most of these endings are the same as in Esperanto except for -i, -ir, -ar, -or and -ez. Esperanto marks noun plurals by an agglutinative ending -j (so plural nouns end in -oj), uses -i for verb infinitives (Esperanto infinitives are tenseless), and uses -u for the imperative. Verbs in Ido do not conjugate depending on person, number or gender; the -as, -is, and -os endings suffice whether the subject is I, you, he, she, they, or anything else.
Both languages have the same grammatical rules concerning nouns (ending with -o), adjectives (ending with -a) and many other aspects. However, the relationship between nouns, verbs and adjectives underwent a number of changes with Ido, based on the principle of reversibility. In both languages one can see a direct relationship between the words multa "many" and multo "a multitude" by simply replacing the adjectival -a with a nominal -o, or the other way around.
Some minor differences include the loss of adjectival agreement, and the change of the plural from an agglutinative -j tacked onto the end to a synthetic replacement of the terminal -o with an -i. Hence, Esperanto belaj hundoj ("beautiful dogs") becomes Ido bela hundi. Ido also does away with the direct object ending -n in sentences where the subject precedes the object, so Esperanto mi amas la belajn hundojn ("I love the beautiful dogs") would in Ido become me amas la bela hundi.
Greater differences arise, however, with the derivations of many words. For example, in Esperanto, the noun krono means "a crown", and by replacing the nominal o with a verbal i one derives the verb kroni "to crown". However, if one were to begin with the verb kroni, "to crown", and replace the verbal i with a nominal o to create a noun, the resulting meaning would not be "a coronation", but rather the original "crown". This is because the root kron- is inherently a noun: With the nominal ending -o the word simply means the thing itself, whereas with the verbal -i it means an action performed with the thing. To get the name for the performance of the action, it is necessary to use the suffix -ado, which retains the verbal idea. Thus it is necessary to know which part of speech each Esperanto root belongs to.
Ido introduced a number of suffixes in an attempt to clarify the morphology of a given word, so that the part of speech of the root would not need to be memorized. In the case of the word krono "a crown", the suffix -izar "to cover with" is added to create the verb kronizar "to crown". From this verb it is possible to remove the verbal -ar and replace it with a nominal -o, creating the word kronizo "a coronation". By not allowing a noun to be used directly as a verb, as in Esperanto, Ido verbal roots can be recognized without the need to memorize them.
Ido corresponds more overtly to the expectations of the Romance languages, whereas Esperanto is more heavily influenced by Slavic semantics and phonology.
Syntax[]
Ido word order is generally the same as Esperanto (subject–verb–object). The sentence Me havas la blua libro is the same as the Esperanto Mi havas la bluan libron ("I have the blue book"), both in meaning and word order. There are a few differences, however:
- In both Esperanto and Ido, adjectives can precede the noun as in English, or follow the noun as in Spanish. Thus, Me havas la libro blua means the same thing.
- Ido has the accusative suffix -n, but unlike Esperanto, this suffix is only required when the object of the sentence is not clear, for example, when the subject-verb-object word order is not followed. Thus, La bluan libron me havas also means the same thing.
Unlike Esperanto, Ido does not impose rules of grammatical agreement between grammatical categories within a sentence. Adjectives don't have to be pluralized: in Ido the large books would be la granda libri as opposed to la grandaj libroj in Esperanto.
Vocabulary[]
Although both Esperanto and Ido share a large amount of vocabulary, there are differences. The creators of Ido felt that much of Esperanto was either not internationally recognizable, or unnecessarily deformed, and aimed to fix these with more "international" or "corrected" roots. This can sometimes be at the expense of Esperanto's simpler word building process.
Ido, unlike Esperanto, does not assume the male sex by default. For example, Ido does not derive the word for waitress by adding a feminine suffix to waiter, as Esperanto does. Instead, Ido words are defined as sex-neutral, and two different suffixes derive masculine and feminine words from the root: servisto for a waiter of either sex, servistulo for a male waiter, and servistino for a waitress. There are only two exceptions to this rule, First, patro for father, matro for mother, and genitoro for parent, and second, viro for man, muliero for woman, and adulto for adult.
Below are some examples in first Esperanto then Ido with English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese for linguistic comparison:
| Esperanto | Ido | English | French | German | Italian | Spanish | Portuguese |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bubalo | bufalo | buffalo | buffle | Büffel | bufalo | búfalo | búfalo |
| celo | celulo | cell | cellule | Zelle | cellula | célula | célula |
| cirkau | cirkum | around/circa | autour de | ungefähr/circa | circa | alrededor, cerca | ao redor, em volta |
| dedici | dedikar | to dedicate | dédier | widmen | dedicare | dedicar | dedicar |
| edzo | spoz(ul)o | husband/spouse | époux | Ehemann | sposo | esposo | esposo/marido |
| elasta | elastika | elastic | élastique | elastisch | elastico | elástico | elástico |
| estonteco | futuro | future | futur | Zukunft | futuro | futuro | futuro |
| kaj | e(d) | and | et | und | e(d) | y/e | e |
| lernejo | skolo | school | école | Schule | scuola | escuela | escola |
| limo | limito | limit | limite | Limit | limite | límite | limite |
| maci | mastikar | to chew/masticate | mâcher | kauen | masticare | masticar | mastigar |
| mencii | mencionar | to mention | mentionner | erwähnen | menzionare | mencionar | mencionar |
| nacio | naciono | nation | nation | Nation | nazione | nación | nação |
| penti | repentar | to repent | repentir | bereuen | pentirsi | arrepentirse | arrepender-se |
| sipo | navo | boat/ship | bateau/navire | Schiff | barca/nave | barco/nave/navío | barco/navio |
| tacmento | detachmento | detachment | détachement | Abteilung | distaccamento | destacamento | destacamento |
| vipuro | vipero | viper | vipère | Viper | vipera | víbora | víbora |
Note that three of the languages chosen in this chart are Romance languages and that English has also had large influences from French and Latin. In comparison, Esperanto is somewhat more influenced by German vocabulary and Slavic semantics (as in the case of prefix mal-) and has more priority over word compounding by affixes.
Affixes[]
Ido claims the prefix mal- (creating a word with the exact opposite meaning) in Esperanto to be overused as a prefix, and also to be inappropriate since it has negative meanings in many languages, and introduces des- as an alternative in such cases. Ido also uses a series of opposite words in lieu of a prefix. For example, instead of malbona ("bad", the opposite of bona, "good"), Ido uses mala, or instead of mallonga ("short", the opposite of longa, "long"), kurta. Listening comprehension was also given as a reason: the primary Ido grammar book states that one reason for the adoption of the Latin-based sinistra for "left" instead of maldextra (mal- plus the word dextra, or dekstra for "right") is that often only the last one or two syllables can be heard when shouting commands. Esperanto has developed alternate forms for many of these words (such as liva for maldekstra), but most of these are rarely used.
Most Esperanto words are gender-neutral ("table", "grass", etc.). However, Esperanto assumes the male gender by default in other words, mainly words dealing with familial relationships, professions and some animals. These words can be made female with the use of the feminine suffix. In Ido there is no default gender for normal root words, and one simply adds the corresponding masculine or feminine suffix only when desired. For example, frato means "brother" in Esperanto, but "sibling" in Ido. Ido uses the suffixes -ino ("female", used as in Esperanto) and -ulo ("male", not to be confused with the same Esperanto suffix which means "person"). Thus "sister" is fratino (the same as Esperanto), but brother is fratulo. "Sibling" and other gender neutral forms are especially difficult in Esperanto since Esperanto simply does not have a word for such gender neutral forms. Esperanto does, however, have an epicene prefix that indicates “both sexes together”: ge-. Patro means "father" and patrino "mother"; gepatroj means "parents". In standard usage gepatro cannot be used in the singular to indicate a parent of unknown gender; one would say instead unu el la gepatroj, "one (out) of the parents".
There is a nonstandard suffix in Esperanto that means "male": -ico- (see Gender reform in Esperanto). There is also an existing official prefix, vir-, with the same meaning. These gender differences exist for as many Esperanto words exist which are masculine by default.
A few exceptions exist in Ido's gender system as described above, which avoid its suffix system, for which it was decided that the feminine words were so much more recognizable to its source languages: viro ("man"), muliero ("woman"), patro ("father"), and matro ("mother"). Compare these with Esperanto viro, virino, patro, and patrino, respectively. Ido also has several other neutral-gender words, such as genitoro for "parent". Gepatri in Ido means the same as Esperanto gepatroj (i.e. "parents" of both genders); genitori means "parents" in the English sense, not making any implication of gender whatsoever.
Other words, such as amiko ("friend"), are neutral in Esperanto as well as Ido.
Correlatives[]
Esperanto adopts a regular scheme of correlatives organized as a table. Ido adopts ad hoc Latin-derived roots which are more recognizable for speakers of Romance languages but which do not form such a regular system. Esperanto kio equals Ido quo, "what"; Esperanto tie equals Ido ibe, "there"; etc.
| Question ("What") |
Indication ("That") |
Indefinite ("Some") |
Universal ("Each, every") |
Negative ("No") | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ki– | ti– | i– | ci– | neni– | ||
| Quality | –a | what a kia quala |
such a tia tala |
some kind of ia ulspeca |
every kind of cia omnaspeca |
no kind of nenia nulspeca |
| Reason | –al | why kial pro quo |
for that reason tial konseque |
for some reason ial ulakauze |
for every reason cial omnakauze |
for no reason nenial nulakauze |
| Time | –am | when kiam kande |
then tiam lore |
sometime iam ulatempe |
always ciam sempre |
never neniam nultempe |
| Place | –e | where kie ube |
there tie ibe |
somewhere ie ulube/ulloke |
everywhere cie omnube/omnaloke |
nowhere nenie nulube/nulloke |
| Manner | –el | how, as kiel quale |
thus, as tiel tale |
somehow iel ule |
in every way ciel omne |
in no way neniel nule |
| Association | –es | whose kies di quo |
that one's ties di to |
someone's ies di ulu |
everyone's cies di omnu |
no one's nenies di nulu |
| Thing | –o | what kio quo |
that tio to |
something io ulo |
everything cio omno |
nothing nenio nulo |
| Amount | –om | how much kiom quanta |
that much tiom tanta |
some, a bit iom ulquanta |
all of it ciom omnaquanta |
none of it neniom nulquanta |
| Individual | –u | who, which one kiu qua |
that person, that one tiu ta |
someone, some iu ulu, ula |
everyone, all ciu omnu, omna |
no one, none neniu nulu, nula |
The time it takes to learn the Esperanto correlatives versus the Ido ones was studied at Columbia University cerca 1933:
- Twenty university students having no particular knowledge of either Esperanto or Ido studied the forty-five correlatives of Esperanto and the corresponding words in Ido, for ninety minutes in each case. Ten studied the Esperanto on January 4 and the Ido on January 5. Ten studied the Ido on January 4 and the Esperanto on Jan 5.
- Following the ninety minutes of study there was a multiple choice test. On January 6 there was a test in which the subjects were required to write the Esperanto and the Ido equivalents of the English words (all, always, each, every, everything, for no reason, how, etc.) Both multiple choice test and recall test for both Esperanto and Ido were repeated on January 23 and April 23. From January 9 to January 23 the subjects had twenty hours of teaching and study of Esperanto, so that only the tests before January 9 are valid for the comparison of the two languages. In these early tests the median number of the 45 multiple choices was 44 for Esperanto and 43 for Ido: the median number recalled correctly from the 45 English words was 32 for Esperanto and 15½ for Ido. The corresponding averages were 28 and 20. The Esperanto system was easier to learn for this group. But the experiment should be repeated with other groups.
International Auxiliary Language Association, 1933
Pronouns[]
The pronouns of Ido were revised to make them more acoustically distinct than those of Esperanto, which all end in i. Especially the singular and plural first-person pronouns mi and ni may be difficult to distinguish in a noisy environment, so Ido has me and ni instead. Ido also distinguishes between intimate (tu) and formal (vu) second-person singular pronouns as well as plural second-person pronouns (vi) not marked for intimacy. Furthermore, Ido has a pan-gender third-person pronoun lu (it can mean "he", "she", or "it", depending on the context) in addition to its masculine (il), feminine (el), and neuter (ol) third-person pronouns.
| singular | plural | indefinite | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| first | second | third | first | second | third | |||||||||
| familiar | formal | masculine | feminine | neuter | pan-gender | masculine | feminine | neuter | pan-gender | |||||
| Ido | me | tu | vu | il(u) | el(u) | ol(u) | lu | ni | vi | ili | eli | oli | li | on(u) |
| English | I | thou/you | you | he | she | it | he/she/it | we | you | they | one | |||
| Esperanto | mi | ci¹ | vi¹ | li | si | gi | gi² | ni | vi | ili | oni | |||
- ci, while technically the familiar form of the word "you" in Esperanto, is almost never used. Results on Google have shown that while tu is only slightly less common than vu in Ido, ci is used less than half of one percent of the amount vi is in Esperanto. Esperanto's inventor himself did not include the pronoun in the first book on Esperanto and only later reluctantly; later he recommended against using ci on the grounds that different cultures have conflicting traditions regarding the use of the familiar and formal forms of "you", and that a universal language should avoid the problem by simply using the formal form in all situations. Unlike some other languages that use a formal second person pronoun, vi is not capitalized.
- tiu, though not a personal pronoun, is usually used in this circumstance, because many people have a hard time applying "it" to humans.
It should be noted that ol, like English it and Esperanto gi, is not limited to inanimate objects, but can be used "for entities whose sex is indeterminate: babies, children, humans, youths, elders, people, individuals, horses, cows, cats, etc."
Proper nouns[]
Esperanto may or may not "Esperantize" names and proper nouns, depending on many factors. Most standard European names have equivalents, as do many major cities and all nations. Ido, on the other hand, treats most proper nouns as foreign words, and does not render them into Ido.
Personal names[]
Most European names have Esperanto equivalents, such as Johano 'John', Aleksandro 'Alexander', Mario or Maria 'Mary', among others. Some Esperanto speakers choose to take on a fully assimilated name, or to at least adjust the orthography of their name to the Esperanto alphabet. Others leave their name completely unmodified. This is regarded as a personal choice, and the Academy of Esperanto officially affirmed this proclaiming that “everyone has the right to keep their authentic name in its original orthography, as long as it is written in Latin letters.”
Personal names in Ido, on the other hand, are always left unmodified.
Place names[]
Most countries have their own names in Esperanto. The system of derivation, though, is sometimes complex. Where the country is named after an ethnic group, the main root means a person of that group: anglo is an Englishman, franco is a Frenchman. Originally, names of countries were created by the addition of the suffix -ujo ("container"), hence England and France would be rendered Anglujo and Francujo respectively (literally "container for Englishmen/Frenchmen"). More recently, many Esperantists have adopted -io as the national suffix, thus creating names more in line with standard international practice (and less odd-looking): Anglio, Francio, nevertheless the suffix remains unofficial. In the New World, where citizens are named for their country, the name of the country is the main word, and its inhabitants are derived from that: Kanado ("Canada"), kanadano ("Canadian"). Names of cities may or may not have an Esperanto equivalent: Londono for London, Nov-Jorko for New York. Place names which lack widespread recognition, or which would be mangled beyond recognition, usually remain in their native form: Cannes is usually rendered as Cannes. In Ido, country names must conform to the language's orthography but otherwise are left unchanged: Europa, Peru, Amerika. City names are treated as foreign words (London), except when part of the name itself is a regular noun or adjective: Nov-York (Nov for nova, or "new", but the place name York is not changed as in Esperanto "Nov-Jorko"). This is not a hard and fast rule, however, and New York is also acceptable, similar to writing Köln for the city of Cologne in Germany. South Carolina becomes Sud-Karolina, much in the same way that a river called the "Schwarz River" is not transcribed as the "Black River" in English even though schwarz is the German word for black. However, less well-known place names are generally left alone, so a small town by the name of "Battle River" for example would be written the same way, and not transcribed as "Batalio-rivero". This is because transcribing a little-known place name would make it nearly impossible to find in the original language.
Studies[]
Esperanto and Ido were compared in studies at Columbia University cerca 1933:
A question which has been of interest to us is the comparative ease of learning of various artificial languages. The above records are all for Esperanto. Unfortunately we have been able to test only two groups learning Ido. Our test material is available to anyone who wishes to obtain further results. Of our two groups one comprised only four volunteer college students. The other consisted of twenty-eight educated adults who studied Ido for twenty hours as paid subjects in an experiment. We present here the outcome of our study.
- Before any study of Ido the initial test scores are higher [than Esperanto], but the gains are less except in one function—aural understanding.
- The final scores are practically the same. They are the same in vocabulary, 71.9; in terms of the sum of the three other tests, we have final scores of 44.1 for Esperanto and 45.2 for Ido. These results are, it must be remembered, for a limited number of subjects of able intellect who were working under more or less favorable conditions. Further experimentation, however, will probably bear out our conclusion that there is no great difference in difficulty in the learning of these two particular synthetic languages.
— International Auxiliary Language Association, 1933
Number of speakers[]
Esperanto is estimated to have approximately 100,000 to 2 million fluent speakers. In the same manner estimates for the number of Ido speakers are far from accurate, but 500 to a few thousand is most likely.[citation needed] It is also important to note the distinction between the number of speakers compared to the number of supporters; the two languages resemble each other enough that a few weeks of study will enable one to understand the other with little difficulty, and there are a number of people that have learned Ido out of curiosity but prefer to support the larger Esperanto movement and vice versa. The number of participants at the respective international conferences is also much different: Esperanto conferences average 2000 to 3000 participants every year whereas Ido conferences have had anywhere from 13 to 25 participants over the last decade. Each language also has a number of regional conferences during the year on a much less formal basis, and with smaller numbers.
Samples[]
The Lord's Prayer:
| Esperanto
Patro nia, kiu estas en la cielo, |
Ido
Patro nia, qua esas en la cielo, |
English
Our Father in heaven, |
Spanish
Padre Nuestro que estás en el cielo, |