Where the Roots Come From

Foundations

Familiar roots with Esperanto spelling and Esperanto endings.

How It Works

Esperanto roots were chosen from existing languages. Most of them come from the languages of Western Europe: Latin and Romance languages such as French, and Germanic languages such as German and English. A few come from Slavic languages.

Word	Meaning	Taken from
telefono	telephone	French
hotelo	hotel	French
biero	beer	German and French
tablo	table	French and English
ŝtrumpo	stocking	German
kolbaso	sausage	Russian
ĉu	question word	Polish

A foreign root is used once, with Esperanto spelling and endings, and the related words are built from it by the rules: teatro, teatra.

Examples (4)

Hans loĝas en hotelo.
Hans is staying in a hotel.
Hotelo is the French root hotel with the noun ending -o.
Hans trinkas bieron.
Hans drinks beer.
Biero comes from the German and French words for beer.
Ewa havas novan telefonon.
Ewa has a new telephone.
Telefono is easy to guess in many languages.
La tablo de Olga estas granda.
Olga's table is big.
Tablo comes from French and English table.

How It Connects

Tap a pattern to see what it builds on and what it leads to.

Where the Roots Come FromFoundations

Learn This First

Looking at where the roots come from builds on knowing that a root carries the meaning of a word.

Words Are Built From Parts
Know that roots carry the meaning, since this lesson is about where those roots come from: telefono, hotelo, biero.
Foundations

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Patterns that build on this one.

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