Shortcut to phrasal freedom

I’m a little stunned that I don't recall visiting this PMEG page before…

It’s all about making words out of phrases (rather than just shoving roots and affixes together). It’s a goldmine of inspiration for word-building, and gets you thinking about how to really play with your words.

I’ll probably write a couple posts over time on it, and today will be concentrating on the section titled “Vortigo per A-finaĵo aŭ E-finaĵo”, which, as you may know, means something like “making a word with an A-ending or an E-ending”.

Now, you may recall that A-words (adjectives) are used to describe O-words (nouns). So if you’ve got your O-words (which show a thing or concept), you can describe the type of thing using an A-word:

melo
a badger

blua melo
a blue badger

E-words, describe everything else, and you’ll mostly see them describing actions.

ŝi kuris
she ran

ŝi rapide kuris
she ran quickly

So, what this section of the page talks about is taking a phrase of some sort, and smooshing it into a single word, and then using it to describe something where that original phrase would apply.

A simple example is the first one.

sur tablo
on a table

surtabla lampo
a table-top lamp, a lamp which is on the table (literally: on-table lamp)

You can even make an adverb version, if you’d rather describe an action:

ili sidis surtable
they sat on the table (literally: they sat on-table-ly)

Instead of:

ili sidis sur la tablo

Just look at the flexibility of those examples on that page though!

This one’s really cool:

kun blanka ĉapelo
with a white hat

You could be boring and start a sentence as below, which is going to be slow-starting and lengthy despite the simple property you’re trying to express:

la homo kun blanka ĉapelo…
the person with a white hat...

Or you could set yourself up for a more interesting/complex yet succinct sentence with:

la blankĉapela homo…
the person with a white hat / the white-hatted person...

Ain’t that grand?

Here’s one that I just thought of:

en la dorsa poŝo
in the back pocket

Becomes:

la endorspoŝa telefono…
the back-pocketed phone… / the phone in the back pocket…

Written out long you’d have to go for:

la telefono, kiu estas en la dorsa poŝo…
the phone which is in the back pocket...

Ĝis!