Esperanto Language Blog

…Majajn florojn! I haven’t been able to think about anything but flowers today. My neighbors across the street have a beautiful gxardeno that they’ve worked hard to cultivate. The results are wonderful…They have so many different types of flowers, all colorful and healthy.

Similar to last week’s entry on insektoj, there are plenty of Esperanto words for specific types of floroj, as well. Here I’ll list a few of them, so when you find a particularly notable specimen in your neighbor’s garden, you can compliment them on it using the most descriptive word available to you!

Daffodil – Narciso (think of “Narcissus,” the flower’s genus)
Daisy – Lekanteto
Nasturtium – Tropeolo
Tulip – Tulipo
Crocus – Krokuso
Violet – Violo
Buttercup – Ranunkolo
Dandelion – Leontodo (not quite a flower, perhaps, but occupies most of my garden!)

Who says procrastination is a bad thing? It has the English prefix “pro-,” which usually connotes a good thing. We didn’t call it “concrastination” for a reason!

In Esperanto, we have the English cognate verb “prokrasti,” which means “to procrastinate.” (Don’t bother trying to break “prokrasti” into various parts – there is no word “krasti” yet, even if “pro-” is a valid Esperanto prefix.) For native English speakers, the use of “prokrasti” makes sense to us intuitively. But, for someone as lazy as myself, who considers procrastination a necessary part of life, I wonder if we could make an Esperanto word that means the same thing as “prokrasti” (to put off), but conveys all the “positive” aspects of the English verb.

So far, I’ve come up with these two possibilities:

“Bonatendi” – combining the adjective “bona,” meaning “good,” and the verb “atendi,” meaning “to wait.”

“Bonmalfruigxi” – here we have “bona” again, coupled with “fruigxi” (to become late, roughly), and the opposite-inducing “mal.”

How would you think to express the good side of procrastination?

The seasons where I live have been confusing as possible these past two months. My winter was about five months long, and only in mid-April did the last snows go away. In my mind, it’s more spring than summer. And it’s only reinforced by all the springtime insektoj!

You can call most any bug on its own a mere insekto, and an Esperantist will understand vaguely what you mean. But, if you want to be more specific, there are special words for a great many of the insects out there. Here are some you might encounter in the spring, or other warmer months.

Libelo = Dragonfly
Moskito = Mosquito
Kulo = Gnat
Vespo = Wasp
Abelo = Bee
Papilio = Butterfly

(This last one I find really amusing. “Papo” means “Pope” in Esperanto, so a butterfly could be broken down and found to contain words that mean a tool of the Pope. Any punsters out there want to try making a joke out of that?)