Esperanto Language Blog

One of my neighbors will soon graduate with a degree in Music Education. Per her request, here are some words for expressing your choice of musical instrument in Esperanto! I couldn’t hope to represent an entire orchestra’s worth of instruments, but I figured I would offer you a list of some of the more common instruments you might have encountered. The world of music is vast…much too much to cover in a single post, so feel free to comment with any additions!

Instrument – instrumento
Guitar – gitaro
Bass – basagitaro
Drum – tamburo
Violin – violono
Saxophone – saksofono
Trumpet – trumpeto
Oboe – hobojo
Trombone – trombono
Cello – violoncxelo

Perhaps it’s because I’m a student of philosophy, but I find that I deal with lots of “-isms” on a daily basis. Taoism, capitalism, anarchism…There are a great many schools of thought out there. Much like the English suffix “-ism,” there is an Esperanto infix that means virtually the same thing. Try using “-ism-” when you want to indicate a school of thought in Esperanto.

As a word of warning, don’t be tempted to drop the “i” that might be a part of your root word. For example, the word “anarchy” in Esperanto is “anarkio.” If we wanted to say “anarchism,” we would use the root “anarki-,” and add “-ism-,” then finally our concluding “-o.” The end result “anarkiismo.” I’m sure you’ll be cautious in your use, but it never hurts to remind oneself!

A recent blood drive I attended has me in a medical mindset. It occurred to me how infrequently I’ve heard medical terms used in Esperanto, since so much of my Esperanto communication over the years has been through writing! Although (with luck!) you may never find yourself in an emergency situation that requires you to note areas of your body, or describe an emergency in general, it could prove helpful to know at least a handful of words for such a scenario. Here are a few. Je via sano!

Emergency – krizo (think English “crisis”)
Bleeding – sangellaso
Injury/Wound – vundo
Broken Bone – rompita osto
Arm – brako
Leg – gambo
Body – korpo
Accident – akcidento
Ambulance – ambulanco
Surgery – kirurgio
“Help me!” – “Helpu min!”