Esperanto Language Blog

PIV online!

Perhaps you’ve heard of the largest Esperanto-Esperanto dictionary called the Plena Ilustrita Vortaro (PIV)? Well, now you can access PIV online! It’s still in beta, so you will have to sign up for a free account to access it (if you already have a lernu account, you can login with that). Then enter any word and you’ll see its definition in a well-formatted entry as you can see on the right. Also, if you don’t understand one of the abbreviations in the entry, like (tr) which means something is a transitive verb, you can just move your mouse over the abbreviation to see what it means (or tap on a tablet computer).

You might find it difficult to learn a language without having translations into your native language, but I find this method much better for truly understanding a language. In any foreign language, I recommend first looking up a word in a beginner’s dictionary of its own language, then trying to understand it from there. Most of the time you’ll succeed! When not, you can look up the other words in the definition until you figure it out, like a challenging puzzle. I used this method a lot for learning French and found it helped me a lot.

Another reason I’m really happy to see PIV online is that the cost of the book is often prohibitive for students, people living in less developed countries or even those who want to just dip their toes in the language, but don’t see themselves spending $103 to buy it from Esperanto-USA. The largest Esperanto bookseller, the Universal Esperanto Association, is currently out of stock, but previously sold it for €93. Unfortunately, you have to log in to view this material. This is particularly unfortunate as it will make it difficult to show this amazing tool to our non-Esperanto speaking friends, since most people won’t register for an account just to view a dictionary in a language they don’t speak. Hopefully they will remove this barrier when the site ends its beta period, but there has currently been no answer from Education@Internet as to the reason for this restriction.

This should, however, give every Esperanto speaker one more tool at their disposal, especially when writing. It will also be a huge help at congresses, because very few people want to carry the thick and heavy PIV in their luggage while travelling abroad. Then when there is a language question, one quick look at a smart phone or laptop should resolve the argument… and we know Esperanto speakers love to argue about proper word usage!

I would like to end by remembering a conversation with Flavio Rebello who runs the news portal Nunonia (more well-known for previously running Ĝangalo.com). He used a somewhat obscure word in one of his articles and I mentioned that the word cannot be found in the Reta Vortaro, so therefore people will have difficulty understanding the article. He replied saying that Ĝangalo isn’t a news portal for beginners and doesn’t want to have to dumb down his vocabulary, because this is an important news source. In retrospect, I have to agree with his answer. In any case, I hope the online PIV will help you express yourself better and improve your understanding of Esperanto. Try it out now at vortaro.net!

For more details about the work behind the online PIV, see the following article at Libera Folio: Reta PIV fine aperos (in Esperanto)

Update: I have since learned that the login was a requirement from SAT, which publishes the book. They feared that people would run automated scripts to download the entire work. So, if you want this changed, complain to them.

Do you know someone who needs to be able to read an Esperanto text aloud, but doesn’t speak Esperanto? Perhaps, they want to read a speech at an Esperanto conference or perhaps you want to play an Esperanto part in a play or movie? Maybe you just want to impress your friends with your mad language skillz? I’m going to show you how to pronounce Esperanto in one quick, easy lesson. The Esperanto alphabet does not have q, w, x, or y. Instead, it includes the letters ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ü.

La alfabeto de Esperanto (License: CC BY-SA 3.0 by Tanja Borzel)

I would recommend taking the time now to listen to the entire alphabet on lernu.net to get a general feel for the letters. Note that when saying a letter, it is simply the sound for vowels and the sound followed by o for consonants. Thus the beginning of the alphabet sounds like ah, bo, tso, cho, doh, eh.

Now, you might be wondering, why add special characters? Well, when Zamenhof was creating Esperanto, he had no problem typing any of these letters on his typewriter. I don’t think anyone could have imagined that technology would “evolve” in such a way that it would no longer be possible to easily type them. You’ll notice in English that there are many ways to pronounce the same written letters. Notice the classic example of ough. If you had never learned English, how would you now how to pronounce cough, tough, though and thought. I especially like the city of Loughborough, England. How do you pronounce it?! Unless you’re from England, you probably have no idea! The first ough like tough, last like though… yes, pronounced different in the same word!

He added these extra characters, so that each letter can only have exactly one way to pronounce it. Not only that, but the stress of each word always falls on the next-to-last syllable. That means if you see an Esperanto word, you always know how to pronounce it! Well, that is once you learn the letters, but as an English speaker, you already know how to pronounce quite a lot of them already. The following are obvious: b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, s, t, v, and z. Now, let’s look at the rest.

Those vowels

a like ah
e like net
i like meet
o like hope
u like boot

Note that these should be pure vowel sounds, which can be difficult for English speakers.

The consonants

c like bats (remember this one!)
g like got
j like year
r similar to the Spanish r (you can pronounce it like the English r and be understood, you may just be laughed at)

Consonants with hats

ĉ like chat
ĝlike giant
ĥ like the Scottish loch (a bit hard to master, but fortunately it’s a pretty rare letter in modern Esperanto)
ĵ like pleasure
ŝ like sh

The letter ŭ

That just leaves ŭ. You will usually find this letter in one of the following combinations: aŭ and eŭ.

aŭ like how
eŭ like Elmer Fudd’s “vewy vewy cewfuw” (very, very careful)

In those rare cases where ŭ is used at the beginning of a word, just consider it a w.

Now, please listen to the entire alphabet again. If you’re doing a recording, it would really be best to make sure someone can check your pronunciation as it can be easy to forget a letter as you’re recording an entire text for the first time.

Special thanks to Tanja Borzel for creating the alphabet graphic above especially for this post! Note that since it is under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, you may use and modify this image given that you publish this image under the same license in your works.