Fundamento de Esperanto
The Fundamento de Esperanto (or Fundamento for short ) is a book by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof that was published in spring 1905. At the first Esperanto World Congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France on August 9, 1905, it was officially declared the foundation of Esperanto . It may no longer be changed, but allows "official additions" to the vocabulary and rules.
The Fundamento consists of four parts: Antaŭparolo (preface), Gramatiko (grammar), Ekzercaro (exercises) and Universala Vortaro (universal dictionary). With the exception of the preface and the meanwhile nine official additions ("Oficialaj Aldonoj"), the foundation comes from earlier works by Zamenhof.
For the Esperanto language, the foundation is a kind of constitution or "system document". It defines what is considered "correct" Esperanto and what is not (i.e. what is to be regarded as an inadmissible change in language).
Fundamenta Gramatiko (1887)
The Fundamenta Gramatiko is the basic grammar of Esperanto in the form of 16 rule groups, which, however, only form the framework of the grammar without going into details. Further rules are explicitly mentioned in the Ekzercaro or only given implicitly through the use of language in the individual parts of the foundation.
It is part of Unua Libro (First Book) , which was published in Warsaw in July 1887 in Russian (and soon after in other languages). The Fundamenta Gramatiko des Fundamentos is in French, English, German, Russian and Polish. The English version is considered to be the most precise. All five parts are considered equal.
The grammar consists of parts A ( the alphabet - including a few pronunciation tips , different depending on the language), B ( parts of speech - rules 1–8) and C ( general rules - rules 9–16). The grammar consists of 16 pages in A6 format.
Therefore the (unnumbered) Esperanto alphabet (with the 28 letters a, b, c, ĉ, d, e, f, g, ĝ, h, ĥ, i, j, ĵ, k, l, m, n , o, p, r, s, ŝ, t, u, ŭ, v, z (also as capitals), partial pronunciation notes and a replacement spelling for the diacritical marks) are often referred to as the 17th or zeroth rule.
The 16 rule groups
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items
- The definite article is la , the indefinite article is omitted.
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Nouns
- ... end in -o (or -oj for plural, -on / -ojn in the accusative), other cases (genitive / dative) are formed with prepositions.
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Adjectives
- ... end in -a (or -aj / -an / ajn), increase with pli ( ol = as) and plej .
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numbers
- List of elements and the educational system of numerals, rules for ordinals (-a) and related constructions (-obl-, -on-, -op-).
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Personal pronouns
- simply all 9 listed. Possessive pronouns with -a.
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Verbs
- Here the endings of the tenses (present, past, future, imperative, conditional), infinitive and participles are listed (each with an example).
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Adverbs
- ... end in -e, increase as well as adjectives
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prepositions
- ... always require the nominative.
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pronunciation
- Every word is read as it is written.
- (This has become one of the main Esperanto advertising slogans.)
- Every word is read as it is written.
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Emphasis
- always on the penultimate syllable.
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Compound words
- ... are created by stringing together the individual words, separated by dashes.
- Actually only word stems (and prefixes / affixes) are lined up, the ending comes at the end. The high- strokes fall according to a footnote in correspondence with those people who are the international language already powerful , gone - today they are generally not used (except occasionally in textbooks).
- ... are created by stringing together the individual words, separated by dashes.
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negation
- ... only happens in a sentence with ne if there is no other negative word.
- View movements
- Indications of direction are formed by the accusative (both for adverbs and tabular words with -e as well as for nouns that denote places).
- the preposition je
- ... can be used if no other preposition fits the meaning. If there is no doubt, the accusative can also be used.
- Foreign words
- ... are taken over according to Esperanto with adaptation of the orthography, but with word families only one basic word (word stem) should be taken over and the rest should then be derived according to Esperanto rules.
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Apostrophes
- The ending -o of nouns and the -a of the article can be replaced by an apostrophe.
The 16 rule groups can already be found in the Unua Libro of 1887, which was entitled "International Language" in German.
Ekzercaro (1894, 1898)
The Ekzercaro is the collection of exercises for the Fundamento. The first edition appeared in 1894 , the improved second edition, which was incorporated into the Fundamento, in 1898 . The Ekzercaro consists of 42 sections that contain a total of several hundred exercise sets. From these exercises, expression, sentence order and rules not explicitly described in the Fundamenta Gramatiko can be seen. The fairy tale "La feino" (The Fairy), a translation from the French of Les Fées by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), is divided into sections 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21 and 23 .
Universala Vortaro (1893)
The Universala Vortaro is the general dictionary of Esperanto. It was published at the end of August 1893 and, in addition to the approximately 920 roots of the Unua Libro , contained around 1,710 new roots in French, English, German, Russian and Polish, for example:
instru` instruire, owner | instruct, teach | to teach | учить | uczyć
Changes to the vocabulary specified here are not allowed due to the inviolability, but official additions decided by the Akademio de Esperanto : Oficiala Aldono.
Antaŭparolo (1905)
The Antaŭparolo is the preface to the foundation. It was written in Esperanto by Zamenhof in Warsaw in July 1905 and regulates institutions and procedures for language development. On the basis of § 4 sentence 3 of the Bulonja Deklaracio it is part of the foundation, without the vocabulary and grammar rules used in it initially belonging to the Esperanto norm; this only happened through later official additions to the Esperanto Academy.
literature
- Berlin commentary on the Fundamento of Esperanto . 2 vols. Berlin 2014, approx. 650 p. (In Esperanto)
- 57 blogeroj pri la Fundamento - 2010–2012, Berlin 2012, 270 p. (57 short articles in Esperanto on individual questions about the Fundamento)
Web links
- Text of the foundation
- German translation and explanation of the Antaŭparolo in: Bernhard Pabst. The foundation as a measure of linguistic correctness in Esperanto . In: Contributions to the 23rd annual conference of the Society for Interlinguistics eV, November 29th - December 1st, 2013 in Berlin. Edited by Cyril Brosch and Sabine Fiedler. Berlin 2014.
- Facsimile of the first edition of the Fundamento , published by Hachette et Cie, Paris 1905