You have now learned, one hopes, that in a glorious thunderstorm you can cry out, in Esperanto:
Brile fulmis, laŭte tondros!
This should be enough for you, if you live in the Midwest. In some other parts of the country, however, we occasionally have thunderstorms that are a little bit inglorious. (1) How to describe them? In English and many other languages, to do so you'll have to learn a whole new set of words. In Esperanto, it's quite possible to make do with the ones you already know. You can do this in the traditional way, by applying an affix.
Affix is a general technical term for prefix or suffix. You've already learned a couple of suffixes, which go on the end of the word's root, right before the ending: eg and et. A prefix, which is what we'll be using here, is even easier to use: you simply tack it onto the beginning of the word, before everything else.
There is a prefix in Esperanto which is used to turn a word into its antonym. (2) This is mal. How to use it? Take the word (we learned it in the last lesson)
forte = strongly
By applying mal we get the word
malforte = weakly; without the ability to cause changes
You can now say, for an inglorious thunderstorm:
Malbrile fulmis, mallaŭte tondros!
For information (but you don't need to use them now) there are a couple of other prefixes that can be used to similar effect; the distinctions are usually minor. Actually, these are not prefixes but other words used as prefixes. One of them, you've already encountered: ne
neforte = not strongly.
This simply means that there is an absence of strength, not the direct opposite. For some words, the distinction is unimportant; in that case, use whichever word you want. For others, it may be important; there's a spectrum from "X" through "absence of X" to "opposite of X".
The other "prefix" (which is actually a preposition used as a prefix) is sen, which generally means "without". This is usually used with words that mean things, to show their absence. For instance, take the root kuraĝ'.
kuraĝe = bravely
nekuraĝe = in the absence of courage
senkuraĝe = without courage
malkuraĝe = cravenly (3)
Important note: using one affix doesn't prevent you from using others. You can use mal, ne or sen on the beginning of a word, and eg or et in the same word. (Since eg and et have opposite meanings however, you probably don't want to use them together, unless you're aiming at incongruity ...)
(1) Pay attention to this English word, whose structure has some bearing on the rest of this lesson.
(2) An antonym is a word that means the opposite (more or less exact) of some other word.
(3) The first word that comes to mind here is "cowardly", but unfortunately "cowardly" is one of those words -- not particularly rare, but certainly not common -- in English in which the adjective form ends in -ly, and so can't be converted to an adverb by adding another -ly. We're forced to either use a prepositional phrase (e.g. "in a cowardly way") or find some other word, as I've done here.
Posted by Don Harlow at February 22, 2004 08:55 AM | TrackBack