Editing Esperanto (section)

=== Classification ===

Esperanto has been described as "a language [[Lexicon|lexically]] predominantly [[Romance languages|Romanic]], [[morphology (linguistics)|morphologically]] intensively [[agglutination|agglutinative]], and to a certain degree [[isolating languages|isolating]] in character".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Blanke |first=Detlev |title=Internationale Plansprachen. Eine Einführung |trans-title=International Planned Languages. An Introduction |journal=Sammlung Akademie-Verlag |publisher=Akademie-Verlag |year=1985 |issn=0138-550X}}</ref> Approximately 80% of Esperanto's vocabulary is derived from Romance languages, and the remainder primarily from [[German language|German]], [[Greek language|Greek]] and [[Slavic languages|Slavic]] languages.<ref name="Koutny 2015 p. 106"/> New words are formed through extensive use of affixes and [[Compound (linguistics)|compounds]].

[[Linguistic typology|Typologically]], Esperanto has [[Preposition and postposition|prepositions]] and a [[information flow|pragmatic word order]] that by default is ''[[Subject–verb–object word order|subject–verb–object]]'' (SVO). Adjectives can be freely placed before or after the nouns they modify, though placing them before the noun is more common.<ref name="Koutny 2015 ch. Typology">{{cite book | chapter=A typological description of Esperanto as a natural language| author=Ilona Koutny|editor=Ilona Koutny | title=Interlingwistyka i Esperantologia | date=2015 | isbn=978-83-63664-96-1 | pages=43–62| publisher=Wydawnictwo Rys}}</ref><ref name="Tonkin 2010"/> The [[article (grammar)|article]] {{lang|eo|la}} "the", [[demonstrative]]s such as {{lang|eo|tiu}} "that" and [[preposition]]s (such as {{lang|eo|ĉe}} "at") must come before their related nouns. Similarly, the negative {{lang|eo|ne}} "not" and [[Grammatical conjunction|conjunctions]] such as {{lang|eo|kaj}} "and" and {{lang|eo|ke}} "that" must precede the [[phrase]] or [[clause]] that they introduce. In [[copula (linguistics)|copular]] (A = B) clauses, word order is just as important as in English: "people are animals" is distinguished from "animals are people".

Esperanto's [[phonology]], [[grammar]], [[vocabulary]], and [[semantics]] are based on the [[Indo-European languages]] spoken in Europe. Beside his native Yiddish and (Belo)Russian, Zamenhof studied German, Hebrew, Latin, English, Spanish, Lithuanian, Italian, French, Aramaic and [[Volapük]], knowing altogether something of 13 different languages, which had an influence on Esperanto's linguistic properties.<ref>''Prace Komisji Spraw Europejskich PAU''. Tom II, pp. 40-41. Ed. Andrzej Pelczar. Krak'ow: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 2008, 79 pp.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Devlin |first=Thomas Moore |date=April 25, 2019 |title=What Is Esperanto, And Who Speaks It? |url=https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-many-people-speak-esperanto-and-where-is-it-spoken |access-date=2022-05-14 |website=Babbel Magazine |language=en |quote=Evidence also shows that he learned Yiddish from his mother and that he studied German, English, Spanish, Lithuanian, Italian and French. In addition, Zamenhof learned the classical languages Hebrew, Latin and Aramaic in school. Esperanto was not even the first constructed language he'd dealt with. First, he learned a bit of Volapük, which was invented in Germany almost a decade before Esperanto. Having command of so many languages had a tremendous impact on his creation of Esperanto, which would be Zamenhof's 14th language.}}</ref>

Esperantist and linguist [[Ilona Koutny]] notes that Esperanto's vocabulary, phrase structure, agreement systems, and semantic typology are similar to those of Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. However, Koutny and Esperantist [[Humphrey Tonkin]] also note that Esperanto has features that are atypical of Indo-European languages spoken in Europe, such as its agglutinative morphology.<ref name="Koutny 2015 ch. Typology"/><ref name="Tonkin 2010">{{cite book | last=Tonkin | first=Humphrey | title=Studies in World Language Problems | chapter=10. The semantics of invention: Translation into Esperanto | publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company | publication-place=Amsterdam | volume=3 | date=2010 | pages=169–190 | isbn=978-90-272-2834-5 | doi=10.1075/wlp.3.15ton}}</ref> Claude Piron argued that Esperanto word-formation has more in common with that of Chinese than with [[Standard Average European|typical European languages]], and that the number of Esperanto features shared with Slavic languages warrants the identification of a Slavic-derived stratum of language structure that he calls the "Middle Plane".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm|title=Esperanto: european or asiatic language?|last=Piron|first=Claude|date=1981|author-link=Claude Piron}}</ref> A 2010 [[Linguistic typology|linguistic typological]] study concluded that "Esperanto is indeed somewhat European in character, but considerably less so than the European languages themselves."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Parkvall|first=Mikael|date=2010-04-01|title=How European is Esperanto?: A typological study*|url=http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/lplp.34.1.04par|journal=Language Problems and Language Planning|language=en|volume=34|issue=1|pages=63–79|doi=10.1075/lplp.34.1.04par|issn=0272-2690|access-date=November 6, 2021|archive-date=November 6, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211106190107/https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/lplp.34.1.04par|url-status=live}}</ref>