Esperanto warning
« previous post | next post »
From Frederick Newmeyer: "A sign in the breakfast room of a not very classy hotel in Amsterdam:"
"The middle language is Esperanto! Who could have decided on Esperanto as the third language and who can read it? The hotel receptionists have no idea."
I don't have much to add, except that Google Ngrams suggests that Esperanto is gradually dying out:
And why the ~20 year oscillations?
HTI said,
March 23, 2026 @ 4:50 am
The Esperanto gene skips a generation
Andrew Taylor said,
March 23, 2026 @ 6:06 am
I like the terseness of the Dutch version, which Google translates as "watch your property".
The Esperanto uses the same verb (lasi, to leave) twice: "Don't leave your bags/property beyond-left", though shouldn't it be the imperative "lasu"? (From my limited knowledge of the language.) The prefix preter- is as in preternatural, which I think is the only reasonably common English word it appears in.
Google also tells me that "bieno" means "estate" or "farm", so I think they have the wrong sort of property there.
Doug said,
March 23, 2026 @ 7:21 am
And I wonder if that should be sokojn/bienon, with accusative marking, as the direct object of lasas (or lasu).
J.W. Brewer said,
March 23, 2026 @ 7:21 am
Google translate renders the Dutch into Esperanto with the terse "Gardu vian posedaĵon." Putting in the English text yields "Ne lasu sakojn/havaĵojn senatente."
Putting the English into a more traditional international auxiliary tongue yields "Noli saccos/res incustoditas relinquere." Although I would have preferred a sign using "impedimenta," the delightful word for the sort of baggage/luggage/equipment a legion might be carrying with it when it crossed the river before pitching camp in the forest in an example sentence from a beginning Latin textbook.
Janiv said,
March 23, 2026 @ 7:34 am
@Andrew Taylor
"Bieno" is indeed a farm – I think the word they should have used is simply "posedaĵoj" (you'll notice the "possess" root; the suffix "-aĵ" basically derives concrete concepts from abstract ones).
The translation is more or less "wrong from beginning to end", as the caterpillar would put it. You mention the imperative and the questionable choice of verbs; I'll add that they also omitted the accusative -n and neglected the agreement in number.
To be fair, though, if you only speak Esperanto (and neither English nor Dutch), you can probably still figure out what the sign is trying to convey.
Jake Wildstrom said,
March 23, 2026 @ 8:34 am
I would have reckoned that the periodic bursts of interest would correspond with notable anniversaries and media coverage thereof, but (a) they'd be a lot sharper most likely, and (b) they're at all the wrong times. Esperanto was invented in 1887, and 1987 (the 100th anniversary, the most obvious time for a burst of retrospective media coverage) is on the falling edge of that 70's-80's hump.
Tim Rowe said,
March 23, 2026 @ 8:46 am
I would read "preterlasita" as "omitted", so I think the other Esperanto translations offered here are probably better.
Stephen Goranson said,
March 23, 2026 @ 10:37 am
May it have been added jokingly?
Julian Hook said,
March 23, 2026 @ 11:51 am
Some years ago I discovered that Google Translate had problems with Esperanto. I happened to be looking at a printer manual that showed, in many languages, how to "clear paper jam." My curiosity aroused, I started translating that phrase into other languages. When I got to Esperanto, Google came up with "klara papera marmelado." It seemed unlikely that "marmelado" was the right word for "jam" in that context, to say the least. (Translating that back into English, I got "clear paper marmalade.") These days, Google gives an entirely different translation.
DCBob said,
March 23, 2026 @ 12:11 pm
Sunspots!
David Marjanović said,
March 23, 2026 @ 12:11 pm
I think -a is some kind of subjunctive (and gets -s added because it's a finite verb). But the accusative ending -n is definitely missing.
cliff arroyo said,
March 23, 2026 @ 12:34 pm
As a reasonably experienced user of Esperanto, The version given here is gibberish: "Packages/landholdings do not leave. Omitted."
I would write the message:
Bonvolu zorgi pri viaj posedaĵoj! (Please take care of/watch after your possessions).
A closer word for word from English might be "Ne lasu viajn pakaĵojn/posedaĵojn ne zorgataj (or "sen prizorgo")
Word for word from the Dutch might be: Zorgu viajn posedaĵojn!
If the hotel were in Rotterdam Esperanto might be more expected as the headquarters of the Universal Esperanto Association are there and about 16 years ago the Universal Congress (biggest yearly event) was held there.
cliff arroyo said,
March 23, 2026 @ 12:35 pm
"discovered that Google Translate had problems with Esperanto"
Google translate has problems with every language. It can be very useful if you know its limitations and how to mitigate those, but those who most rely on it mostly… don't.
Y said,
March 23, 2026 @ 12:58 pm
Google Ngrams suggests that Esperanto is gradually dying out
That is a subjective reading of the graph as slow decay over the past hundred years. It could also be read as pre-WW2 enthusiasm dying out, and being replaced by a steady state (with oscillations) from the end of WW2 to the present. Check again in twenty years.
CuConnacht said,
March 23, 2026 @ 2:02 pm
The only time I have come across Esperanto in the wild was on a sign in a hotel in Vilnius saying that towels to be laundered should be left on the floor. It was one of about a dozen languages.
dainichi said,
March 23, 2026 @ 11:57 pm
> Ne lasu viajn pakaĵojn/posedaĵojn ne zorgataj
Interesting. I would have expected an -n on that object complement to make it agree in both number and case with the object, but consulting with the Internet I learn that indeed it needs to agree only in number. Don't know any other language this is the case for… unless it's a Slavic style instrumental that happens to coincide with the nominative?
Michael Nash said,
March 24, 2026 @ 1:06 am
@David Marjanović -as is simply the present tense verb ending. -us is conditional or subjective, and -u is imperative (and also, unrelatedly, for individual-type correlatives), -a is the ending for adjectives, participles and kind-type correlatives.
cliff arroyo said,
March 24, 2026 @ 2:50 am
" I would have expected an -n on that object complement"
Ne lasu viajn posedaĵojn ne zorgatajn = Don't leave your unattended possessions
Ne lasu viajn posedaĵojn ne zorgataj = Don't leave your possessions unattended
the construction is usually called the predikativo (predicative) in Esperanto grammar
IIRC the idea is that there's an elided verb esti (to be)
Ne lasu viajn posedaĵojn ne zorgataj = (more or less) Ne lasu viajn posedaĵojn esti ne zorgataj (Don't leave your possessions to be unattended).
In Polish at least, the instrumental would not enter into the equation
dainichi said,
March 24, 2026 @ 4:24 am
> In Polish at least, the instrumental would not enter into the equation
I don't know Polish, and it's possible that "leave x unattended" doesn't have a fitting "object + object complement" equivalent in Polish, but in e.g. "Make the house big" "Uczynić dom dużym" or Russian "Сделать дом большим", "dużym" and "большим" are instrumental.
About object complement declension, my understanding is that accusative+number alignment is the original PIE approach. The Slavic instrumental and the German/Dutch zero marking are innovations. Of course, Esperanto isn't IE, but pretending it is, it feels like an innovation.
Bob Ladd said,
March 24, 2026 @ 4:59 am
@ Dainichi: You don't really have to pretend very hard to treat Esperanto as Indo-European!
Jarek Weckwerth said,
March 24, 2026 @ 5:14 am
@dainichi: My Russian is extremely rusty, but in Polish uczynić dom dużym belongs to a very high (almost biblical) register. No-one talks like that in real life, and as a result native intuitions are weak and frequencies are low. (Or at least they used to be. These days, the structure is enjoying its five minutes due to lazy translations of English make x y.)
With that in mind, my native-speaker intuition for the plural is that it doesn't work very well, and in particular it doesn't work very well with the passive participle that would be required by the original sentence. Uczynić domy porzuconymi 'make houses abandoned' sounds quite off to me but the solution isn't to remove either the plural or instrumental.
In the OP sentence, some kind of prepositional phrase along the lines of cliff arroyo's sen prizorgo would be needed. Also because of the verb which doesn't go very well with the instrumental.
cliff arroyo said,
March 24, 2026 @ 7:11 am
"Some kind of prepositional phrase along the lines of cliff arroyo's sen prizorgo"
bez opieki (without care) seems to be the default for unattended baggage in Polish.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
March 24, 2026 @ 3:54 pm
Yes, absolutely. You could perhaps imagine bez nadzoru 'without supervision' but station/airport announcements use bez opieki.
Which brings us to the bizarre mix of lexemes in Esperanto. Zamenhof included quite a bit of Slavic, and pri-zor-go is evidently modelled on nad-zór or something similar.
John Swindle said,
March 24, 2026 @ 3:57 pm
@cliff arroyo: It could also be "Ne lasu [viajn] posedaĵojn senzorgite." Treating it as adjectival makes sense in English, but treating it as adverbial sounds more Esperantish. I don't know how that corresponds to Russian (one of E-o creator L. L. Zamenhof's native languages).
Bybo said,
March 24, 2026 @ 4:29 pm
Well, would you look at these: (just an example, if you search for "Hygiene-Beutel für Damenbinden" you'll find other pictures, those things appear to be sold by several shops). Those can be found in apperently random hotels in Germany (and maybe elsewhere). Don't know why. The design is obviously antique.
David Y. said,
March 25, 2026 @ 10:39 pm
The 20 year oscillation is obviously related to the skirt length article posted later.
cliff arroyo said,
March 26, 2026 @ 4:29 am
" pri-zor-go is evidently modelled on nad-zór or something similar."
I'm pretty sure the root zorg- is from German sorgen, the preposition pri means 'about' so the word prizorgo means something like 'take care about sth' although ime it's most often used in organizing things so maybe 'sen zorgo' would be better.
David Marjanović said,
March 26, 2026 @ 10:43 am
Because even Un-American toilets get clogged if you try to flush those.
Definitely, but I wouldn't be surprised if Zamenhof engaged in a little phonosemantic matching here.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
March 26, 2026 @ 12:45 pm
@ cliff arroyo I'm pretty sure the root zorg- is from German sorgen — OMG of course! In retrospect it's to blindingly obvious that I'm somewhat embarrassed. What was I even thinking?
Bybo said,
March 26, 2026 @ 3:49 pm
@David Marjanović:
Don't know why the damn thing is written in Esperanto, of course! :^)
I'd be surprised to learn that Esperanto is widespread among customers of hotels in Germany, ie the intended users of those paper bags.
I suspect someone who started selling these things (in the 1950s or whatnot) was an Esperantist, and the design has never been changed because, apparently, most people are the kind of incomprehensible weirdos that doesn't read/decipher every foreign-language text they encounter, even on the most mundane items (like normal people do), and doesn't even notice what's written there, and in which languages.
But I don't know.
Bybo said,
March 26, 2026 @ 4:24 pm
PS: My last comment was (obviously) not entirely serious, but I now notice that the possibility exists that you did indeed not see the (smallish, bottom of the picture) Esperanto text, and that my answer might be read as condescending. That is not what I meant. (I took your comment as a joke.) On the contrary, I was trying to make a little bit of fun of myself, because I spend my time wondering about random utilitarian stuff I read and that more serious people don't give a moment's thought about. But I'm sorry if I made a mess.
Jonathan Badger said,
March 26, 2026 @ 6:21 pm
There is a surprising amount of German in Esperanto even though people expect primarily Romance and Slavic (Given that Zamenhof was a Polish Jew most comfortable in Russian)
amy said,
March 28, 2026 @ 1:04 am
I wonder if eigendom has anything to do with eigenvectors or eigenspaces.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
March 29, 2026 @ 12:54 pm
@amy — Yes it does. German and Dutch eigen is 'own'.