Lukas' weblog

✍️ Written on 2021-04-25 in 2534 words.
Part of languages Esperanto English German

Motivation

Constructing languages can be done along various dimensions. Simplicity in vocabulary, naturalism, or syntactic unambiguity shall be given as example. Esperanto has a cultural rationale to serve as universal second language in order to provide a lingua franca (or at least, this is my interpretation of Zamenhof’s statements).

Regularity is something every language learner desires. If you can ask “tu es heureux” and use the interrogative word “est-ce que” to turn it into a question “est-ce que tu es heureux”, you expect it to work for any statement/question pair. As a language learner you are looking for such rules to make your studies easier. And regularity is key is make studies easier. On the contrary, the noun-article association (i.e. der/die/das) in German has very few rules and feels arbitrary.

Esperanto as conlang feels more regular to me than any natural language. Even though Esperanto is far from perfect, in my humble opinion regularity in Esperanto peaks in the “table of correlatives”. Let me show you.

English table of correlatives

So, the idea of the table is simple: we take two dimensions and consider the vocabulary for the intersection. For example, the intersection of “universal/every/each” (column) with “time” (row) is “always”. For English, the table looks as follows:

Table 1. English table of correlatives
	Interrogative	Demonstrative	Indefinite	Universal	Negative
Kind of, sort of	what kind of, what a	that kind of, such a	some kind of	every kind of	no kind of
Reason	why	therefore, hence	for some reason	for all reasons	for no reason
Time	when	then	at some time, once	always	never
Place	where	there	somewhere	everywhere	nowhere
Motion	[to] where, whither	[to] there, thither	[to] somewhere	[to] everywhere	[to] nowhere
Manner	how, as, like, such that	thus, as, so	somehow	in every way	no-how, in no way
Possessive	whose	its, that one’s	someone’s	everyone’s, everybody’s	no one’s
Demonstrative pronoun	what	that	something	everything	nothing
Amount	how much	that much	some, a little, a bit	all	none
Demonstrative determiner	who, which one, which X	that one, that X	someone, a certain X, some X	everyone, each X, all X's	no one, no X

With this table, I learned about the vocabularies „whither“ and „thither“.

German table of correlatives

Table 2. German table of correlatives
	Interrogativ	Demonstrativ	Indefinit	Universal	Negativ
Sorte	welches, was für ein	dieses	eines	jedes	keines
Grund	wieso, warum	darum, deswegen	weshalb, aufgrund	weshalb immer	grundlos
Zeit	wann	dann	einmal	immer	nie, niemals
Ort	wo	dort	irgendwo	überall	nirgends
Richtung	wohin	dorthin	irgendwo hin	überall hin	nirgendwo hin
Art	wie	so	irgendwie	auf jede Art	nirgendwie, auf keine Weise
Possessiv	wessen	dessen	jemandes	jedermann’s	niemandes
Demonstrativpronom	welches	dieses	etwas	alles	nichts
Menge	wieviel	soviel	etwas	alles	nichts
Demonstrativbegleiter	welches	dieses	jenes	jedes X	kein X

As far as German is concerned, it was not easy to find words for all the different cases:

My choice for “for no reason” (i.e. “grundlos”) is unusual. “grundlos” does not feel like a correlative, but a regular adjective. You could also translate it as “weshalb niemals”. Or more generically: pick any word of this line and add a negation (kein/nie/nicht). These feel more like correlatives, but are less specific.
Many words repeat between “Sorte”, “Demonstrativpronom”, and “Demonstrativebegleiter”. Also between “Menge” and “Demonstrativpronom”.
One funny archaic aspect is the use of the et- prefix. Instead of “irgendwo”, you could say “etwo” (I use it, it is arachic to other people in my social circle). This follows the principle of “was” → “etwas” (common in Standard German). The same can be generalized to “wie” → “etwie” (I don’t think anyone uses this one). However, “etwessen” or “etwelches” sounds completely foreign.
Also important, I think my table is influenced by my dialect (Carinthian, South Austrian). Someone from Germany might come up with a different table. One example, I can come up is: I would not say “nirgendwo hin”, but “nirgends hin”. For this instance, I picked the one closer to Standard German explicitly.

Slovenian table of correlatives

Disclaimer: Kudos to Anita who contributed this table!

Table 3. Slovenian table of correlatives
	vprašalni	demonstrativni	nedoločni	univerzalni	negativni
umetnost	kakšen	takšen	nekakšen	vsakršen [vsakšen]	Nikakšen / nikakršen
razlog	zakaj	zato
čas	kdaj	tedaj	nekdaj	[vsekdar], vselej, vedno	nikdar
kraj	kje	tam	nekje	povsod	nikjer
smer	kam	tja	nekam		nikamor
način	kako	tako	nekako		nikakor
posesti
demonstrativni zaimek	kaj	to	nekaj	vse	nič
znesek	koliko	toliko	nekoliko	vse	nič
demonstrativni določnik	kdo	ta	nekdo	vsi	nihče

Now the Slowenian case is also very interesting. If you look at English, you will find shared prefixes and suffixes (wh-, th-, every-, some-, -here). German is more chaotic, but some can be found as well (we-, irgend-).

Another consistency is that you can replace the prefix to switch from Interrogative to Demonstrative (engl. “when” → “then”, “where” → “there”) (dt. “wann” → “dann”, “wessen” → “dessen”).

What about Slovenian? Slovenian uses prefixes and suffixes a lot (k-, t-, ne-, vs-, -kšen, -ies, -liko). It is much more structured than German or English.

The Esperanto case

	demanda	pruva	nedifinita	universala	negativa
vario	kia	tia	ia	ĉia	nenia
kialo	kial	tial	ial	ĉial	nenial
tempo	kiam	tiam	iam	ĉiam	neniam
loko	kie	tie	ie	ĉie	nenie
direkto	kien	tien	ien	ĉien	nenien
arto	kiel	tiel	iel	ĉiel	neniel
posedo	kies	ties	ies	ĉies	nenies
Pruva pronomo	kio	tio	io	ĉio	nenio
kvanto	kiom	tiom	iom	ĉiom	neniom
Pruva difinilo	kiu	tiu	iu	ĉiu	neniu

demanda

pruva

nedifinita

universala

negativa

vario

kia

tia

ĉia

nenia

kialo

kial

tial

ial

ĉial

nenial

tempo

kiam

tiam

iam

ĉiam

neniam

loko

kie

tie

ĉie

nenie

direkto

kien

tien

ien

ĉien

nenien

arto

kiel

tiel

iel

ĉiel

neniel

posedo

kies

ties

ies

ĉies

nenies

Pruva pronomo

kio

tio

ĉio

nenio

kvanto

kiom

tiom

iom

ĉiom

neniom

Pruva difinilo

kiu

tiu

ĉiu

neniu

Now, this peaks in the case of Esperanto. All the words are made up of prefixes and suffixes. If you don’t remember the vocabulary for “always”, just combine the prefix for “Universal” (column) and the suffix for “Time” (row) ⇒ “ĉiam”.

Of course, comparing a conlang to natural languages is unfair, but I just wanted to share this beauty of Esperanto.

Conclusion

Of course the question arises ‘Was Esperanto designed this way?’. The answer is yes.

In general, L.L. Zamenhof (i.e. inventor of Esperanto) seemed to base the table on Russian.
- Slovenian correlatives are quite regular. Slovenian is a South Slavic language. Russian is an East Slavic language. They share some grammatical familiarity. This might indicate that Russian has quite regular correlatives.
- My understanding of Russian is only two weeks old, but yeah, it seems to be regular.
- Esperanto shares many familiarities with Slavic languages. Zamenhof himself was raised in a Russian part of Poland and was fluent in Russian. Russian is considered as one design influence of Esperanto.
infogalactic.com has an article about pro-forms. Correlatives are instances of pro-forms.
The paper “The Case of Correlatives: A Comparison between Natural and Planned Languages” discusses correlatives in various languages. But they do not discuss Russian.
User ‘Charotte SL’ points to a Scienca revuo article by Karl Ammer; an indologist from Vienna. He detects a relation between regularities in Esperanto and regularities in Sanskrit.

In the end, the historical context is confusing, but the table was certainly planned. And it is awesome!

Esperanto's table of correlatives