Hungarian (agglutinative): népbiztos (nép = people; biztos = commissar)
Chinese (isolating): rénmín-wĕiyuán (rénmín = people; wĕiyuán = commissar)
The German structure in this case is more closely related to that of languages in other categories such as Hungarian or Chinese than to languages in the same, Indo-European language family such as French:
commissaire du peuple (literally, ‘commissar of the people’)
or Russian:
narodnyj komissar (literally, ‘people (adj.) commissar’).
Another example is presented by the possessive adjectives. They are independent words substituting for the relevant noun in the majority of inflecting languages. Thus ‘my father’ is mon père in French and moj otec in Russian in just the same way as it is wŏde fùqīn in Chinese, an isolating language. But another system, which uses suffixes in a way at first glance typically characteristic of the agglutinative languages (Turkish baba ‘father’ but babam ‘my father’) turns up also in some inflectional languages:
Persian (Indo-European): pidar = father — pidaram = my father,
Arabic (Semitic): ab = father — abi = my father.
As a third example, let us take negation. The structure
exists in all three categories:
Russian (inflectional): ja ne ponimaju (I don’t understand)
Hungarian (agglutinative): én nem értem
Chinese (isolating): wŏ bù dŏng.
On the other hand, the reverse also occurs, and languages of the same category or even the same family may have different negative structures. To the same “inflectional” group and the same “Indo-European” family also belong:
| German: | ich verstehe nicht | literally: I understand not |
| French: | je ne comprends pas | literally: I not understand not |
| English: | I do not understand | literally: I make not understand |
We see that it would be wrong to base our argument on separate traits like those just mentioned when addressing the question of where Esperanto is situated among languages. The criterion defined at the beginning; namely, the proportion of the morphemes in which variation is possible, is much more precise and seems more appropriate. Nevertheless, since adepts of traditional classification will perhaps not accept it, we will also consider various other traits that are perhaps less significant but which still can help to locate Esperanto a little better in the vast spectrum of the languages of Europe and Asia.
Let us suppose that centuries after a catastrophe has destroyed our civilization, archaeologists from a new culture little by little rediscover documents written in the languages of the present time, which had vanished till then. One of them uncovers texts in Esperanto and asks himself how this language is situated relative to the others.
In one of the documents he encounters the phrase Li legis multajn seriozajn librojn, ‘He read many serious books’. At first glance he concludes that it is a typical inflectional language because of the grammatical agreement between the adjectives and the corresponding nouns (as in several Indo-European and Semitic languages). Looking at the stock of words, he proposes the hypothesis that Esperanto is an Indo-European language. Studying the matter further, he finds confirmation of this thesis, for example, in seeming word families like the following ones, which he notices in recovered parts of a dictionary:
| direkcio (management) | direkti (manage) | direktoro (manager) |
| redakcio (editorial department) | redakti (edit) | redaktoro (editor) |
or like:
| fragmento (fragment) | fragila (fragile) | frakasi (smash) |
|---|---|---|
| frakcio (fraction) | frakturo (fracture) |
which seem at first glance to be united by the concept of breaking. He concludes therefore that in Esperanto there exist formal families of words similar to those of the Romance languages. Among other things he notes the alternation of two roots (direkc/direkt and frag/frak) with the same meaning value. According to this archaeologist, Esperanto is therefore an inflectional, Indo-European Romance language.
But let us suppose he does not limit his investigation to that. Continuing his research, he begins to realize that chance initially delivered to him an abnormal specimen (a dictionary), and that in Esperanto there are also other sorts of families of words, actually much more frequent, where each new word is formed by an invariant root and affixes of fixed form:
| simpl-a | simple |
| simpl-ig-i | simplify |
| simpl-ig-ebl-a | simplifiable |
| simpl-ig-ebl-ec-o | simplifiability |
This system, by which one regularly forms new words by adding affixes to invariant roots, is traditionally considered typical of agglutinative languages. Our archaeologist ascertains that this system is much more productive (i.e. comprises a much larger proportion of ordinary text) than the system of alternating roots like frak/frag. Indeed the alternating-root system proves to be very much the exception. He concludes that Esperanto belongs to the agglutinative group, which is perfectly confirmed by such verbal forms as li resanigeblis ‘he was curable’ or la raporto tradukendos ‘the report will have to be translated’, which flawlessly evoke the verbal system of Turkish.
But, plunging yet deeper into his studies, he notices also that the “affixes” behave exactly like any other semanteme, with an ability to stand alone that is not found in the agglutinative languages. Affixes indeed are found entirely by themselves (with, of course, the final vowel): aro, ebla, iĝi, eco, and so on, and in combination with each other: ebliĝi, arigi, ebleco, aĉularo, and the like.
Now is not the tendency of morphemes to stand alone the primary characteristic traditionally attributed to isolating languages? Esperanto in this respect shows itself more isolating than Chinese! The affixes of Turkish, Hungarian and other agglutinative languages, for their part, are true affixes, always linked to other semantemes, and not independent words, as are the inaccurately named “affixes” of Esperanto.
His curiosity piqued, our archaeologist decides to look for other factors that might argue in favor of structural similarity between Esperanto and the isolating languages. And he gathers an abundance of them. Forms like:
ĝis nun (till now)
ĝisnuna (hitherto — adjective)
mi (I)
mia (my)
mia lando (my country)
mialanda (of my country)
These all make him think of Chinese word formation. So does the fact that in the same article — we may pretend he found the 69th volume of the journal Esperanto from 1976, or anyway page 61 of it — he finds both estrarkunsido and estrara kunsido, obviously with the same meaning, and clearly typical of the Chinese tendency to use or omit at will the sign of modification de:
| estrar-kunsido | zhíxíngchù-hùiyì |
| estrara kunsido | zhíxíngchùde hùiyì |
| (meeting of board directors) | |
|---|---|
Is Esperanto then an isolating language?