So recently as I’ve been studying Esperanto, I’ve stumbled across something really cool, and a little… weird.
In Esperanto you can modify an adjective to use it like a verb. It’s somewhat akin to the English concept of the gerund, using a verb as a noun, like “swimming.” But while that feels natural to me, this other thing feels distinctly odd.
I’m happy to give you an example. You could say, “I’m happy” as…
Mi estas feliĉa.
But you can also write it as….
Mi feliĉas.
Which is sort of.. “I’m happy-ing.” Semantically they mean exactly the same thing. But stylistically, that second one is sort of oddball. It’s like speaking with a weird accent, maybe. I did a little digging, even found a note on the Esperanto stack overflow about it. (And who the heck would have guessed there even was an Esperanto stack overflow, am I right?)
Okay, so why do I care about this, and why should you? What’s the granda afero, the big deal here?
A few things.
First, using that odd style makes your Esperanto a bit less English-like, and more compact. So if you’re going for speaking discretely in public, making it harder for casual listeners to suss out what you’re saying, this helps with that.
If you’re a big, telling their little that their naughty behavior makes you unhappy,
Via fia konduto malŝatas min.
is a bit harder to discern for nosy vanillas than
Mi malŝatas vian malbonan konduton.
Second, that adjective-as-verb business is kind of a language hack for expressing certain ideas in consensual power exchange and ageplay relationships. Take the concept of feeling, getting, or being made to feel “little.” It’s super awkward in English to say that someone “littles” you. They make-you-feel little, or make-you-become little. Snuggling your favorite teddy bear might do that, for example. But there’s not a good, compact way to express the idea in English.
But not so in Esperanto. Take this sentence for example.
Panjo, ŝi malgrandigas min enmetante min en vindotukon.
That is, “Mommy, she makes me feel little by putting me in a diaper.”" Literally, “Mommy, she littles me, by putting me in a diaper.”
I think that is cool as hell.