# What is Esperanto based on? Where its words come from

Source: https://esperantopedia.org/about/word-origins/
Language: en
Updated: 2026-10-29

> About 70% of common Esperanto roots come from Latin, French and other Romance languages, 24% from Germanic ones. Data from 4,006 roots, with examples.

Esperanto is not based on one language. Its roots come mainly from **Latin and the Romance languages** (French, Italian, Spanish), about a quarter from **Germanic languages** (German, English, Yiddish), and a few percent from Slavic, Greek and other languages. In our analysis of the 1,000 most frequent Esperanto roots (843 with usable etymology data; 7 October 2026), **69% were Romance, 24% Germanic, 4% Slavic, 1% Greek and 2% from other languages**. The grammar is not copied from any one language either. It is a small regular system of unchanging parts, closer in structure to agglutinative languages than to the Romance languages that supplied most roots.

## Our analysis of Wiktionary etymologies

We matched the roots of the Reta Vortaro (ReVo) dictionary to the English Wiktionary, which records for many Esperanto words the languages they were borrowed from. Of 12,680 roots (after removing affixes and proper names), 4,006 have a named foreign source. Among the 1,000 most frequent roots, ranked in 822,296 Tatoeba sentences, 843 do. Of the 2,654 roots that ReVo marks as part of the *Fundamento* (1905), 1,931 do.

| Source family | Top 1,000 roots | *Fundamento* roots | All roots with data | Running text |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Romance (Latin, French, Italian…) | 69% | 66% | 60% | 74% |
| Germanic (German, English, Yiddish…) | 24% | 25% | 24% | 21% |
| Slavic (Russian, Polish, Czech…) | 4% | 5% | 5% | 3% |
| Greek | 1% | 2% | 5% | 1% |
| Other (Arabic, Japanese, Finnish…) | 2% | 2% | 6% | 1% |
| Roots analysed | 843 | 1,931 | 4,006 | 2.9 million occurrences |

Roots with sources in several families, such as *familio* "family" (German, French, Italian, English), are split equally. "Running text" weights each root by how often it occurs in the Tatoeba sentences. A second ranking from Zamenhof's *Fundamenta Krestomatio* (1903) gives almost the same result: 71% Romance, 22–23% Germanic.

### Purely Romance, purely Germanic or mixed

In 26% of the top 1,000 roots, the sources span more than one family.

| Family | Only this family | Named among the sources |
|---|---|---|
| Romance | 488 roots (58%) | 693 (82%) |
| Germanic | 118 (14%) | 310 (37%) |
| Slavic | 7 (0.8%) | 72 (8.5%) |
| Greek | 6 (0.7%) | 14 (1.7%) |
| Other | 7 (0.8%) | 20 (2.4%) |
| Several families | 217 (26%) | – |

The "named" column adds up to more than 100%.

### Languages named most often

| Language | Top 1,000 roots | All roots with data |
|---|---|---|
| Latin | 45% | 40% |
| French | 42% | 33% |
| Italian | 28% | 19% |
| English | 25% | 23% |
| German | 21% | 20% |
| Russian | 6% | 9% |
| Polish | 6% | 8% |
| Spanish | 4% | 3% |

Latin and French lead. Spanish is named for only 30 of the 843 common roots; roots that look Spanish are credited to Latin, which Spanish shares.

### Limits of the analysis

- Wiktionary is collaborative; only about 150 Esperanto entries cite an etymological dictionary (Vilborg's or Cherpillod's).
- We count the languages named as direct sources, not older ancestors (*hundo* counts as German, not Proto-Germanic).
- Only 32% of all roots, and 84% of the top 1,000, have usable data. Internationalisms such as *sistemo* and *regiono* often lack an etymology, so Latin and Greek are probably under-counted.
- English is sometimes named alone for Latinate words it shares with French (*protekti*, *rivero*). Counting those as Romance moves the top-1,000 Romance share by only about one point.

## Comparison with other estimates

| Estimate | Romance | Germanic | Rest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mattos (1987), basic vocabulary | 84% | 14% | 2% Slavic or Greek |
| Janton (1994), cited by Puškar (2015), vocabulary | about 80% | 10% | 5% Greek, 5% Slavic (his 1993 analysis: 75/20/5) |
| Zamenhof's original vocabulary (1887) | about two-thirds | about one-third | – |
| This analysis, top 1,000 roots | 69% | 24% | 7% |
| This analysis, *Fundamento* roots | 66% | 25% | 9% |

The usual "80% Romance" matches the share of roots that *name* a Romance source (80–82% here), not the share that are purely Romance (55–58%). The figures differ because studies count different things (dictionary roots, basic vocabulary, running text), because words that reached Esperanto through English or German are credited to those languages here, and because the data are incomplete. A safe summary is: two-thirds to nine-tenths Romance, depending on what is counted, most of the rest Germanic, and a few percent Slavic and Greek.

## Example words by source

| Source | Examples (Wiktionary's stated source) |
|---|---|
| Latin | *homo* "human being" (*homō*), *vidi* "to see" (*videō*), *sed* "but" (*sed*) |
| French | *granda* "big" (*grand*), *ĉambro* "room" (*chambre*), *infano* "child" (*enfant*) |
| Italian | *bela* "beautiful" (*bello*), *verda* "green" (*verde*), *ricevi* "to receive" (*ricevere*) |
| German and Yiddish | *hundo* "dog" (*Hund*), *tago* "day" (*Tag*), *knabo* "boy" (*Knabe*), *ŝati* "to like" (*schätzen*), *hejmo* "home" (*heym*) |
| English | *birdo* "bird", *suno* "sun", *ŝipo* "ship", *ŝi* "she" |
| Polish and Russian | *celo* "aim" (*cel*), *krado* "grating" (*krata*), *nepre* "without fail" (*nepremenno*), *kolbaso* "sausage" (*kolbasá*) |
| Greek | *kaj* "and" (*καί*), *pri* "about" (*περί*), *kosmo* "cosmos" (*κόσμος*) |
| Other | *saŭno* (Finnish), *papriko* (Hungarian), *kimono* (Japanese), *islamo* (Arabic) |

### Which words come from English?

Wiktionary names English as the only source of 264 roots (6.6% of those with data), 36 of them among the 1,000 most frequent. Examples are *birdo*, *suno*, *ŝipo*, *boato* "boat", *teamo* "team" and modern loans such as *klubo*, *ĵazo* "jazz" and *sandviĉo*.

### Which words are Slavic?

Only 65 roots (1.6%) have purely Slavic sources, including *vosto* "tail" (Russian *xvost*), *gladi* "to iron" (Russian *gladitʹ*), *barĉo* "borscht" (Polish *barszcz*) and *roboto* (Czech *robot*). Slavic languages are named for 12% of roots, mostly international words like *fakto* that exist in Russian and Polish too. Slavic influence is larger in meaning and grammar: the prefix *ek-* and suffix *-ad-* echo Slavic verbal aspect.

### Which words contain ĥ and ĵ?

About 205 of the 12,680 roots contain **ĥ** and 67 contain **ĵ**. Of the 44 ĥ roots with data, 23 name Greek, as in *ĥaoso* "chaos", *teĥniko* "technique" and *ĥoro* "choir"; a few come from Russian (*kolĥozo*), Hebrew (*ĥasido*) or Arabic (*ĥalifo*). Of the 32 ĵ roots with data, 21 name a Romance language, mostly French (*ĵurnalo* "newspaper", *ĵeti* "to throw", *ĵaŭdo* "Thursday"), and a few English (*ĵazo*) or Japanese (*ĵudo*).

## Is the mix chaotic?

No: the sources are mixed, the system is not. Zamenhof's rule 15 in the [16 rules](https://esperantopedia.org/grammar/16-rules/#rule-15-foreign-words) says that international words are taken whole, with Esperanto spelling and endings. Compromises such as *tondri* "to thunder" (English *thunder*, French *tonner*) are rare.

Every root then follows the same rules:

- **One sound per letter**, so a borrowed word is spelled as it is pronounced.
- **Fixed endings** (*-o*, *-a*, *-e*, *-i*) and no irregular verbs.
- **Unchanging parts**: *san* "healthy" always stays *san*, giving *mal·san·ul·ej·o* "hospital". See [word building](https://esperantopedia.org/grammar/word-building/).

Linguists describe Esperanto as lexically Romance, morphologically agglutinative and, to a degree, isolating (Blanke, 1985). A 2010 study found it "somewhat European in character, but considerably less so than the European languages themselves" (Parkvall). Naturalistic languages such as Interlingua copy natural vocabulary with little derivation of their own; see [Esperanto compared](https://esperantopedia.org/about/compared/).

## How many words will an English or Spanish speaker recognise?

For **Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian speakers**, 82% of the common roots name a Romance source, and many have a close relative: *libro*, *granda* (*grande*), *verda* (*verde*), *amiko* (*amigo*), *vivi* (*vivir*). Others look foreign, such as *hundo* "dog" and *tago* "day", which are German.

For **English speakers**, both layers help: Germanic words (*birdo*, *suno*, *vorto* "word", *lando* "land", *vintro* "winter") and Latinate ones that English shares (*familio*, *universitato*). English is named among the sources of 25% of common roots, German of 21%.

We found no published measurement of how much Esperanto vocabulary a speaker of a given language recognises, so we give no percentage; the tables show origin, not recognisability. Try the [dictionary](https://esperantopedia.org/dictionary/), or read how [Zamenhof](https://esperantopedia.org/about/zamenhof/) chose the 917 roots of the [*Unua Libro*](https://esperantopedia.org/about/unua-libro/) in 1887.

## Common questions

### Is Esperanto based on Spanish?

No. Spanish is named as a source for about 4% of the 1,000 most common roots, against 45% for Latin, 42% for French and 28% for Italian. Esperanto can sound like Spanish or Italian because it has five pure vowels, and its Latin roots often have Spanish relatives.

### Is Esperanto a mix of languages?

In its vocabulary, yes: roots come from many languages, mostly European. The mix is organised, because each root is borrowed whole, spelled phonetically and combined by regular rules.

### Which language is closest to Esperanto?

No single one. By vocabulary, Latin and French are named most often, then Italian, English and German. By structure, Claude Piron argued that its word formation resembles Chinese more than typical European languages, with a Slavic layer in meaning and grammar. We found no published study ranking one closest language.

### Is Esperanto Eurocentric?

Its vocabulary largely is: Romance, Germanic, Slavic and Greek sources account for about 98% of the common roots with data and 95% of all roots with data. Its grammar is less so. See [criticism of Esperanto](https://esperantopedia.org/about/criticism/) for the arguments and replies.

## Sources

- Wiktionary (English edition, CC BY-SA), Esperanto entries as extracted by [Wiktextract at kaikki.org](https://kaikki.org/dictionary/Esperanto/index.html), downloaded 7 October 2026; our own analysis of 135,141 entries
- [Reta Vortaro (ReVo)](https://reta-vortaro.de/), release of 7 October 2026: root list and *Fundamento* marks
- [Tatoeba](https://tatoeba.org/) Esperanto sentences (CC BY 2.0 FR) and Zamenhof, [*Fundamenta Krestomatio*](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8224) (Project Gutenberg): word frequencies
- Wikipedia, [Esperanto etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_etymology): Geraldo Mattos, "La deveno de Esperanto", *Fonto*, 1987 (84% Latinate, 14% Germanic, 2% Slavic or Greek in basic vocabulary); original vocabulary about two-thirds Romance and one-third Germanic
- Wikipedia, [Esperanto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto) and [Esperanto grammar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_grammar): Krunoslav Puškar, "Common criticism of Esperanto: facts and fallacies", *Język. Komunikacja. Informacja* 10 (2015), about 80% Romance; Detlev Blanke, *Internationale Plansprachen* (1985)
- Mikael Parkvall, ["How European is Esperanto? A typological study"](https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.34.1.04par), *Language Problems and Language Planning* 34(1), 2010
- Claude Piron, ["Esperanto: European or Asiatic language?"](http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm), 1981
- Further reading: Andras Rajki, [*Etymological Dictionary of the Esperanto Language*](https://reto.cn/php/esperanto/esperantaj-vortoj/etimologia-vortaro-de-esperanto/) (E.D.E.L., Budapest 2006), readable online (copy on the Verda Reto site): about 3,900 entries, each Esperanto word followed by the corresponding words in Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, Yiddish, German, French, Italian, English and Latin; meanings are not given
- Further reading: Ebbe Vilborg, *Etimologia vortaro de Esperanto*, 5 volumes (Malmö: Eldona Societo Esperanto, 1989–2001), a printed etymological dictionary of Esperanto, written in Esperanto