Ido/How is Ido different from Esperanto?

How is Ido different from Esperanto?

Vocabulary

Ido is a modified version of Esperanto with a number of changes designed to make it easier to learn and easier to type.

The first noticable difference between the two languages is that Esperanto has the diacritical marks ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŭ, ĉ, and ŝ. These are used in order to adhere to the one letter = one sound rule, but many thought them to be a needless barrier in promoting the language. Ido did away with letters with diacritical marks and instead replaced:

• ĝ with j (pronounced as in French je and as the 'zh' sound as the 's' in 'pleasure')
• ĥ with h (the ĥ in Esperanto is pronounced as a gutteral as in Arabic)
• ĵ with j (same sound as above)
• ŭ with u
• ĉ with ch
• ŝ with sh.
• j with y

Internationality

The creators of Ido felt that much of Esperanto was either not internationally recognizable, or unnecessarily deformed. Ido aims to fix these with more "international" or "corrected" roots. This can sometimes be at the expense of Esperanto's simplified word building process. Below are some examples.

Esperanto	Ido	English	French	German	Italian	Spanish
bubalo	bufalo	buffalo	buffle	Büffel	bufalo	búfalo
ĉelo	celulo	cell	cellule	Zelle	cellula	célula
ĉirkaŭ	cirkum	around	autour de	ungefähr/circa	circa	alrededor
dediĉi	dedikar	to dedicate	dédier	widmen	dedicare	dedicar
edzo	spoz(ul)o	husband	époux	Ehemann	sposo	esposo
elasta	elastika	elastic	élastique	elastisch	elastico	elástico
estonteco	futuro	future	futur	Zukunft	futuro	futuro
kaj	e(d)	and	et	und	e(d)	y/e
lernejo	skolo	school	école	Schule	scuola	escuela
limo	limito	limit	limite	Limit	limite	límite
maĉi	mastikar	to chew	mâcher	kauen	masticare	masticar
mencii	mencionar	to mention	mentionner	erwähnen	menzionare	mencionar
nacio	naciono	nation	nation	Nation	nazione	nación
penti	repentar	to repent	repentir	bereuen	pentirsi	arrepentirse
ŝipo	navo	ship	bateau/navire	Schiff	barca	barco/nave/navío
taĉmento	detachmento	detachment	détachement	Trennung	distaccamento	destacamento
vipuro	vipero	viper	vipère	Viper	vipera	víbora

Affixes

The prefix mal- (creating a word with the exact opposite meaning) in Esperanto is overused as a prefix. It can be inappropriate since it has negative meanings in many languages.

The primary Ido grammar book states that one reason for the adoption of the Latin-based sinistra for "left" instead of maldextra (mal- plus the word dextra, or dekstra for "right") is that often only the last one or two syllables can be heard when shouting commands.

Ido does not assume male gender in a word.

Personal names

As stated above, most European given names have Esperanto equivalents: "John" is Johano, "Alexander" is Aleksandro, etc. Because some cultures place the surname first before the given name and others last after it, it is the practice of some Esperanto writers to give surnames in all capital letters, although it is unusual to find this in publications. "John Smith" would thus be rendered "John SMITH" or "Johano SMITH" in the first mention. Most non-Western names do not have equivalents and are rendered as close as possible in Esperanto orthography.

Ido, on the other hand, simply leaves the names as is; "John Smith" would be "John Smith" in Ido. Names from languages with non-Latin scripts are rendered as phonetically as possible. Ido does not capitalize surnames.

Place names

Most countries have their own names in Esperanto. The system of derivation, though, is sometimes complex. In Old World nations, where the country is named after an ethnic group, the main root means a person of that group: anglo is an Englishman, franco is a Frenchman. Originally, names of nations were created by the addition of the suffix -ujo (container), hence England and France would be rendered Anglujo and Francujo respectively (literally, "a container full of Englishmen/Frenchmen"). More recently, Esperanto has adopted -io as the national suffix, thus creating names more inline with standard international practice (and less odd-looking): Anglio, Francio.

In the New World, where citizens are named for their nation, the name of the nation is the main word, and its inhabitants are derived from that: Kanado ("Canada"), kanadano ("Canadian").

Names of cities may or may not have an Esperanto equivalent: Londono for London, Nov-Jorko for New York. Place names which lack wide-spread recognition, or which would be mangled beyond recognition usually remain in their native form: Cannes is usually rendered as "Cannes".

In Ido, country names must conform to the language's orthography but otherwise are left unchanged: Europa, Peru, Amerika. City names are treated as foreign words (London), except when part of the name itself is a regular noun or adjective: Nov-York (Nov for nova, or "new", but the place name York is not changed as in Esperanto "Nov-Jorko"). This is not a hard and fast rule, however, and New York is also acceptable, similar to writing Köln for the city of Cologne in Germany. South Carolina becomes Sud-Karolina, much in the same way that a river called the "Schwarz River" is not transcribed as the "Black River" in English even though schwarz is the German word for black. However, less well-known place names are generally left alone, so a small town by the name of "Battle River" for example would be written the same way, and not transcribed as "Batalio-rivero". This is because transcribing a little-known place name would make it nearly impossible to find in the original language.