This word list was pulled in large part from the Frekvencmorfemaro de Parolata Esperanto (List of Morpheme Frequency in Spoken Esperanto), an analysis of usage frequency in spoken Esperanto. That list revealed that 467 morphemes are enough to yield 95% comprehension in Esperanto, and that 564 words are enough to obtain 80% comprehension based on frequency of use. In most Indo-European languages, about 2000 words are necessary for this level of comprehension.

Here you are presented with a non-exhaustive list of root words in Esperanto. By means of agglutination from within this list, in line with the various part of speech endings, you can be extremely expressive in Esperanto. Reading Esperanto, you can break down the parts and use this list in order to understand compound words.

The table is below; you can also download this entire document for your personal reference here:

Esperanto Common Roots Glossary.pdf

Contributed on 28 February 2002 to the public domain by Christopher Zervic, author.