About the Fourth Edition (current)

Ninety percent of these words are common to all parts of Australasia, however there are some regional variations, e.g. bathers, cozzie, togs, trunks. What is called a black duck in Australia, is called a grey duck in New Zealand. (It is in fact brown.) Australia has some words special to its terrain and culture, and New Zealand has many Maori words in everyday use. Each person has a right to find the translation by the term he or she uses, and not be referred to someone else's usage, so we list all these terms as headwords.

Some of our things that also exist elsewhere are known by different names here from their names in other parts of the world. What is called cumbungi in Australia and raupo in New Zealand is called cattail in the United States and reedmace in Britain. Esperantists in Australia and New Zealand need to be able to find Esperanto translations from our own names for these things. This dictionary aims to provide that need.

The First Edition of the Australian-Esperanto Dictionary was edited by Ralph Harry in 1983 with 700 translations. It grew out of the sessions to produce the Aŭstralia Antologio, a work of 400 pages published in 1988, and it carried such expressions as go crook and paddock, which are common in novels and stories on both sides of the Tasman. The Second Edition in 1985 had 1000 translations. The Third Edition in 1990 had 1100 translations.

It was then decided that this Fourth Edition would expand to cover additional terms needed to translate our literature into Esperanto, and for corresponding with Esperantists overseas about our countries. Also it would include words from both Australia and New Zealand. This fourth edition has 1600 headwords, and in total there are translations into Esperanto for 2000 different items. It lists 600 plants and animals under headwords for both their common names and their scientific names.

This dictionary contains 40 words found in other Esperanto dictionaries although not recorded in Plena Ilustrita Vortaro. It has another 130 neologisms to cover animals and plants, and a further 30 for things that are peculiar to our part of the world. These words are listed at the end of the dictionary.

A word about neologisms - if we use an Esperanto word outside of its regular definition, this does not avoid creating a neologism. For instance, if we were to translate cabbage tree withbrasikarbo we would merely be offering that as a neologism for either the palm Livistona australis in Australia, or the agave Cordyline australis in New Zealand. This fourth edition proposesAŭstralia livistono, and Novzelanda kordilino for these two plants.

We thank those Esperantists who checked the draft for errors or made suggestions for improvements to this edition, especially: Donald Broadribb, Jackie Fox, Volo Gueltling, Des Langman, Marcel Leereveld, Brendan Linnane, Terry Manley, Vera Payne, Donald Rogers, Trevor Steele, and Alan Towsey. Many other people also contributed over the years.

We wish you many happy hours translating the stories of Australia and New Zealand into Esperanto stories.

Ralph Harry and Brian Fox

2000

About the First Internet Edition 2002

This internet edition is based on the printed Fourth Edition 2000. The main change is the removal of duplicate entries, which are now replaced by hyperlinks to a single entry for each item, e.g. waxeye is hyperlinked to silvereye, since they are the same species of bird. The scientific names appear in the main listing only if there is no other name for it, e.g. wahlenbergia.

There have been several minor changes to suit the Internet:

Two indexes have been added: one sorted by Esperanto terms; one sorted by scientific terms. The ordering of meanings and derivatives within each entry has been altered to make it easier for programs to sort the items automatically. Also some auxilliary words (e.g. a, the, to) have been omitted to make the entries sort to their correct place in the alphabetical sequence in the indexes.

The colour of the text is mostly coded according to the language used: Aboriginal, English, Esperanto, French, Latin and scientific, Melanesian, Maori and other Polynesian. However, where a word has been thoroughly assimilated into English, it appears as an English word.

This Internet Edition has been converted from the original Word Perfect file by a series of macros and hand editing by Donald Rogers, to an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) format. The view that you see on screen is attained by a set of XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) style sheets.

This dictionary is a work in progress. We still need lots of illustrations, and some links to useful sites. However readers may find it more useful to use a search engine to find related links. Readers are welcome to submit suitable small digital images for animals and plants in jpeg format. To advise us of any typographical errors or to suggest additions and alterations and images please contact Donald Rogers: at nzea@esperanto.org.nz

Donald Rogers

2002