-aŭ

Appendix:Variations of "au" Esperanto Etymology eo. -aŭ was the only possible vocalic ending left in the language, after the dedicated part-of-speech suffixes, apart from the uncommon -eŭ. There are, however, sporadic parallels in other languages, such as Lithuanian tačiau "however". Suffix eo suffix A neutral suffix that does not specify the part of speech of a word. Generally used for words such as hodiaŭ "today" which may be either an adverb or a conjunction, noun, preposition, or adjective, depending on context. Usage notes In theory the suffix -aŭ may be replaced by another grammatical suffix, or simply dropped, but in practice this does not occur outside poetry: "aŭ does not belong to the root, but is only a conventional ending, and is thus as easily left off as the o in nouns." Zamenhof further wrote of the "neutral but definite ending aŭ", that is, that -aŭ does not define the part of speech of the root. He suggested in 1892 that it could be replaced with an apostrophe. —Kalocsay & Waringhien 1985:121. Instead, grammatical and other suffixes, additional roots, etc., are appended to the -aŭ ending, e.g. ĉirkaŭ → ĉirkaŭo, ĉirkaŭi, ĉirkaŭa, ĉirkaŭaĵo, ĉirkaŭpreni, etc. Derived terms -aŭ is not a productive suffix, and is only found with a few roots. These are: eo adiaŭ goodbye int eo almenaŭ at least conjunction and adverb eo ambaŭ both adjective and adverb eo ankaŭ also adverb eo ankoraŭ still, yet conjunction and adverb eo anstataŭ instead of preposition and conjunction eo antaŭ before preposition the -aŭ cannot be removed eo apenaŭ barely conjunction and adverb eo baldaŭ soon adverb eo ĉirkaŭ around preposition and adverb eo graŭ because of preposition and neologism eo hieraŭ yesterday noun and adverb eo hodiaŭ today noun and adverb eo kontraŭ against preposition and adverb eo kvazaŭ as if conjunction and adverb eo malgraŭ despite preposition eo morgaŭ tomorrow noun and adverb eo preskaŭ almost adverb Of the adverbs, only eo baldaŭ soon can be used in the comparative. The preposition eo laŭ along, the numeral eo naŭ nine and the neologistic interjections eo ĉaŭ ciao and eo ŭaŭ wow are bare roots and do not contain this suffix. 1