Virgulino

Esperanto is a constructed language, developed by Ludwig Zamenhof and first presented to the world in 1887. Due to its relative success, some serious works of literature has been translated to this somewhat peculiar language.

This seems to be the ultimate Esperanto Bible. It contains Zamenhof's translation of the Old Testament, the so-called “London Bible” translation of the New Testament, and Ferrit Berveling's translation of the Apocrypha. In a sense, then, even the translation is “ecumenical”. This work has been approved by the International League of Christian Esperantists (which describes itself as “mostly Protestant”) and the Catholic Esperantist Movement.

Unfortunately, I don't have easy access to this version at the present time, but the version freely available on the web seems traditional, for instance when referring to the young woman in Isaiah 7:14 as a “virgulino”, i.e. a virgin. This strikes me as strange, though, since Zamenhof was Jewish! Was his translation revised before publication by Christians?

I suspect there might be more to explore here than simply strange suffixes…