Questions & Answers about La plombaĵo estas en la dento.
What does plombaĵo mean, and how is it formed?
In this sentence, plombaĵo means a dental filling.
It is built from:
- plomb- = the root
- -aĵ- = a suffix meaning a concrete thing, substance, or result
- -o = noun ending
So plombaĵo is the actual filling itself.
Is plombaĵo related to plombo? Does it literally mean something made of lead?
It uses the same plomb- root, but here you should simply understand it as the normal word for a dental filling. In real usage, it does not force the meaning made of lead. As often in Esperanto, the practical meaning of a word is something you learn from usage, not only from the parts.
Why is there la before both nouns? And where is a/an?
Esperanto has:
- la = the
- no separate word for a/an
So:
- la plombaĵo = the filling
- la dento = the tooth
If Esperanto leaves out la, the noun can be indefinite or general depending on context. Here, la shows that the speaker has a specific filling and a specific tooth in mind.