Esperanto Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for teachers and students of the Esperanto language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I’m looking for a suitable translation for the object named “mat” in English and used in e.g. gymnastics or yoga: that is, either a piece of foam covered in vinyl/plastic/leather or a piece of PVC/rubber without filling.
Esperanto has the (fundamental) word mato but according to the definition in PIV, it has to be a woven piece, such as a door mat or the one placed on the floor in many Asian cultures:
maldelikata kovraĵo aŭ tapiŝo el plektita pajlo, junko, basto, stipo ks
I'd simply use mato. Most of the meaning is there in the PIV definition. I wouldn't worry too much about the woven part. Most languages would probably have similarly defined a mat before other types were invented.
Of course if you want to specifically say a gymnastics mat: gimnastika mato, gimnastikmato
Or a yoga mat: joga mato, jogmato
Other possibilities are: vato (wadding, vati - to pad), or pufo (padding, puff)
The right word to use is certainly mato. PIV is notorious for presenting definitions that contain details which do not hold for all the objects nameable by the defined word.
