What are the rules of syllabification in Esperanto?

Question

I am specifically asking about the rules for breaking words at the end of the lines in written text. I’m not a native English speaker, and from my experience so far, I’ve gotten the impression that it is best to avoid it. As far as I know, the words can be broken on roots and affixes but I’m not really sure, and the whole thing is very difficult to understand, at least for me.

However, in other languages, like my native Bulgarian, there are definite and strict rules: In Bulgarian the words are broken by spoken syllables, it is really easy (though that may be because I’m a native spearker) and so encouraged where useful.

How does this work in Esperanto? Are there well defined rules or is it a decision of the particular writer, like is the case of the quotation marks? If so, please also share experiences of which is the most used way of breaking words.

Answer 1

There are no officially accepted rules about this. PMEG says:

Ne ekzistas devigaj reguloj pri vortotranĉado en Esperanto. Oni simple tranĉu tiel, ke la rezulto estu facile legebla kaj komprenebla. Multaj tial evitas tranĉojn, kiuj disigas unu solan literon de vorto aŭ vortoparto. Oni ekz. preferas tranĉi “ĉef-urbo” anstataŭ “ĉe-furbo” por ne forigi la solan literon F disde la prefikso ĈEF, kaj ankaŭ ĉar ofte estas pli klare, se oni tranĉas laŭ la efektivaj signifohavaj vortelementoj.

There are no obligatory rules about word breaking in Esperanto. You should just break them in a way that makes the result easy to read and understand. This is why many people avoid breaks that separate one letter from a word or a word element. One would prefer writing e.g. ĉef-urbo to ĉe-furbo so that F is not separated from the prefix ĈEF, and because it is often clearer if the words are divided at the boundary of elements that have a meaning.