![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I tried linking to eo:Egzismo, but the link won't display for some reason. Note that if you do make the link, the Esperanto article is factually incorrect. -- kwami 21:05, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
"vortprovizo" gets 3800 Ghits to 80 for "vortoprovizo". I am going to change this paragraph to reflect that. Personally I think I've heard "vortprovizo" more often than "vortoprovizo", too, but I'm not going to go so far as assert that it is absolutely more common in speech, for want of a proper speech corpus analysis. -- Jim Henry | Talk 15:19, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
Removed this from the intro:
This was discussed elsewhere, but looks like I forgot to cover it in this article. Could be a case of /nav.a/ vs. /na.va/. Anyway, it doesn't belong in the intro. kwami
There is no way that v and ŭ can be treated as allophones: as mentioned above the former may only oocur pre-vocallically whilst the latter is usually only the second part of a diphthong, but these positions are NOT mutually exclusive as both can occur intervocalically. And despite the possibility of the minimal pairs being analysed with different syllabic structures, this is not taken into account when determining the phonemic status of a speech sound in any language. There are good reasons for this. 1) Syllable boundaries are nto clearly defined in languages such as English and Esperanto where syllable structure can be CV or VC and are often a matter of personal opinion 2) taking the morphonological view, such as used by John Wells, the syllables boundaries can be analysed and coinciding with morpheme boundaries giving [nav.a] and [nau̯.a] 3) as suggested some speakers may not distinguish between v and ŭ, which if they were true allophones would mean they could be given the same phonetic realisation without a loss of contrast (such as the realistation as English /l/ which is always 'dark' in soem varieties). But if both Esperanto sounds are realised the same, the contrast between "naŭa" and "nava" will be lost, regardless of where one theoretically places the syllable boundary as this boundary is not explictally given in the pronunciation.
For similar reasons, the offglides in English closing diphthongs cannot be treated as allophones of the semivowels /j/ and /w/, which only appear in syllable initial position. Matt.
The glide in 'cooperate' is part of a diphthong /@U/ which is treated as phoneme in itself, not a sequence of /@/ plus /U/. This kind of analysis could be applied to Esperanto, in which case 'aŭ' and 'eŭ' are phonemes. In this case whatever 'ŭ' represents it still cannot be an allophone of /v/. The point I am trying to make regarding 'v' and 'ŭ' is that if the utterance /naPa/ was produced (where /P/ represesnts a voiced labio-dental approximant) what is beign said? The sound could be interpreted as either [v] or non-syllabic[u](or [w]), but this then leads to the question whether 'nava' or 'naŭa' is the intended word. I understand that in many Slavic languages there is an alternation between a labio-dental fricative or approximant pre-vocalically and a vowel-like glide word-finally or before a consonant, but because an intervocalic position is by virtue also pre-vocalic, the realisation will always be the fricative/approximant and as such is NEVER used contrastively, regardless of syllable boundaries. therefore the system in these languages is different to that used in Esperanto.
Well it mentions it in the introduction as a possibility whcih seems rather unnecessary to me.
Include the alternate forms like orhxestro/orkestro. -- Error 03:00, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
At the end of the section on Ĥ/K, it says that Esperanto roots cannot end in h. This is not true. Note the verb subtrahi. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gary Rector ( talk • contribs) 10:33, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
-- I have a few questions about assimilation. I see people saying that "abs" is pronounced "aps". In Portuguese (Brazilian), we have words starting with "abs" (absoluto, absurdo) and nobody pronounce them as "aps...". If there were words with "abz", "aps" and "apz", it would hard to distinguish among them, but possible. Maybe the reason is that we usually introduce a short "i" vowel between the consonants. Could i say that "absolute" in Esperanto should be pronounced as abisolute, then :-P ???? I think introducing a vowel it's no less valid than voicing or devoicing one of the two consonants (Why the first? Why not change the second?).
Now for "kz". To me, pronouncing it "gz" would sound very strange. I think my pronunciation of "kz" is more like "ks", but never "gz". But, still, when pronouncing "ks", i think i do it differently (and i don't introduce a vowel between the consonants). Maybe the best representation would be "ksz" and "kss"? How can i tell which sounds i'm really saying? And again: why favor one pronunciation change (k -> g) over the other (z -> s)? -- Yuu en 23:38, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
-- Wow, thanks. Very good answers! :) I thought i would start a little flame war, but your explanation is very well written! Now i see the point of "gz" and it's nice to read some "fresh" information that "short obscure vowels" or a glottal stop can be acceptable pronunciations (this article seemed a little one-sided to me because alternative pronunciations are not considered). I also see that a full [i] would mark me as having a strong Brazilian accent. I guess most beginners here pronunce "kvar", "kvin" as "ki var", "ki vin". :) And the Japanese would most likely say "ku var", "ku vin". :) Now i need to get rid of my habit of pronouncing "is still" as "is-i-still" :) -- Yuu en 20:12, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
-- Now i wonder why "kv" is not a case for assimilation into "gv" (or "kf")... Most likely, the answer will be "Slavic phonology" :-). Is "kz" phonologically any harder than "kv"? Now practicing: kza, kza, kza, gza, gza, gza, ksa, ksa, ksa, kza, kza, kza... They sound pretty different to me :-P. But i wouldn't bet my life on this. ;-) -- Yuu en 07:32, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
I have changed the table in the "Orthography & pronunciation" section so as to remove the explicit (and, as it stood, absolutist) reference to a kz exception, and refer the reader to the (much more nuanced) discussion under "Assimilation"—for two reasons: (1) Previously, the table seemed to espouse egzismo unambiguously, as though it were the only option; (2) There was no reference to other possible assimilations, leading the unwary reader to suppose that kz–>gz was the only one.
I was also sorely tempted to include an entry for consonantal ŭ, since no matter how rare (and arguably obsolescent) it is, it can occur in standard Esperanto—and not just in words like "ŭato" and proper nouns, but in the zamenhofa "ŭa!", and of course the name of the letter itself, "ŭo". I only refrained from doing so because it would have required more than just the insertion of one line for the article to be consistent, due to its assumption that "initial ŭ violates Esperanto phonotactics". I suggest that the table is incomplete without it (even if it needs to be flagged as "rare"), but it may involve changes elsewhere in the text. Vilcxjo 02:00, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
You have provided an interesting and useful description of Esperanto phonology. I use description in the sense of descriptive phonology as opposed to normative phonology. I want to argue that what Esperanto primarily needs is a normative phonology, i.e., a set of phonological norms.
First let me indicate what qualifications I have and don't have to speak on this matter. I have taken all the courswork for a PhD in linguistics (30 years ago), but never wrote a dissertation and have never worked as a linguist. Thus I know considerably more about linguistics and specifically phonology than the average layman, but I am by no means a professional phonologist.
Esperanto is fundamentally different from natural languages in the following sense. For every natural language there is a community of people who use the language every day for every purpose and whose children acquire the language by imitation of what they hear. Most speakers are unaware of any grammatical description of their language or of any set of rules or norms. (Even in the case of educated speakers of major languages, they become aware of the rules only after they already speak the language and it is doubtful that their knowledge of these rules affects their use of the language very much.) A linguist doing field work on a given language describes some aspect of that language either in the hope that his description will shed some light on the general phenomenon of language, or just for the value of the description. His approach is fundamentally non-normative.
In the case of Esperanto there is no analogous community of native speakers. Almost all speakers learn the language as adults on the basis of rules or norms, usually in non-ideal conditions. Lots of people all over the world study English and other foreign languages in the context of well-organized courses with competent instructors and often well-designed languages labs. Very few people learn Esperanto under such favorable conditions. Even the handful of "native speakers" of Esperanto learn the language from people (their parents) who learned the language as an adult. Whatever idiosyncracies are in the language of the parent will be acquired by the child.
Some phonological matters are routinely dealt with in Esperanto textbooks, and many speakers (certainly not all) succeed in conforming their pronunciation of the language to those norms. But many matters (aspiration of unvoiced stops, regressive assimilation of nasals, secondary stress, etc., etc.) are either never mentioned or dealt with only very cursorily. Relative to those matters, a linguist doing field work on Esperanto speakers will learn nothing about Esperanto; he may learn a lot about the phonology of the native language of those Esperanto speakers. Because of the way in which every speaker of Esperanto learns the language, many of the empirically observable characteristics of his pronunciation are characteristics of his native language, not of Esperanto.
I should clarify that relative to many matters, e.g., aspiration, secondary stress, prosody in general, bilabial fricative (Spanish) versus labio-dental fricative (English), apico-dental t and d (Spanish) versus apico-alveolar t and d (English), I don't propose any norms. Speakers of Esperanto will simply retain the speech patterns of their native languages.
All of this having been said, let me turn to those matters which I am actually interested in, for example, regressive voicing assimilation. It is not the end of the world to introduce a voicing assimilation rule that caused 'absoluta' to be pronounced [apsoluta] or 'obtuza' [optuza], but I don't think we should do this unless it is necessary. There is a syllable boundary after the 'b'. English dictionaries say that 'b' is pronounced [b] in the corresponding English words, and that is what I hear in my own speech. (I do understand that native speakers often don't hear their language accurately, and if a phonetician were to say to me that I actually say [apsolut] I will accept his judgement.) For the time being I hear [absolut]. If we are going to have a voicing assimilation rule, we need to say how extensively it applies. It will be very difficult to achieve agreement, and the simplest solution is to say that there is none. (I am being normative not descriptive.)
In the case of 'ekzemple', there is a syllable boundary between 'k' and 'z', and it isn't hard to say [ekzemple] if one wants to. Nor is it hard to say [okdek] (your example), or [ekdecidi] ('ekdecidi') or [ekzomi] ('ekzomi') or [ekbani] ('ekbani') or [sepdek] (70). So far as I know, morpheme boundaries don't have to have phonological consequences, although they sometimes do. If we start changing the language to accommodate everyone who has some pronunciation difficulty, where do we stop?
Relative to place assimilation of nasals, I think it would be reasonable to say that there are two nasal phonemes /n/ and /m/, and that /n/ assimilates in position to the following consonant and does not occur before labials. I am not trying to word this rule with precision. The assimilation of /n/ to velars and palatals is different from the above cases, because there is no collision with another phoneme. I agree with the spelling 'Vashintono'.
From a normative point of view, I don't think we should mention vowel length (duration). In the abstract all vowels have the same duration. Actual speech will depend on what the speaker brings with him from his native language.
Again from a normative point of view, we need rules to say when we insert a linking vowel (usually 'o') in compound words. It isn't logical to use 'vortprovizo', as most people do according to Google, but 'partopreni'. Since a syllable boundary occurs between 'rt' and 'pr', it probably isn't helpful to think of 'rtpr' as a cluster. The relevant question is whether 'rt' is an accepable coda, and according to the sonority principle that you mention, it is. For consistency 'partopreni' should become 'partpreni'.
I have said enough. Your article was interesting and helpful.
Not yet. One more comment. Relative to what Vilcxjo said about the ŭ before vowels, I agree that it is rare but not that it is obsolescent. I think it will become increasingly common as proper names are adapted to Esperanto. In NPIV several Chinese place names have it. I regard the v in Nikaragvo, Gvatemalo, etc. as very contrived and undesirable, but these words are established. If we decide to Esperantize the states of Mexico (those of the US are already Esperantized), how will we represent "Chihuahua" [ĉi-wa-wa] where I use w for the back on-glide? I suggest "Ĉiŭaŭo". --Neal Parker
I did not intend to imply that [gv] and [kv] are intrinsically unnatural or undesirable, and I have no quarrel with general words like 'kvartalo' or 'akvo'. When we borrow proper nouns from a specific language, we try to stay as close as possible to the original form, and it seems obvious to me that the only reason we use 'Gvatemalo' instead of 'Gŭatemalo' is the taboo against the use of /ŭ/ as an on-glide.
/j/ is both an off-glide and an on-glide. The phonological system would be more symmetric if /ŭ/ were also both an off-glide and an on-glide, and having been trained as an abstract mathematician, I like symmetry. The /ŭ/ phoneme already exists. Not to permit /ŭ/ + vowel seems very artifical, since the combination is easily pronounced and since there are very few restraints on other pronounceable combinations (only the 3 diphthongs ij, iŭ, and uŭ come to mind). We accept intrasyllabic consonant clusters like [ks] ('kseneno') and [pn] ('pneŭo') that many people find hard to pronounce, not to mention [sc] ('scii'), and if someone were to introduce a previously non-existent cluster like [zv] in, let's say, 'zvotuto', no one would object.
Since 'Chihuahua' and 'Guanajuato' are very specifically Mexican words, I object to making the Esperanto version conform to a Slavic or Baltic model when we have available what we need to do a "natural" conversion.
In cases where the vowel /u/ is not accented, there is very little difference between [uV] and [ŭV] as in the words 'trotuaro', 'puerpera', 'tualeto', 'duodeno', and 'Kuala-Lampuro'. It seems to me that the difference is mostly a matter of relative duration of the two vowels, about which we have no rules in Esperanto. Perhaps the taboo against the back on-glide is less real than we think.
I recently sent an analysis of compound words like 'partopreni' and 'vortprovizo' and whether a linking 'o' is present or not to akademia-diskuto in Yahoogroups. I would like to forward it to you for your opinion. You can contact me at nparker@airmail.net. Neal Parker Jan 7, 2006
I would be completely opposed to the introduction into Esperanto of front rounded vowels or interdental fricatives or tones. Since I am not opposed to the use of the back on-glide ŭ in new borrowings I need to construct a logical argument that there is an essential difference between the two cases.
In the first case we would introduce new phonemes into the phoneme inventory, and I perceive that to be a major change. I think it is very important that Esperanto be stable, and thus I am opposed to unnecessary change. Some people would like to spell 'Barato' and other words of Indian origin with 'Bh'. I have argued against that on the grounds that we should not introduce 1) aspirated voiced stops (if that is what 'Bh' is) or 2) new difficult to pronounce consonant clusters (in the case that the sound is a sequence of 2 consonants). There seems to be disagreement among phonologists about the best representation.
In the second case, /j/ already has 2 allophones: the front off-glide, which occurs after vowels to form diphthongs, and the front on-glide, which appears before vowels. /j/ represents tongue movement either from (off-glide) or to (on-glide) the position of the high front vowel /i/. /ŭ/ is a closely analogous phoneme involving the high back vowel /u/. I am merely proposing that we allow /ŭ/ to behave like /j/ already behaves. To me that is very minor change. It improves symmetry without introducing any practical difficulty.
About a year ago I reported the following facts about German, Polish, and Russian in a message to the group akademia-diskuto. No one disputed them, and a message from the Norwegian phonologist Otto Prytz tended to confirm them. In German [kw] and [gw] do not occur in native words. [kv] occur in a few native words ('Quelle' = source, 'Qual' = pain) and in some words of Latin origin ('Quartal' = quarter). I have found in my dictionary several loan words pronounced with [kw]: 'Kuomintang' from Chinese and 'Guanako' = guanaco, 'Guano' = guano, 'Guajave' = guayaba, 'Guarani' = Guaraní from Spanish. I don't find [gv] in any word. The combination [tsv] is fairly common, as in 'zwei' = two.
In Polish [w] before vowels is common, and in native words the letter for that sound is 'l' with an oblique hypen through it. Here I will use an ordinary 'l'. For example, 'bialy' = white, 'cialo' = body, 'Bialistok', 'glodny' = hungry. [kv] and [gv] also exist, and they appear to me to be common. The letter 'w' is pronounced [v]. For example, 'kwiat' = flower, 'kwiecień' = April, 'gwiazda' = star, 'gwizdać' = whistle. I don't know Polish, and these definitions may not be syntactically correct.
In Russian [kv] and [gv] occur, and I believe that [kw] and [gw] do not.
I am having difficulty understanding the meanings of your statements "Zamenhof intentionally avoided a /v/-/w/ contrast." and "More languages distinguish tone than /v/ from /w/." To me /v/ is an ordinary fricative (labio-dental phoneme in English, bilabial allophone of the bilabial stop in Spanish) which I believe to be very common (primarily in the labio-dental form) in the languages of the world. The tongue is stationary as in vowels and in other fricatives, and thus the sound can be prolonged. /w/ is a glide which represents tongue movement. Glides cannot be prolonged. To me they are fundamentally different sounds, and they can be adjacent as in the Spanish word 'abuelo' [avwelo] = grandfather. Like other fricatives /v/ participates in consonant clusters, some of which are more common than others.
In English you could say that /v/ and /w/ contrast because of pairs like 'west' and 'vest'. Are you saying that in the languages of the world, that is an unusual situation, that generally if /v/ occurs before vowels then /w/ does not, and vice versa?
'Chihuahua' is pronounced [ĉiwawa] in Spanish. It won't be the end of the world if the Esperanto word is 'Ĉivavo', but as yet I am not convinced of the need for that.
There is a saying, "Everything is easy if you know how." I don't contribute to Wikipedia on a regular basis, although I did write the article on 'Konsonantoj' in the Esperanto section. Thus I am not familiar with all the procedures and possibilities. When I click on your name, I go to a page which I assume to your 'talk page'. I had been there before, but I have never been able to discover how I would send e-mail to you. Please tell me what to do. Thanks. Neal Parker January 8, 2006
I am contemplating your arguments. I have realized that the conclusion one comes to depends on the model he is using. Your quantitative information is helpful.
Below the logo I see the navigation box, then the search box, and then the toolbox box with 7 entries in it: What links here, Related changes, User contributions, Upload files, Special pages, Printable version, and Permanent link. I can't find "e-mail this user" anywhere. I have just discovered the 4 tildes. H. Neal Parker 02:05, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
-- Kwami said that the Japanese, among many others, have great difficulty distinguishing /w/ from /v/. I think the Japanese have difficulty distinguishing /v/ from /b/ (not from /w/!). At least, when they write foreign words in Katakana, V becomes B. A similar phenomenon occurs in Spanish: the phoneme /w/ is clearly defined, but the distinction between /b/, /v/ and intermediate phonemes is blurred. I think /w/ is much closer to /u/ than to /v/ (I agree with H. Neal Parker that Chihuahua should retain its "U"s in Esperanto), altho it might be possible to find a language where even /k/ and /t/ are allophones, so it's no surprise that many parts of the world think /w/ and /v/ sound similar. Every language has its own ideas about what variation in pronunciation is permissible... -- Yuu en 07:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes these pedantic phonology discussions go in such tight circles they get detached from the real world. Did Zamenhof actually say ŭ may never occur before a vowel, or are linguists reading this into the language? In any case, most Esperantists have never heard of these rules, so they de facto don't exist for them. People spell Guatemala Gvatemalo on analogy with kvar, because they see that Esperanto traditionally prefers kv over kŭ. But since Chiuaua has no official spelling, and nobody since Zamenhov's death can claim official authority on how to spell new place names (or what Esperanto's phonology is, for that matter), it really comes down to how the people who most frequently say Ĉivavo/Ĉiǔaǔo choose to spell it, and whether one particular spelling later catches on among most of the Esperantistaro. Such as is my own home state of Washington/Vaŝintono/Vaŝingtono/Vaŝintonio. I think most people prefer spelling Vaŝintono but they pronounce it alternatingly with /n/ or /ŋ/. Of course, those who have never heard the English pronunciation will pronounce it /n/, and maybe one day their influence will cause anglophone Esperantists to universally pronounce it that way too, but that'll be a while in coming. In the meantime, there's the disagreement over whether Koreo is a place or a people, whether the capital of Brazil is Brazilio, and whether the capital of Mexico is Meksiko or Meksikio or Meksikurbo, to say nothing of Mexico State. This is a non-phonological version of the same issue. Sluggoster ( talk) 03:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Likewise, the jida issue seems to be overblown. So "Yiddish" was assimilated in its most natural way. This is supposed to be rejected just because somebody decided that since there are no other ji- words in the language, there can't be any? That's like how English words supposedly can't start with /ŋ/ or /ʒ/ -- or at least they couldn't until Nguyen became a common name and people wanted to pronounce Georges and du jour correctly. Sluggoster ( talk) 03:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Would this count as a marginal loan phoneme considering it exist in some loanwords...? Cameron Nedland 15:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
The article mentions that r, v, ĉ, ŝ, ĝ and ĵ can also be pronounced as [ɾ], [ʋ], [tʂ], [ʂ], [dʐ] and [ʐ] respectively, instead of their standard pronounciations as [r], [v], [tʃ], [ʃ], [dʒ] and [ʒ] respectively. I can't find a source that supports this claim. The most reliable source about Esperanto grammar is the Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko, and it mentions only the standard pronounciations, not the pronounciations as [ɾ], [ʋ], [tʂ], [ʂ], [dʐ] and [ʐ]. If no one provides a source that supports the current claims, I will remove them, so that the article represents the phonetic inventory in the same way as does the Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko. Marcoscramer 20:15, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Given the way the diphthongs are presented in the section "Inventory", a reader might think that the diphthongs are seperate phonemes in Esperanto. However, Esperantologists generally agree that the diphthongs are just realisations of phoneme-pairs. Maybe we should make this clear in the article. Marcoscramer 14:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
The comment in an English text about 'buoy' 'as written' is seriously misleading. 'As written' would probably sound like Esperanto 'buoj', and in any case written English is seldom a reliable guide to pronunciation. What is especially confusing is that 'buoy' is pronounced as Esperanto 'buj' in American English, but as Esperanto 'boj' in British English - something few English-speakers seem to be aware of. Perhaps a more useful example for the pronunciation of 'uj' would be 'phooey', pronounced as Esperanto 'fuj' in all varieties of English. Or else 'screwy' (more or less Esperanto 'skruj') 62.194.211.96 ( talk) 21:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
How are non-Esperanto sounds like [θ] and [ð] represented in Esperanto? Are Esperantized letters like t̂ and d̂ used? Or the Icelandic letters þ and ð? Or the Sami letters ŧ and đ? Or English digraphs th and dh? Or modified digraphs like tħ and dħ (with a bar through the h)? Did Zamenhof deal with this explicitly? -- Evertype· ✆ 12:02, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
Kwamikagami reverted my edit regarding my edit to English approximation for pronunciation of Esperanto letters. I wonder how possibly would it be for a normal reader who is not familiar with phonetic jargon to get an idea of how would phooey be pronounced as one syllable, approximating the Esperanto diphthong, uj !? They won't understand it in either ways, whether it is approximated to something misleading or leaving it with no approximations. Leaving it without approximations is much better because at least it won't confuse anyone with something else [u.i]. The word is informal and not in plain English, so I doubt that using such examples is helpful at all! Also, how can an diphthong, as in boat, in major English dialects be used as an approximation for an Esperanto vowel o !? The o in more is the closest since the Esperanto vowel is the mid vowel, [ o̞. The vowel in more varies between [ ɔ to [ o across English dialects, which makes [ o̞ in the middle and much better approximated than approximating it to a diphthong [əʊ̯~oʊ̯]. I also made an edit to the style to be clearer for the foot notes. No point at all of reverting my edit. -- Mahmudmasri ( talk) 22:04, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Really? It seems to me matĉo is almost as common, if not more common, than maĉo for “[sporting] match”. Some people criticize maĉo as seeming to imply chewing. (Sorry, kids, ludo kaj konkuro just don’t cut it.) Wiki Wikardo 21:19, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
The use of "bet" for the e vowel sound in esperanto is not universal across english. North American english speakers would pronounce bet as /bɛt/, not /bet/. In addition, many speakers of esperanto pronounce "e" as /ɛ/ in medial positions, but as /e/ in final positions (whether wrongly or correctly). Is there another word that can be used? It may simply be better to use a as in "gate" or "fate". Though these are not pronounced identically across english, and are actually pronounced as /eɪ/, they are better than "bet", in my opinion.
"War" may not be the best word for the o sound. Perhaps "bone" would be better, though this is also usually /oʊ/ in english.
The note regarding the pronunciation of "eŭ" is ridiculous, and nonsensical to many people. Many pronunciation guides use words equivalent to /ɛu̯/ rather than /eu̯/. About the best I've seen approximating the sound is "ayw" in "wayward." — ★ Parsa ☞ talk 18:05, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
I found several doubtful assertions on this page.
Mutichou ( talk) 11:32, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
The introduction of the article has the following sentence, which has had a "citation needed" label since May 2013: "Given that the comparison languages were not completely identical, he later advised that the pronunciation of Italian could be considered a model for Esperanto." In February 2014 I deleted the sentence with the following comment: "remove unreferenced claim: I tried to find a reference for it, and also asked my colleagues in the pronunciation section of the Esperanto Academy, but no reference could be found; hence the claim seems very dubious." Three days later, Kwamikagami re-entered the sentence with the comment: "can't find ref offhand, but still relevant". I suggest that if no reference for this claim is found within the next few days, this dubious claim should get finally deleted from the article. Marcos ( talk) 09:50, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
I found a reference which *seems* to hint that Esperanto was indeed modelled after Italian pronunciation. It is from: J. Cresswell and J. Hartley (revised by J. H. Sullivan) Esperanto - A complete course for beginners, 1987 (first edition:1957). He says: a good pronunciation of Esperanto is quite easy to acquire, and (b) it is one of the most beautiful-sounding languages on earth. If this seems a rash claim, consider what is the most beautiful language. Tastes differ, of course, but if a vote were taken, perhaps Italian might be the winner: and the sound of Esperanto very closely resembles that of Italian. This, of course, does not prove that Zamenhof *purposely* designed Esperanto to sound like Italian but it's a suggestion that such consideration may have been in his mind. — Preceding unsigned comment added by L0rents ( talk • contribs) 19:12, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
"This inventory is rather similar to that of Polish, but is especially close to Belarusian"
Is it really? Most Esperanto sounds are found in most languages, especially Indo-European. The exceptions are:
And other sounds are not even the same as in Belariusian and Polish: coronal consonants are alveolar, not dental; it's /ʃ ʒ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ (sounds found in English, French, Spanish, German, Czech etc.) rather than /ʂ ʐ ʈ͡ʂ ɖ͡ʐ/; mid vowels are /e o/, not /ɛ ɔ/; there is /x/, but there's also /h/ not found in Slavic languages (and for Slavic languages speakers it's probably more difficult to differentiate between the two than for an English speaker).
What I'm trying to say is that I don't see any reason why this inventory is "rather similar" to that of Polish or Belarusian. If I'd seen this inventory without reading about "Slavic origins" I would've thought that it's a generic Indo-European phonology.
Basically, if you take Belarusian phonology, and take away "minor differences" given in the article, i.e. 1) palatalization, 2) [ɣ], 3) absence of /h/, you get the following: /m n p b t d k g t͡s d͡z ʈ͡ʂ ɖ͡ʐ f v s z ʂ ʐ x w l j r/, which is an inventory (ʂ ~ ʃ, ʐ ~ ʒ, x ~ h) found basically in any Indo-European language (which is the point, as it's an auxiliary language).
Therefore, I think that that section should be removed, as it's really irrelevant and not necessarily true, unless there are sources that'd directly say Zamenhof was somehow inspired by Belarusian phonology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.146.129.46 ( talk) 16:48, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
I fully agree with the original comment: the sentence "This inventory is rather similar to that of Polish, but is especially close to Belarusian" does not really stand up to close scrutiny. In particular, between Polish and Belorussian, Esperanto is closer to Polish than to Belorussian (although Esperanto phonotactics is much simpler than Polish one). I've drawn up a spreadsheet comparing the sound inventory of Esperanto to the ones of Italian, Polish, English, French, Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Czech, Croatian and Mandarin Chinese; I've listed these languages in descending order of my personal level of knowledge of their phonology (I'm an Italian native, don't know Chinese at all). There's a bit of ambiguity in such a comparison (e.g., /ʒ/ is officially absent in Italian but in practice it's used regularly in, e.g., foreign words of French origin, so it's completely unproblematic. Similarly, Russian words never use /d͡ʒ/ but the sound is used in foreign names etc.). By most reasonable measures Polish comes out victor (=most Esperanto sounds are present in the language) by a small measure, as the only feature of Esperanto not present in Polish is opposition /x/ vs /h/ (which is anyway obsolete in Esperanto). At second place I have an ex-aequo of Italian, Belarussian, Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian and English. Poor Chinese is very far down the list (Polish gets a score of 97%, the languages at second place 91%, Czech 88%, French 86%, Chinese 50%). In actual practice all Belorussians and a good deal of Ukrainians are Russian bi-lingual so adding the inventories Ukrainian+Russian would come second after Polish (95%) and Belarussian+Russian would come third (93%). I could throw in more Romance and Germanic languages and I believe they would score in the 80-90% range. In any case in terms of phonotactics Esperanto resembles much more Italian and Slavic languages and, all in all, I don't think it makes sense to say it is particularly close to Belarussian. L0rents ( talk) 19:00, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
@ Kwamikagami: Greetings! Regarding this revert...I thought it was pretty clear from the HTML comment what to do? An automated spell check has detected in this article the following words which are not English and which are not inside a template:
Each instance of these words should be enclosed in {{ lang}}, or {{ respell}} or {{ IPA}} or whatever template is most appropriate to the circumstance. Does that make sense? -- Beland ( talk) 20:42, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
The article seems to suggest that there are words in Esperanto which are stressed on the last syllable and not the result of elision, and cites the example oĝalan. This is also found on the Esperanto article "Akcento"… and basically only in these two sources. A Quoran told me he looked it up in «il vocabolario più strutturato in Esperanto con circa 25.000 lemmi» (the most structured Esperanto monolingual dictionary with about 25.000 lemmas», and didn't find it. So what is it? Where is it from? Are there other words with stress on the last syllable that aren't the result of elision? What is the situation of anstat = anstataŭ, which I've found on that Esperanto article? Is it an alternate pronunciation happening in fast speech that isn't standard, or perhaps a slang variant? MGorrone ( talk) 21:57, 3 February 2022 (UTC)