Re: Two questions about Esperanto

Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:

> On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 07:22:42AM +0200, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > But Esperanto uses 'c' for /ts/, not /k/, which, one assumes, is the
> > unvoiceless counterpart to /g/.
>
> No, /g/ *is* the "unvoiceless" one.  /k/ is actually voiceless. :)
[slap myself]

> I see your point, but I was addressing the Latin alphabetic history
> behind Esperanto's choices, not consistency within the system itself.
> The only reason <c> for /ts/ makes sense in the first place is because,
> although <c> originally represented only /k/ in Latin, it got
> palatalized (into /ts/, among other results such as /tS/, /s/, /T/, etc)
> before front vowels.  This led to the letter <c> used for these non-/k/
> sounds in other languages when they adopted the Latin script.  Since
> /tS/ is another of those sounds, using a modification of <c> for it also
> makes sense, without trying to formulate any systematic meaning for the
> Esperanto circumflex diacritic.
>
> The voiced counterpart <g>=/g/ also got palatalized before front vowels,
> and /dZ/ was one of the outcomes, so using a modification of <g> for
> that sound also fits.
I'm quite aware of that, as I hope you realize. I'm just feeling that, Esperanto
being a consciously engineered, regular language, the circumflex _should_ have a
systematic meaning.

> Therefore, looking at Esperanto from the outside, <ĉ> and <ĝ> make sense
> for their respective sounds.  Were I designing its orthography myself, I
> would have made different choices, but <k̂> for /tS/ is not among them.
> That would be just plain weird. :)
When I was flirting with the idea of making a Euroclone (is the word officially
changed to 'euroklono' yet? How does Esperanto pronounce 'eu'?), I was thinking
to use j-hac^ek for /dZ/. Plain 'j' was to indicate /dz/ (s, z, c and s^, z^, c^
as in Czech).

                                                          Andreas

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