Re: Two questions about Esperanto

RB> This is stranger & stranger. The Fundamento (which I've known some
RB> Esperanto fundamentalists treat as tho it were holy writ) actually allows
RB> what is potentially ambiguous, but this is not liked by many Esperantists!
RB> "Curiouser & curiouser" as Alice said.

Well, I'd be surprised if we had any Esperanto "fundamentalists"
(Fundamento-lists?) here - who among such could stand us?  ;)  But even
the fundamentalists don't worship LLZ as a demigod; he was fallible.
Mistakes were made, to get in a little RWR tribute of sorts.  Everyone
recognizes that there are ways to improve upon the Fundamento, but not
everyone agrees on what those improvements should be.  The Esperantists'
goal is to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater and causing a
split (c.f.  Ido), and the easiest way to do that is to stick to the
Fundamento.

But the -x convention has pretty widespread support. It's effectively an
ann-x to the Fundamento.  :)

NT> I don't know why they don't just introduce the apostrophe to distinguish
NT> /sh/ (s'h) from /S/ (sh) if they're so concerned about ambiguity.

The apostrophe is already used, as in English, to indicate dropped
letters.

RB> Indeed - or even use |s| = /s/ and |x| = /S/.

RB> It vaguely amuses me that Esperanto dispensed with |q|, |w|, |y| and |x|,
RB> bringing the total number of letters to 22, then adds 5 accented
RB> consonants and one accented vowel to bring the number up to 28.

Okay, let's see.  Replace <ux> with <w>, <sx> with <x>.  Remap /j/ to
<y> and use <j> for /Z/ (replacing <jx>).  Replace the affricate symbols
with the corresponding stop+fricative pairs, so <gx> becomes <dj> and
<cx> becomes <tx>.  That leaves us with . . . <q> for /x/?  MUCH better.
;-)

RB> As they say in the north of England: "There's nowt so queer as folk".

Dumb question: how do you pronounce <nowt>?  /naUt/?

RB> Why, if Esperanto felt it necessary to have a letter to denote /w/,
RB> didn't it just use |w|? Just puzzled.

IIRC, the _Fundamento_ allows use of <w> in lieu of <ǔ>; in fact, I
don't think it recognizes <uh>, reserving the -h digraphs for the
consonants.  (Those of us who use -x do use <ux>, however).  But I would
guess that it's not <w> in the primary orthography in order to avoid
confusing those whose native language has <w>=/v/, as in Zamenhof's
native Polish.  In fact, in the languages which have <w> in use for
native words, doesn't it represent /v/ more often than it does /w/?

That's just my guess, though.  And it's admittedly a weak argument, since
*some* element of Esperanto's orthography is going to be different from
*everyone's* native one . . .

-Marcos

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