Re: Two questions about Esperanto

on 7/14/04 8:13 AM, Mark J. Reed at markjreed@MAIL.COM wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 11:33:25PM -0400, Ph. D. wrote:
>> Allow me to quote Richardson in _Learning_and_Using_the_International
>> _Language_:
>>
>> To get the sound of "e" really right, do this: Place two fingers lightly
>> across your mouth . . . and say "they" very carefully. Feel how the
>> lips and jaw shift position midway through the "ey" sound. That's
>> because in English, the sound of "ey" is really made up of two sounds:
>> "eh" followed by "ee".  Now practice saying just the "eh" without
>> sliding into the "ee" sound. That is how you pronounce "e" correctly
>> in Esperanto.
>
> And that is a description of the sound spelled in X-SAMPA as [e].
>
>> Well, some E-o words do have [e] in them. This sound is spelled "ej",
>> although I can't think of a minimal pair at the moment.
>
> No, no.  Esperanto "ej" is also [ej] (or [ei_^] in X-SAMPA.  [e] does
> *not* mean "the English long-a sound".  It means "the English long-a
> sound without the glide", or "the Spanish e-sound" - both of which are
> different from [E], which is the English short-e sound.
I first learned the "Pa, let me go too."  system, so I still use the e of
'let' when speaking Eo, not the é of été.
--

Rex F. May (Baloo)
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