Re: Two questions about Esperanto

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.

-Marcos

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