Re: Two questions about Esperanto
| From: | Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Tuesday, July 6, 2004, 20:13 |
|---|
I guess this letter h^ was introduced mainly because
this phoneme is very common in Russian, and Zamenhof
probably was influenced by Russian. A choir is
actually "h^or" (xop) in Russian. Now, if there are
very few Esperanto words using it, it's probably not
absolutely indispensable.
In French, "k" and "w" are also considered as
"foreign" letters, used only to transcript foreign
words: wagon, kilowatt, and so on. That's why there
are of high value (10) at Scrabble.
The problem in Esperanto is those letters with
diacritics signs: h^, g^, c^, j^, s^. I think that
when Zamenhof invented his language, those letters
were rather easy to produce on typewriters (you just
type the ^, then any letter; besides, several are
quite usual in Slavian languages). But now we're
working on computers. This is a huge progress: we
cannot get those characters any more, or only with
difficulty. How could Zamenhof have foreseen that ?
That's why (I think), Ido tried to get rid of those
special letters. But to me, this is not a huge
problem. The real problem is to change mentalities and
politics. [STOP ! YOU'RE ENTERING FORBIDDEN ZONE !]
--- Jean-François_COLSON <fa597525@...> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
> To: <CONLANG@...>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 1:45 AM
> Subject: Re: Two questions about Esperanto
>
>
> > On Mon, Jul 05, 2004 at 08:27:53PM +0200, Andreas
> Johansson wrote:
> > > Since, apparently, no-one is ditching h^
> completely, what's the point in
> > > dropping in some words?
> >
> >
> > Ease of pronunciation of at least those words,
> plus enhanced
> > recognizability of those words by speakers of
> languages such as English
> > (others? Italian maybe?) where /x/ -> /k/ in
> their cognates.
> >
> > And I understand there are some Esperanto-speakers
> who do ditch ĥ
> completely,
> > replacing it with either k or h depending on which
> one is unambiguous.
> > Though I don't know if there are any triples
> distinguished solely by
> > /h/ vs. /x/ vs. /k/, or what such speakers would
> do when confronted by
> > one.
> >
> > -Markos
> >
>
> There's at least one such triple:
> hxoro = choir, chorus
> koro = heart
> horo = hour
>
> Perhaps the speakers you mention would replace hxoro
> by koruso.
>
> The main problem with hx (h with circumflex, the
> 11th letter of the
> Esperanto alphabet, unvoiced velar fricative), as
> explained in
>
http://esperantorama.free.fr/lingvo/gramatiko/elqbaz.html,
> last section,
> "Alternativoj de Ĥ-vortoj", is that that letter is
> difficult to some
> speakers AND that it's the less frequent letter of
> Esperanto, therefore
> those who can't pronounce it easily have not many
> occasions to exercise.
>
> Replacement of hx by k (the other unvoiced velar
> consonant) was officially
> accepted by the Akademio in words such as
> arhxeologio, where hx is preceded
> by r. Some speakers replace hx by k in most of the
> words where it appears
> and use alternative words when such a replacement
> could lead to ambiguity.
> I was not aware that Cxinio was named Hxinio before.
>
> For those who can read Esperanto, there's an
> interesting article by Bernard
> Golden at
>
http://www.esperanto.hu/egyeb/litero-h.htm.
>
> In an article by Josef Kavka
> (
http://mujweb.cz/Kultura/malovec/FONEMOH.htm),
> I read that the replacement of hx by k tend to be
> generalized except in 2
> occasions: the transliteration of person and place
> names and the scientific
> terminology, where the use of hx allow to avoid
> ambiguity in words of Greek
> origin.
>
> In the same text, the last paragraph of section 4
> says: "We see that the
> differences between languages are very important and
> that, on the other
> hand, author's subjectivity plays a relatively less
> considerable role. This
> fact should convince each esperantist that
> radicalism, intending to
> eliminate the phonem hx from everyday Esperanto,
> would be fruitless. The
> widely international composition of the language
> users would simply not
> allow the phonetic impoverishment."
>
> Jean-François Colson
>
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