Re: Two questions about Esperanto

On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 10:13:12AM -0400, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> 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.
P.S.  I was taught that Esperanto |e| represented [E], not [e],
but that [e] was allowed.  The quotations from the message I was
responding to above indicate that [e] is actually the preferred
realization.  Perhaps the book I read, being targeted at English
speakers, chose [E] because we already have [E] in our native
speech, whereas [e] tends to turn into [ej] (a phenomenon well-attested
in my Spanish and French classes in high school).

-Marcos