Re: Two questions about Esperanto

On Tuesday, July 6, 2004, at 09:13 , Philippe Caquant wrote:

> I guess this letter h^ was introduced mainly because
> this phoneme is very common in Russian, and Zamenhof
> probably was influenced by Russian.
It is common in Russian, but on the other hand /h/ is absent from the
language. Esperanto has both /h/ and /x/. Zamenhof knew Russian, as his
part of Poland was at that time under Russian rule. But I feel Zamenhof
was far more influenced by his L1, i.e. Polish, which also has both /h/
and /x/, as does Esperanto.

[snip]
> The problem in Esperanto is those letters with
> diacritics signs: h^, g^, c^, j^, s^.
Yep.

> 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).
No, they're not. AFAIK Esperanto alone puts circumflex accents on
consonants. Probably what you're thinking of is the 'caron' (hacek, haczek)
  used in the writing of Czech & some other Slav langs - like an _inverted_
circumflex.

This was, indeed, Z's starting point. But he, quite rightly, thought that
western printers, type-setters, type-writers etc. would have problems with
the caron. The solution? Invert the caron & use the good ol' circumflex
that the ancient Greeks bequeathed us.

> 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.
?? Ido was invented long before computers! Doesn't its origins go back to
1908?
Also, of course, Ido did merely _try_ to get rid of the letters - it
actually did.

> But to me, this is not a huge
> problem.
Maybe not - but it is a problem & IMO a problem that could easily have
been avoided.

> The real problem is to change mentalities and
> politics. [STOP ! YOU'RE ENTERING FORBIDDEN ZONE !]
================================================================

On Wednesday, July 7, 2004, at 12:27 , Jean-François COLSON wrote:

> Where is that "forbidden zone"? I don't see it. The "Fundamento de
> Esperanto" itself allows you to use digraphs with h instead of the
> circumflexed letters
It does indeed. But for some reason Esperantists in practice do not seem
to like this. Even on the Internet the combos cx, hx, jx etc seemed to be
preferred to ch, hh, jh etc. I don't know why.

But Philippe's enigmatic reference to the "forbidden zone" can hardly have
anything directly to do with denoting certain sounds with circumflexed
consonants or an objective discussion of Esperanto's phonology, since
these are linguistic matters and, strictly speaking, quite OK here.

The clue, I guess is in "The real problem is to change mentalities and
politics" which also is enigmatic, but those of us who've been around a
long time are possibly less puzzled.

Since Philippe mentioned Ido, he might be referring to old Ido ~ Esperanto
quarrels (betrayal or whatever) which some of us have heard ad_nauseam
before & has no relevance to this list. It most certainly is forbidden
territory here as it is very much a matter of auxlang politics.

But I have a horrible suspicion - tho I'd like to think I'm wrong - in
view of the context in which it occurs that it's the problem of daring to
criticize any feature of Esperanto. It's assumed by some - thankfully not
all - that if you criticize the language you are doing so for political
reasons (i.e. have 'bad mentality'). I remembered being treated to sarcasm
& flames on that other list for suggesting that, er, maybe having
adjectives agree with nouns in case & number was, perhaps, not the best
idea in a _global_ AIAL. Now that IMNSHO is a _linguistic_ matter - but it
meets, alas, the type of response that it's me who has the problem & I
need to change my mind and politics.

As I say, I do sincerely hope that my suspicion is wrong & that I've
misunderstood Philippe. But that is why we mostly avoid auxlangs here. It
is, alas, in practice difficult to discuss them objectively.  {sigh}

Maybe we'd best leave the circumflexed consonants alone. I think the
replies about the use of h^ ~ hh ~ hx have shown what, in practice, is
going on in the Esperanto community.

Ray
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