Re: phonemic spellin of "science"

At 22:31 09/05/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Jonathan Chang wrote:
>> okay, good topic... what would be  would a good alternative spellin' be?
>> "siensio" /sie'ns'i'o/ or /si'ens'i'o/ ? or what?
>
>Better yet would've been if he'd used <c> = /k/, for /skien'kio/ (or
>even esciencio, /eskien'kio/), or at least esciencio, /estsien'tsio/.
>But, what's done is done.
>
In fact, Esperanto for that is just like any natural language: if the
majority of the community uses a certain form, it will become the official
one, even if it was not accepted before. Unlike many natlangs' academies,
the Akademio de Esperanto is very democratic and less prescriptivist than
many others (except for grammar, but no one has ever wanted to change the
16 rules :) ). Most of its members think that it's the actual usage that is
the "official" Esperanto, and that the role of the Akademio is just to
uniformize in order to prevent emergence of dialects in the diaspora.

>It's clusters like that that give Esperanto an ugly sound, IMHO.  /sts/,
>/kn/, /kv/ (and why kvar and not kwar?) are hideous, I think.
>
"Des goûts et des couleurs on ne discute pas." In my opinion, those
clusters are marvelously beautiful (and yet I hate German for its
consonnant clusters). As for the reason it's /kvar/ and not /kwar/, it's
because the sound /w/ can appear only (a few exceptions attested, like the
name of the letter /wo/) after a vowel. That why a noun like Washington is
esperantised as 'Vasxintono'. Personally I find that rule stupid (The fact
that I am an Esperanto enthusiast doesn't mean I cannot be critical :))) ),
but as you said, what's done is done.

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)