Re: phonemic spellin of "science"

At 10:31 pm -0400 9/5/00, Nik Taylor 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/.
Except that /sk/ does not occur in any natlang's pronunciation of this word
AFAIK.  Some convention allowing <sc> = /S/, a la Italian or Old English,
would give a far pleasanter sound, but would probably be inconsistent in an
AIL like Esperanto.

Also one has to consider derivations.  Presumably the language would want
words like 'scientist', 'scientific' etc.  If, on pain of death, I had to
produce an "Esperanto reform", I'd opt for 'sientio'.  But...

>But, what's done is done.
Amen.

I've had more than my fill of E-o (and other AILs - don't blame E-o for
them all, by any means) flame-wars on another list, so I hesitate to
comment.  But IMHO Esperanto is Esperanto is Esperanto. As Nik says: what's
done is done.

If one starts messing around, one only produces yet another 'esperantido' -
and IMO there's more than enough of those around already.

[...]
>
>Of course, /sts/ can also occur in English as in "guests"
But _not_ as syllabic onset.  And in the traditional Sussex dialect, that'd
be 'guestes' (or even 'guesteses'  :)

>(or worse yet,
>"guest's story", with /stst/!).
Only in slow, deliberate speech.  The first /t/ surely disappears in
'allegro speech'.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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