Poruke: 12
Jezik: English
melissamaples (Prikaz profila) 26. rujna 2012. 10:15:41
My question is about knowing where and from whom to take cues on how to speak Esperanto correctly. For other languages, this is fairly simple - you just find a radio station or TV station broadcast from the country, et voilà, you're pretty much guaranteed native speakers and you don't have to worry too much about whether they're pronouncing words the "right" way, because they are.
With Esperanto, obviously it becomes more tricky. Even if you do find a native speaker, chances are they learned from their parents, who most likely weren't native speakers themselves.
My concern about this stems from listening to an Esperanto radio broadcast a few days ago, and even with my rudimentary knowledge of the language, I spotted several instances in which I was pretty sure the person talking was saying some words incorrectly (syllabic stress in the wrong place and so forth). So it made me wonder - in a community with almost no native speakers, how do I judge whether the person I'm listening to is someone I should be using as a model for my own pronunciation?
I'm guessing there's no clear-cut answer to this, but I'm wondering what people use as guidelines, or if there are certain go-to podcasts or broadcasts that are known for featuring particularly skilled speakers.
Any advice is welcome! I want to start listening to more Esperanto online but want to make sure I'm modelling my own pronunciation after people who speak the language well, since listening to natives is probably not a realistic option like it is with "natural" languages.
Thank you!
EldanarLambetur (Prikaz profila) 26. rujna 2012. 11:52:13
There is a website called "Radio Verda" (http://radioverda.com/), that has hundreds of audio programmes made by competent Esperanto speakers. They pronounce words carefully, just below conversation speed. The main programme is run by a man and woman, so you'll hear both feminine and masculine voices. And there is a variety of diverse topics. All of this is very helpful for learning.
Also, many of the courses on Lernu.net have audio components!
So I'd listen to those to get your pronunciation model sorted, and then use what you've learnt to know when other broadcasts are mispronouncing!
-Andy
sudanglo (Prikaz profila) 26. rujna 2012. 12:44:11
Esperanto is fairly tolerant of regional (national) accents because of the limited number of vowel sounds (compare 20 for English) and the fact that most consonants are common to the majority of European languages.
Errors in stressing the correct syllable seem unlikely because the rule for the primary stress is so simple and has no exceptions. Getting any secondary stress right in a compound word somewhat depends on your knowledge of the language - is this compound sufficiently well known that is is treated as though it was a root+finaĵo or is the compounding to be signalled.
It is unlikely that any experienced Esperantist would say stacidomo (station) because this is such a common compound. But manĝ-vagono (dining car) could well occur. However nobody would consider it an error if you said manĝ-vagono.
Te general agreement on the best pronunciation in Esperanto is that it is one that prevents another Esperantist from guessing your mother tongue. By that I don't mean, of course, deliberately adopting a French accent to disguise the fact that you are Swedish.
I myself was once accused of having a German accent in Esperanto. But if true, it was certainly not deliberate.
I'd say that the variation in pronunciation of Esperanto depending on the mother tongue of the speaker is on the whole pretty trivial compared to the massive variations in the accents of English speakers. Think of the difference between a Scot and an Australian, or a Geordie and a Londoner.
melissamaples (Prikaz profila) 26. rujna 2012. 15:46:38
The Radio Verda site is amazing, that's a fantastic resource. That speed is... well, just about my speed.
As for the syllable stress errors, I don't remember all of them but one that sticks in my head is that the speaker was talking about his friends, and he kept calling them amikoj, and I was thinking, I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be amikoj. He also said familio a couple of times, which again I thought was incorrect. Am I wrong there?
bartlett22183 (Prikaz profila) 26. rujna 2012. 19:13:23
Gosudar (Prikaz profila) 26. rujna 2012. 20:32:55
melissamaples:My question is about knowing where and from whom to take cues on how to speak Esperanto correctly.That's my question too. It is relatively easy to learn to read Esperanto, but how do you learn to speak Esperanto when you don't have anyone to speak it with? How do you know that your pronunciation and intonation are correct? How do you learn to speak "like a native" when there are no natives?
I found a solution to this problem in the person of an Austrian radio announcer names Anton Oberndorfer. I accidently stumbled across him on the Internet not once but twice. He is the narrator of Esperanto Vikifilmetoj. These are little YouTube videos which consist of nothing more than Herr Oberndorfer reading articles from Vikipedio, the Esperanto-language version of Wikipedia.
He can also be heard podcasting is own, quite interesting, op-ed pieces on Esperanta Retradio. There is no problem following what he is saying because, with the podcasts as with the YouTube videos, the script is shown on the screen, so you can always match the spoken with the written word.
I think ... but because I am, like you, a komencanto, I don't actually know ... that Anton Oberndorfer speaks perfect, accentless Esperanto. Unless someone tells me different, I am going to use him as the exemplar after whom to model my own spoken Esperanto.
melissamaples (Prikaz profila) 26. rujna 2012. 21:30:43
sudanglo (Prikaz profila) 27. rujna 2012. 09:30:33
For native English speakers, things to avoid which might reveal your mother tongue are:
Do not dipthongise the vowels O and E. Do not use the vowel sound in Home for O and the vowel sound in Hay for the E. Do not say 'Tray bone-ah' for tre bona.
Do not aspirate after P, T, K. Not sure if you are aspirating? Hold a lighted match in front of your mouth and watch the flame while you say Peter picked a peck of pepper. You won't burn your fingers.
On the other hand, you risk a singeing if you do the same experiment with Bubble Bomb and burn
Finally trill your R sound. Make Karto and kato clearly different.
Edit: You can compare an American accent in Esperanto with the speech of someone whose mother tongue is Hungarian here. Personally, I find Katalin's pronunciation very easy on the ear.
sudanglo (Prikaz profila) 28. rujna 2012. 13:23:30
This congress will be more international than usual for a British Congress because of the close proximity of Ramsgate to the Continent, with a direct cross-channel link to Belgium, and nearby links through Dover to France.
It should be relatively easy to assemble a panel of experienced speakers with different mother tongues and allow the kongresanoj to anonymously record their voices to be judged for internationality of accent by the panel. Or even, perhaps, the kongresanaro as a whole can do the judging, as the various recordings are relayed over the public address system, with display of voting paddles like those used by the judges in the TV dance competitions.
creedelambard (Prikaz profila) 1. listopada 2012. 01:58:43