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Help with pronunciation of "oŭ"

by Rejsi, May 28, 2013

Messages: 15

Language: English

Vilinilo (User's profile) May 31, 2013, 11:40:53 PM

Kirilo81:
There is no such ban in the Fundamento, just a rule to use ŭ after vowels only.
Thanks for the tip. But even though there's such a rule, it's still used before a vowell in the name of the letter itself, ŭo. I never understood why purposely limiting the usage of ŭ, I can easily pronounce ŭa, ŭe, ŭi, ŭo and even ŭu. Could it be a linguistic prejudice from Mr. Zamenhof?

marcuscf (User's profile) June 1, 2013, 3:44:14 AM

According to this PDF (last line of page 135), it seems that Zamenhof did not like «ŭa» much. But he didn't dislike it so much as to introduce an irregularity, so he did include ŭo as the name of the letter, but didn't create any other words with that combination. I don't think we need to be too strict against ŭa, ŭo, oŭ etc. in proper names, culture-specific words and some other things, just don't go overboard changing basic words akvo to akŭo, etc... That would certainly be kontraŭfundamenta.

etala (User's profile) June 1, 2013, 6:27:19 AM

Vilinilo:
Kirilo81:
There is no such ban in the Fundamento, just a rule to use ŭ after vowels only.
Thanks for the tip. But even though there's such a rule, it's still used before a vowell in the name of the letter itself, ŭo. I never understood why purposely limiting the usage of ŭ, I can easily pronounce ŭa, ŭe, ŭi, ŭo and even ŭu. Could it be a linguistic prejudice from Mr. Zamenhof?
I just chalked it up to the tendency of two influential groups in the beginning of Esperanto, Russians and Germans, to avoid the sound of "ŭ" at the beginning of a syllable.

Vilinilo (User's profile) June 1, 2013, 5:36:07 PM

etala:
I just chalked it up to the tendency of two influential groups in the beginning of Esperanto, Russians and Germans, to avoid the sound of "ŭ" at the beginning of a syllable.
On the other hand, to me (and I believe that values for other speakers of latin languages as well) it's a lot easier to say "akŭo" than "akvo".

jchthys (User's profile) June 4, 2013, 3:27:05 PM

Vilinilo:
etala:
I just chalked it up to the tendency of two influential groups in the beginning of Esperanto, Russians and Germans, to avoid the sound of "ŭ" at the beginning of a syllable.
On the other hand, to me (and I believe that values for other speakers of latin languages as well) it's a lot easier to say "akŭo" than "akvo".
…meaning it would be all the worse to introduce minimal pairs with v/ŭ.

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