הודעות: 5
שפה: Esperanto
amgb (הצגת פרופיל) 21 ביוני 2016, 12:28:19
I would like to know what a "native-like" pronunciation corresponds to in Esperanto. While this concept is easier to define for other languages that have a geographically-defined population of speakers, for Esperanto, as an international language, this is more problematic, I imagine. For example, I recognise an English or Spanish accent in Esperanto, but what is an "Esperanto" accent? These reflections were triggered by the comment on this website concerning some reading materials: "The English sound materials are good, with samples of speech. We can't say the same about the Italian version, which has strong national language accents". I would have thought that a language such as Esperanto lends itself to being spoken with various "national" or "regional" accents, but maybe not. I know that single phonemes can be specified to a degree, but what about sentence intonation or other aspects of "accent"? Can anybody shed light on this?
Luib (הצגת פרופיל) 21 ביוני 2016, 13:11:19
- the h is not pronounced
- the ĵ is pronounced like ĝ
- and maybe ŝ is pronounced like s before consonants.
As an English speaker be careful NOT to
- pronounce ĵ like ĝ
- forget how to pronouce the vowels (since in English it's quite nonsense, sorry)
- drop the h or the r
And also not to forget the -n ending when necessary, but this is grammar, not pronunciation. (If you don't know yet what it is, you'll learn it pretty soon)
amgb (הצגת פרופיל) 21 ביוני 2016, 17:28:48
lagtendisto (הצגת פרופיל) 21 ביוני 2016, 17:52:38
Luib (הצגת פרופיל) 22 ביוני 2016, 12:02:43
amgb:Thanks, Luib, that's really useful! So in terms of intonation, there is nothing in particular that makes one accent better than another? It's just a question of phonemes?There is also the accentuation, i.e. the fact one syllable of a word should be pronounced (generally) "stronger" than the others. But it's less important since there can hardly be a confusion.
In Esperanto you always accentuate the before-last syllable of words: tiTOlo, KREi, HUNdo, enIri, BEla, raDIo,... I could imagine the Italian speakers were tempted to say *TItolo* and *RAdjo*.
It's really important only to make the difference between words like metro (MEtro, meter) and metroo (meTROo, underground train).
But there are multiple ways to do this accentuation. Normally the syllable is pronounced stronger (as it is in English too: EspeRANto is a BEAUtiful, EAsy LANguage), but it may also be longer or higher. So in this way intonation is not that important.