what nationalities (or language communities) have a problem with the hx sound? It's not really in English, but it doesn't seem to me to be a very hard sound to make. Then again, it is pronounced in mandarin to varying degrees, sometimes very strong, other times closer to a normal "h" depending on the dialect (or accent) of the mandarin speaker. I'm personally a fan of hx,but is it really that hard for people to pronounce? perhaps its because I've been exposed to a variety of sounds as a kid, but i find most sounds that I've encountered can be replicated with a little bit of practice which is part of the joy of learning languages!

I've been reading through my Esperanto bible, and a lot of peoples and place names have "hx". its really cool, and a lot of names are quite a bit different from the English, which i assume is because Zamenhof was translation directly from the Hebrew (am i correct about that?).

anyways, If internationalization means angloization, then unfortunately international place names (which Esperanto draws much vocabulary from) will probably lack the hx, which really is to bad.

sergejm:

R2D2!:
Ne forgesu “Meĥıko”-n . Mı ne komprenas tıon, ke la nomo de mıa lando en alıaj lıngvoj estas bazıta sur la skrıbo kaj ne sur la prononco.

—Ilhuıtemoc δ

The name of your land in Russian is Мексика[Meksika], but its capital city is Мехико[Меĥıko].
Oni povus uzi 'x', kiu aspektas kiel rusa 'х' kaj ne estas uzata en Esperanto, anstataŭ 'ĥ'!
They could use 'x', which look like Russian 'х' and isn't used in Esperanto instead of 'ĥ'!

I like that 'x' has no phonetic value in Esperanto. It has served very well with h,g,j,c,s,and u as a completely unambiguous way to represent phonenes in the language. Changing the orthography now is unnecessary and would result in a mass of older texts needing to be reprinted or left as is to confuse newer readers.

I think we should keep all the hx words in the language as well... there're so much fun to say!

One thing I have against transliterating the Greek χ (chi) with ĥ is that the Greek sound is properly a "kh"—a form of k rather than of h. Thus I approve of Ĥam (חם Ham, son of Noah), but am more ambivalent towards arĥivo (αρχειον).

Senlando:what nationalities (or language communities) have a problem with the hx sound?

Well it depends, but I think for languages like English, Japanese (depending on accent) and a few others, the problem is trying to produce a 'hx' instead of a 'k' or a 'h' as 'hx' feels as if it is in between the two somewhere.
If we think of it in computing terms, 'k' is like 1, 'h' is like 0, and 'hx' is the quantum value that makes no sense to people who haven't come across it but are used to the other two (although it does help when, for instance like in Spanish, Russian or Mandarin there are varying degrees between 'h' and 'hx', even if like in Spanish and Russian its not strictly meant to be there, and Mandarin... well... It's a H according to pinyin so I'll be slack and incorrect and go with that )
So I guess it depends on what you are used to, like I'm used to hearing Japanese but I accidentally pronounce 'u'/'ü' and 'e' in Chinese like in Japanese, and I'm used to Swedish so I pronounce some German words like 'du' and 'r' like in Swedish (or some Central swedish accent because I use the R the same way as in English).

ceigered:

Senlando:what nationalities (or language communities) have a problem with the hx sound?

...for instance like in Spanish, Russian or Mandarin there are varying degrees between 'h' and 'hx', even if like in Spanish and Russian its not strictly meant to be there, and Mandarin... well... It's a H according to pinyin so I'll be slack and incorrect and go with that )

well in truth i never bothered (or even noticed)with the hx in my dialect of mandarin, never even noticed the differance between h and hx, but as soon as my chinese proffesor (easy university credit, haha) pointed out that it was there and made me pronounce it, luckily i was able to pronounce it without problem. I probably always used a very light variant of hx, so all i had to do was stranthen the sound. So i guess i must have been exposed to it since i was young, but never new it was there until it was pointed out to me. I think the Beijing accent probably pronounces it much more (and thicker) then what the typical Taiwanese would. Its funny that we often know so little about the languages we are razed in.

btw, the h sound in mandarin is the same or very similar to the hx in esperanto, right? or have i been pronouncing my hx wrong all this time? lol that is always possible. when i heard the audio on the lernu alphabet, it wasn't to helpful, since i could barely hear the difference between the speaker's hx and h. I've just listened to it now, and noticed he has a very light pronunciation of it, the one in mandarin sounds much more pronounced to me. Like i pronounce it where i can hear a vibration in my throat, is this overkill?

Senlando:

ceigered:

Senlando:what nationalities (or language communities) have a problem with the hx sound?

...for instance like in Spanish, Russian or Mandarin there are varying degrees between 'h' and 'hx', even if like in Spanish and Russian its not strictly meant to be there, and Mandarin... well... It's a H according to pinyin so I'll be slack and incorrect and go with that )

well in truth i never bothered (or even noticed)with the hx in my dialect of mandarin, never even noticed the differance between h and hx, but as soon as my chinese proffesor (easy university credit, haha) pointed out that it was there and made me pronounce it, luckily i was able to pronounce it without problem. I probably always used a very light variant of hx, so all i had to do was stranthen the sound. So i guess i must have been exposed to it since i was young, but never new it was there until it was pointed out to me. I think the Beijing accent probably pronounces it much more (and thicker) then what the typical Taiwanese would. Its funny that we often know so little about the languages we are razed in.

btw, the h sound in mandarin is the same or very similar to the hx in esperanto, right? or have i been pronouncing my hx wrong all this time? lol that is always possible. when i heard the audio on the lernu alphabet, it wasn't to helpful, since i could barely hear the difference between the speaker's hx and h. I've just listened to it now, and noticed he has a very light pronunciation of it, the one in mandarin sounds much more pronounced to me. Like i pronounce it where i can hear a vibration in my throat, is this overkill?

Oh how I would love to speak Mandarin
but in regards to your question, the 'hx' is described by wikipedia as often corresponding to either:
- The Voiceless velar fricative /x/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_frica...
or
- The Voieless uvular fricative /χ/

The Mandarin chinese sound in hé (河) is reportedly the Voiceless velar fricative, where as the other consonant sound is much more throatier and more of a Hebrew/Yiddish kind of sound (according to Wikipedia, and I don't know about different variations in those two languages either)

Check out the audio on the wikipedia pages if you can.