Skip to the content
Reply

Sounds 'ts' versus 'c'

by paulbrill, September 21, 2009

Messages: 13

Language: English

paulbrill (User's profile) September 21, 2009, 8:13:54 PM

If one was to pronounce a word with the "ts" sound in it, how would I know whether or not it's spelled with a "c" (which I would assume) or if it's spelled with "ts"? They seem to have the same sound to me. Can anybody provide insight on this?

Miland (User's profile) September 21, 2009, 8:19:17 PM

I don't remember having any difficulties with this in practice. Perhaps you can provide an example, if you have?

paulbrill (User's profile) September 21, 2009, 8:25:50 PM

I don't really have an example. I'm a beginner, and I don't know a whole lot of words at this point. It's just that I should know how something is spelled simply by hearing it, right? So it just makes me wonder whether I would spell something with a 'c' or with 'ts' when I hear that sound... unless of course the sounds really are different. Will I just probably never see a word with 'ts' in it?

tommjames (User's profile) September 21, 2009, 8:36:30 PM

I don't know of any Esperanto root that has a "ts" in it. Some words will have that letter combination but that will be due to 2 roots being combined, where one ends in a "t" and the other starts in an "s", that being the case I'd say the way you'd know the spelling is by knowing the roots themselves and recognising that they've just been joined together.

If you run the query \\b\\w*ts\\w*\\b through at Tekstaro you will find lots of matches for words that contain "ts". In every case they are combined words. A few examples...

postsignoj - post signoj
tutsimple - tut simple
spiritstato - spirit stato
militservo - milit servo
festsalono - fest salono

..and so on. If you know the roots it's not hard to discern meaning / spelling.

paulbrill (User's profile) September 21, 2009, 8:43:04 PM

Cool, thanks for the help.

fizikisto (User's profile) September 21, 2009, 8:47:46 PM

I suppose, the same is true for tŝ / ĉ and dĵ / ĝ.

Matthieu (User's profile) September 21, 2009, 8:51:37 PM

Actually there's a small difference. Compare in English “why choose” and “white shoes”. There is a short pause in the second case. It's the same difference between “ĉ” and “tŝ”.

But in practice, it is not really important: as it has been said, “ts” occurs only in compound words, and it is not difficult to understand if you know the roots.

mnlg (User's profile) September 22, 2009, 1:10:18 PM

Mutusen: remarkable example. I'm going to steal it from you, if that's ok ridulo.gif

Matthieu (User's profile) September 22, 2009, 1:20:08 PM

That's okay, I took it from Wikipedia. lango.gif

ceigered (User's profile) September 22, 2009, 1:45:22 PM

Mutusen:That's okay, I took it from Wikipedia. lango.gif
So really mnlg you need to go to the original wikipedia page and search through the ŝanĝlisto and then find the user who originally added the information which mutusen used, and then ask them who their source was and blah blah blah blah ..........

(5 years later)
.......... blah blah blah blah blah. Then you can ask that person!

Back to the top