Messages : 35
Langue: English
ceigered (Voir le profil) 13 janvier 2010 11:13:58
darkweasel:Well, I meant vocalic in regards to the universal nature of the consonant, not in terms of Esperanto's own orthography/phonology. L, as in the IPA /l/, will always, no matter what the language, have a small vocalic quality to it.ceigered:Yes, but in Esperanto, vocalic consonants aren't supposed to exist. That's why nobody uses for example "Aŭstrlando" - it would vocalize R, which is disallowed according to PMEG:
But at least it's a vocalic consonant.
Winchester → vinĉester (Angla urbonomo). La “W” (= Ŭ) fariĝas V, ĉar Esperante Ŭ ne povas aperi vortkomence. La malklara “E” fariĝas E. La fina “ER”, kiu elparoliĝas kiel vokaleca R, fariĝas ER, ĉar Esperante R ne povas esti vokalo.
I guess that this is valid for L, too.
Anyway, if you can say Finland in English, or Finnland in German (You're Austrian, right? Sorry if I got that wrong
, you can say Finnlando in Esperanto. Gemination simply means you have to hold down the n a bit longer. Other that that, it's identical to how you would say "Finlando" (different meaning though 
) 
darkweasel (Voir le profil) 13 janvier 2010 12:54:02
It seems that PMEG agrees with you, so I guess you're right.
gyrus (Voir le profil) 14 janvier 2010 23:05:20
ceigered (Voir le profil) 15 janvier 2010 09:14:15
darkweasel:Yes, I'm Austrian, and not Australian, uh, I mean, the other way round ...Thanks for sharing the links, got some good laughs out of them (I often confuse the words in quick writing, so sometimes I'll accidentally do a Google search for something in Austria instead of Australia)!
darkweasel (Voir le profil) 15 janvier 2010 14:28:18
ceigered:The Austrian embassy in Japan once thought about changing Austria's name from "osutoria" to "osutori" to avoid confusion with "osutoraria". Maybe English should change my country's name to "Austri" toodarkweasel:Yes, I'm Austrian, and not Australian, uh, I mean, the other way round ...Thanks for sharing the links, got some good laughs out of them (I often confuse the words in quick writing, so sometimes I'll accidentally do a Google search for something in Austria instead of Australia)!
Here we see another advantage of -uj- against -i- in Esperanto: It helps avoid confusion between "Aŭstrujo" (= Aŭstrio) and "Aŭstralio". How glad I am that "Österreich" and "Australien" are in no way similar
erinja (Voir le profil) 15 janvier 2010 19:35:43
Some Americans get confused between Sweden and Switzerland, even though these names are totally different, apart from starting with Sw. I was once at a dinner at my friend's grad school, and a girl at my table said she was Swiss, and a dumb guy at the table said "Oh, is everyone blond there?" I felt so embarrassed; now this girl will think that all Americans are dumb, I thought! He clearly was confusing it with Sweden.
Oh, and this dinner was held at Harvard. It was a Harvard Law student who made the dumb comment.
Having said this, on my brief visit to Vienna, I loved the "No kangaroos in Austria" t-shirts that I saw on sale.
Vilinilo (Voir le profil) 15 janvier 2010 21:38:27
erinja:I was once at a dinner at my friend's grad school, and a girl at my table said she was Swiss, and a dumb guy at the table said "Oh, is everyone blond there?" I felt so embarrassed; now this girl will think that all Americans are dumb, I thought! He clearly was confusing it with Sweden.If she comes to that conclusion, she's probably just as dumb. Anyway, in Portuguese it's even easier to make that confusion, as their names are very alike: Suécia (Sweden) and Suíça (Switzerland).
Paraguay and Uruguay are also bound to be confused.
RiotNrrd (Voir le profil) 16 janvier 2010 04:13:22
niko-tina:Americans are famous for the unfair and probably unfundamented fact that they don't know much about geography concerning "the outside world".I would consider that to be a completely unwarranted and offensive stereotyping of Americans in general, if it were anywhere close to being untrue.
But it is actually pretty much the case. I read recently that something like 65% of 18-24 year old Americans couldn't find Iraq or Afghanistan on a map. Switzerland, Sweden, whatever - they're in Asia or Africa or something, so who cares*?
-----
* Yes, yes, *I* know where they are. But that actually is the attitude of a lot of Americans. My apologies to the world on our behalf.
ceigered (Voir le profil) 16 janvier 2010 10:43:51
erinja: I was once at a dinner at my friend's grad school, and a girl at my table said she was Swiss, and a dumb guy at the table said "Oh, is everyone blond there?" I felt so embarrassed; now this girl will think that all Americans are dumb, I thought! He clearly was confusing it with Sweden.But then again you've just gone and called all Swedish people blonde!
He could have gone "well, the Swiss are close to Germany and Northern Italy, they speak German, both Germany and Northern Italians stereotypically have lots of blondes, therefore surely many Swiss would also be blonde".
Unless of course he mentioned Denmark of Norway. Then you know he's off track!
It's like people thinking all Irish have red hair. They don't, the overwhelming majority are brunettes, with the next being blondes, and the minority being the "stereotypical Irishman" with red hair. Or like people thinking all Australians are tanned
In terms of stereotypes, and of Americans being geographically clueless, I'd like to take this opportunity to say that all humans are equally as stupid. Yes, even Europeans (
). Americans don't know one country from another, Europeans, Britons and Australians tend to think their countries are perfect (until someone tries to make internet censorship mandatory cough cough), the Chinese govt. has unfair control of the press, the Japanese don't care about whales, New Zealand has an identity crisis with many thinking it's just another Australian state, and the list just goes on. So while the US may have its (perceived or realistic) faults, lets remember we all have them too LyzTyphone (Voir le profil) 16 janvier 2010 17:25:51