Al la enhavo
Respondi

Merging ĝ and ĵ to just ĵ

de k1attack, 2010-novembro-28

Mesaĝoj: 51

Lingvo: English

Mustelvulpo (Montri la profilon) 2010-decembro-03 14:17:39

K1 compared his proposed ĝ/ĵ merger to the gradual disappearance of ĥ from the language. I see a big difference between that and what he proposes. Zamenhoff himself acknowledged that Esperanto would change naturally over time. The ĥ sound has been disappearing in that natural, gradual manner, not by some decree. If ĝ and ĵ are meant to merge, it will eventually happen, but I see no sign of it at this point.

k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-decembro-03 17:14:53

What ceigered hasn't mentioned is that many people can't pronounce the ĵ sound either. Those, who can't pronouce ĵ, substitute it for the English J sound (most of the time), the sh sound, the z sound, or even the Y sound. Don't forget that Esperanto's meant to be international! The English J-sound is more common around the world than its French equivalent.

Forget Esperanto! I'm outta heere! I'm off to learn Tika, with only 8 phonemes!

Donniedillon (Montri la profilon) 2010-decembro-03 20:15:49

k1attack:
Forget Esperanto! I'm outta heere! I'm off to learn Tika, with only 8 phonemes!
I hope you find it more fulfilling. sal.gif

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-decembro-04 04:45:39

k1attack:What ceigered hasn't mentioned is that many people can't pronounce the ĵ sound either.
Seriously? Virtually all English, German, Dutch, Russian, French, Italian, and probably Spanish and Chinese people can do it pretty easily, they just need to be taught and not told something stupid like "it's a soft ĝ".

Last time I checked, that's 400m + ~100m + ~50m + 200m + 100m + 50m + 500m + 1,000+m which is more than a third of the entire population of the Earth. This isn't including the other slavic languages, which all have a ĵ/ĝ distinction somewhere (or their speakers are able to do it).

I don't know about the rest of the languages on the face of the earth, but I'm sure that virtually everyone who can access Esperanto can learn very easily to pronounce "ĝ" and "ĵ" separately. Don't believe the gross over-estimations and assumptions of people who believe "10 phonemes or less" is the only way to have a language. The reason languages have so many "hard" sounds is because we humans are smart enough to have them.

If you really want your language without ĝ/ĵ but want something Esperanto-like, learn Ido. At least then you're speaking something that most people might be able to understand a word of.

Also note that most of all those "simple languages" evolve at one point in time and become more complicated depending on the growth of society and a people's exposure to others. No language's phonemes are "safe" and "perfect" forever, as Latin has taught us.

patrik (Montri la profilon) 2010-decembro-04 05:36:58

My word on this is that one of the reasons why people stick to E-o, as it is, is not due to its supposedly superlative attributes (being the simplest, easiest...) but because it's "good enough" for those people (the "Goldilocks principle"). Therefore, any attempt to any deliberate and arbitrary changes is bound to fail, just because it's already "good ENOUGH".

Also, I feel that k1attack seems to underestimate our potential and ability to learn and master new phonemes. "ĵ" and "ĥ" doesn't exist in Tagalog ("ĝ" does, however), but it doesn't mean that Filipinos or anybody else cannot ever learn it if they want to.

Frith Ra (Montri la profilon) 2010-decembro-04 06:37:51

En tiu ĉi tuta fadeno mi neniam vidis eĉ iomete de la Fundamento. Kial ne? demando.gif

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-decembro-04 09:38:34

Frith Ra:En tiu ĉi tuta fadeno mi neniam vidis eĉ iomete de la Fundamento. Kial ne? demando.gif
Bonvolu uzi la Anglan lingvon tie ĉi (aŭ Esperanton kun angla traduko) okulumo.gif

The reason why you've not seen the fundamento is because changing the language pretty much ignores the fundamento, so someone coming and proposing changing the language ain't gonna care about the fundamento anyway, eh? rido.gif

Rohan (Montri la profilon) 2010-decembro-04 10:25:36

ceigered:Basically, all a "ĝ" is, is really a palataly sound that goes from hard to soft, and has a bit more vibration than a ĉ.
It strikes me as amusingly paradoxical that a couple of posts later, you go on to say

ceigered:Virtually all English [...etc] people can do it pretty easily, they just need to be taught and not told something stupid like "it's a soft ĝ".
...

ceigered: Also, "manĝi" is a lot easier to pronounce in Esperanto than "manĵi", because "manĝi" means you can pronounce the "n" like a normal "n". "manĵi" means you have to learn how to pronounce a nasal vowel before a ĵi, because if you said "manĵi" with a normal "n", it would have a high chance of turning "ĵ" into a "ĝ" anyway in the pronunciation.
Well actually, more often than not, it's nasals that assimilate to following stops, rather than the other way round. So if 'manĵi' were a word, the ĵ would probably remain as it is, while the 'n' would digress from what might be called the 'default' Esperanto 'n' (i.e. 'n' would probably be post-alveolar rather than alveolar or dental, because 'ĵ' is post-alveolar). The same principle is at work in words like 'sango', where a velar 'n' is perfectly acceptable.

That also means that no one would have to bother learning to pronounce nasal vowels. Not that I care in the slightest for 'manĵi', mind.

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2010-decembro-04 13:23:47

This is exactly why I suggested not feeding the trolls. k1attack is known to do this both here and in other forums; he starts a thread on some inflammatory topic, suggesting that Esperanto should make some major reform, and saying that some language of Arpee's is much better. And this forum always rises to the bait and starts defending the way Esperanto does this thing or that thing. This forum gets drawn into a loooong debate. I am more than a little sick of this and I wish that we as a forum would stop engaging him. Need I remind everyone of previous similar situations?

As an addition - k1attack has come to this forum in the past with sincere questions, and he has gotten his sincere answers, even after the aforementioned threads. I think that by now this forum is pretty good at distinguishing between a sincere question and trolling behavior. But if he's talking about 'wouldn't it be better of Esperanto did xyz?' rather than asking a simple grammar question, experience shows that he's not asking out of a sincere desire to know.

For those who are new to this forum, I encourage you to read the threads I linked to above; please think about that next time you want to engage with k1attack. Ask yourself, "Does this question indicate a sincere desire to improve his Esperanto?" If so, go ahead and give a nice helpful answer. If it's a troll attack, I would definitely not draw him into any long debates. Just give a *brief* message saying that Esperanto certainly has some flaws, as does every language, but that it is not open to reforms, just as other living languages are not. This remains the case whether Zamenhof made the best decision in the world or the worst, with regard to choosing a specific grammatical element.

Rohan (Montri la profilon) 2010-decembro-04 13:32:44

erinja:k1attack is known to do this both here and in other forums
Why hasn't (s)he been ingloriously banned yet?

Reen al la supro