I was thinking about replacing the letter ĝ with ĵ, as Ido (and Japanese) have done. The new letter ĵ can be pronounced both as an English J sound OR a French J sound. Isn't that a good idea?

k1attack:I was thinking about replacing the letter ĝ with ĵ, as Ido (and Japanese) have done. The new letter ĵ can be pronounced both as an English J sound OR a French J sound. Isn't that a good idea?

I believe that part of what makes the Esperanto language easy and standard is that each letter makes one sound, and one sound only. To have the letter ĵ pronounceable as either ĵ or ĝ would be tantamount, IMO, to having the letter a pronounceable as either a or e, and then we end up repeating one of the biggest flaws of the English language.

Look at the Esperanto phonology article. R and V can be pronounced in many different ways.

witeowl:

k1attack:I was thinking about replacing the letter ĝ with ĵ, as Ido (and Japanese) have done. The new letter ĵ can be pronounced both as an English J sound OR a French J sound. Isn't that a good idea?

I believe that part of what makes the Esperanto language easy and standard is that each letter makes one sound, and one sound only. To have the letter ĵ pronounceable as either ĵ or ĝ would be tantamount, IMO, to having the letter a pronounceable as either a or e, and then we end up repeating one of the biggest flaws of the English language.

But the point is that the distinction made between ĝ and ĵ isn't very important and doesn't seperate many words, so merging them wouldn't have much negative effect on the language, whereas merging a and e WOULD.

Ĥ has been mostly replaced by K with very little problems.

k1attack:I was thinking about replacing the letter ĝ with ĵ, as Ido (and Japanese) have done. The new letter ĵ can be pronounced both as an English J sound OR a French J sound. Isn't that a good idea?

I don't see the point. If you want to make the pronunciation or alphabet of esperanto really easy, you'll need to make a whole lot more changes. This seems just one random silly change.

k1attack:I was thinking about replacing the letter ĝ with ĵ, as Ido (and Japanese) have done. The new letter ĵ can be pronounced both as an English J sound OR a French J sound. Isn't that a good idea?

It was told you several times that Esperanto is still to wide spreaded to change it that strong way and that it will confuse new beginners.

gyrus:

witeowl:

k1attack:I was thinking about replacing the letter ĝ with ĵ, as Ido (and Japanese) have done. The new letter ĵ can be pronounced both as an English J sound OR a French J sound. Isn't that a good idea?

I believe that part of what makes the Esperanto language easy and standard is that each letter makes one sound, and one sound only. To have the letter ĵ pronounceable as either ĵ or ĝ would be tantamount, IMO, to having the letter a pronounceable as either a or e, and then we end up repeating one of the biggest flaws of the English language.

But the point is that the distinction made between ĝ and ĵ isn't very important and doesn't seperate many words, so merging them wouldn't have much negative effect on the language, whereas merging a and e WOULD.

Ĥ has been mostly replaced by K with very little problems.

Ĥ and K don't distinguish roots (or very very few), or, more importantly, any suffixes. If Ĝ and Ĵ were pronounced the same, you'd have problems with compounds using aĝo as the second element (possible confusion with X-aĵo). I'm sure other problems, that I can't think of off the top of my head, would crop up as well.

gyrus:
But the point is that the distinction made between ĝ and ĵ isn't very important and doesn't seperate many words, so merging them wouldn't have much negative effect on the language, whereas merging a and e WOULD.

Ĥ has been mostly replaced by K with very little problems.

My vocabulary is still very small, yet I know that aĝo and aĵo are two very different words. Sure, we can tell by context, but isn't that the answer we give for words like read/read which trouble ELLs (English language learners)?

I guess the question I would have, is... perhaps the cost is small (depending on whom you ask)... but what would be the benefit?

k1attack:Look at the Esperanto phonology article. R and V can be pronounced in many different ways.

Yes, but are they pronounced in ways which create different words and meanings? There are existing Esperanto words which have different meanings depending on whether they are pronounced with a ĝ or ĵ. There are no words, to my knowledge, which have different meanings depending on whether they are pronounced with a German r or a Spanish r.

k1attack, I think you have discovered in the past that this forum is not really the best place to float your ideas for reforms to Esperanto. Let's keep this forum limited to helping others learn the language as it is, rather than making all of our proposals for how we wish the language would be.