Pronunciation de Interlingua (Most of you I sincerely doubt will need a translation for this).

Look for the section about "g", and the gigantic list of exceptions. Note that "g" is still meant to be pronounced hard (gale/ghost/gummy bear) "normally" when ahead of "i" and "e", yet that's an awefully large list of "exceptions" with a soft g (gem, gelatinous, george).

Now, note that c before i and e is always pronounced ts (or s I believe, but you're meant to do ts as far as the official dudes are concerned).

So why on earth is ge/gi's "soft pronunciation" not standard but rather some sort of "by-rule", I don't know - especially since every single romance language softens a pre-i/e G to a ĝ/ĵ or ĥ (Spanish being the odd one out).

As for how the hell this concerns EO, it goes to show that Esperanto, often called the "unscientific" and "unnatural" etc of the conlangs by those neutral, can make more sense, and thus be more natural in some ways (since in EO, things are pretty much pronounced a certain way.).

So, if you (referring to komencantoj) ever feel the need to justify Esperanto to someone who speaks another conlang or is a conlanger for some stupid reason (I'd just say it's better to avoid such discussions since they're going downhill anyway), just remember that Esperanto actually can be quite naturalistic at times, and in some ways Zamenhoff's system is more naturalistic than Interlingua! (if they're also evangelising about interlingua itself, remind them interlingua was never made to be Esperanto).

Feel proud of your green language and all its under-the-skin traits (of course, if you're already feeling happy with the community and the language then you wouldn't probably care nor doubt about EO's naturalness, but for beginners or those feeling like EO just isn't natural enough, perhaps reconsider?)

As for me and my shoddy interlingua, I'll be happy pronouncing my "ts"'s (soft c/t) as s's and gi/ge's as ĝ/ĵ's. >, since I think Gode wouldn't care given his writings bout the subject.

I've only glanced at Interlingua a few times over the years, so I might be wrong, but I *believe* that it is primarily meant to be a written rather than spoken language, and that the creators tended to preserve the spellings from the source languages, either in whole or in part. The pronunciation rules of the source languages, of course, differ somewhat, so the pronunciation rules of Interlingua need to be more complex in order to allow for them. And you also would get a lot of plain ol' exceptions.

To me, Interlingua *looks* more natural than Esperanto, which at times can look very artificial. But Esperanto is simpler, which is the benefit balancing out the "artificiality" cost. I think choosing "straightforward" over "cooler looking" is in keeping with Zamenhofs general design approach.

RiotNrrd:I think choosing "straightforward" over "cooler looking" is in keeping with Zamenhofs general design approach.

I'd have to concur. It sometimes seems as if that's representative of Zamenhoff as a person - sort of a "man on a mission", C19th style.

Thanks for that info about interlingua too! I guess that it really was created with the idea of making a "modern Latin" (unfortunately though it seems just as used as Latin, a bit unexciting!)

Sometimes I think I could make a spelling reform in Interlingua and nobody would care, since community activity is very low and they are so keen on diversity (as opposed to rigid rules). It would look like just another natural variation...

RiotNrrd:To me, Interlingua *looks* more natural than Esperanto, which at times can look very artificial. But Esperanto is simpler, which is the benefit balancing out the "artificiality" cost. I think choosing "straightforward" over "cooler looking" is in keeping with Zamenhofs general design approach.

I don't know about you, and maybe it's just because I know Esperanto, but I think Esperanto has always looked the least artificial of constructed languages to my eyes. Ido and Interlingua look terure aĉa (horrible) to my eyes

toki pona li pona lukin suli tawa mi! (Toki pona actually looks better to me!)

jchthys:Ido and Interlingua look terure acxa (horrible) to my eyes

I think this feeling - which I share at least concerning Ido - is just there because we're Esperantists. To us, Ido looks like horribly changed Esperanto plus more Latin roots.

I guess an Idist has the same feeling about Esperanto ...

In the jargon of constructed languages "naturalism" has a more restricted meaning. A naturalistic language is one that is modeled on certain existing languages in such a way as to be readily understandable by people familiar with (some of) those languages at first sight. For this reason, naturalism, as a design principle in constructed languages, is in tension with "skemismo", or the use of rules and forms that depart from the way the source languages do things.

The supporters of Ido were bitterly opposed to Esperanto's tabelvortoj because these are not modeled on words in the source languages, for the most part. They also rejected the use of affixes as free-standing words, since this practice is generally not found in the source languages either.

In this restricted sense of the term, Interlingua is certainly more naturalistic than Esperanto, and probably moreso than Ido, too.

Even within Esperantujo, there is an ongoing dialectic between those who favor the introduction of more naturalistic neologisms, in the hope that they will eventually become official, and those (like myself) who prefer to preserve the skemisma aspect of the language.

darkweasel:

jchthys:Ido and Interlingua look terure acxa (horrible) to my eyes

I think this feeling - which I share at least concerning Ido - is just there because we're Esperantists. To us, Ido looks like horribly changed Esperanto plus more Latin roots.

I guess an Idist has the same feeling about Esperanto ...

The funny thing is, even before I learned Esperanto I don't remember having an acute adverse reaction to it the way I had (and still have) with these other languages.

I guess different languages just appeal to different people. The reason you chose to learn Esperanto is because it was pleasant to use. If Ido had appeared pleasant to you and Esperanto hadn't, you would have learned Ido instead...

I don't know, I learned Esperanto never having seen or heard of Ido at all.

I thought Esperanto had a cool Slavic look with the accented letters.

I don't much like the way that Ido looks but I don't think it's my bias as an Esperanto speakers, I think it's just my taste in languages. Some orthographies appeal to me and some don't.

I don't particularly like the most common orthography of Haitian Creole, for example. I know it's perhaps more accurate to pronunciation than the "standard French" orthography but I have to say that writing "Ayiti" just doesn't look as nice to me as "Haiti". Its orthography gives it a bit of a "fake" look that I don't like too much, although the language is in no way "fake" or anything of the sort.