Talk:Esperanto phonology

message: I tried linking to eo:Egzismo, but the link won't display for some reason. Note that if you do make the link, the Esperanto article is factually incorrect. --kwami 21:05, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [Untitled]

message: Removed this from the intro: 
:(This is not strictly true, as although v may appear between a consonant and a vowel while ŭ only ever appears as the second part of a diphthong, there are minimal pairs such as naŭa (ninth) and nava (of naves, concerning naves) which are distinguished only by these two phonemes.)
This was discussed elsewhere, but looks like I forgot to cover it in this article. Could be a case of /nav.a/ vs. /na.va/. Anyway, it doesn't belong in the intro. kwami
There is no way that v and ŭ can be treated as allophones: as mentioned above the former may only oocur pre-vocallically whilst the latter is usually only the second part of a diphthong, but these positions are NOT mutually exclusive as both can occur intervocalically. And despite the possibility of the minimal pairs being analysed with different syllabic structures, this is not taken into account when determining the phonemic status of a speech sound in any language. There are good reasons for this. 1) Syllable boundaries are nto clearly defined in languages such as English and Esperanto where syllable structure can be CV or VC and are often a matter of personal opinion 2) taking the morphonological view, such as used by John Wells, the syllables boundaries can be analysed and coinciding with morpheme boundaries giving [nav.a] and [nau̯.a] 3) as suggested some speakers may not distinguish between v and ŭ, which if they were true allophones would mean they could be given the same phonetic realisation without a loss of contrast (such as the realistation as English /l/ which is always 'dark' in soem varieties). But if both Esperanto sounds are realised the same, the contrast between "naŭa" and "nava" will be lost, regardless of where one theoretically places the syllable boundary as this boundary is not explictally given in the pronunciation.
For similar reasons, the offglides in English closing diphthongs cannot be treated as allophones of the semivowels /j/ and /w/, which only appear in syllable initial position. Matt.
:Ŭ may be a non-syllabic /u/ rather than /v/ or /w/. 
:What would you say about the Ŭ sound in English cooperate? Might be similar. kwami 09:32, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite true. I don't think the article makes the claim any longer that Ŭ and V might be allophones. I'll double check. kwami 18:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  V vs. Ŭ 

message: Include the alternate forms like orhxestro/orkestro. --Error 03:00, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Orĥestro is obsolete, but the merger is found in other words. kwami 09:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Hx/K

message: I have changed the table in the "Orthography & pronunciation" section so as to remove the explicit (and, as it stood, absolutist) reference to a kz exception, and refer the reader to the (much more nuanced) discussion under "Assimilation"—for two reasons: (1) Previously, the table seemed to espouse egzismo unambiguously, as though it were the only option; (2) There was no reference to other possible assimilations, leading the unwary reader to suppose that kz–>gz was the only one.
:Yes, good call. This table used to be an article of its own, with a very schematic outline of pronunciation. kwami
I was also sorely tempted to include an entry for consonantal ŭ, since no matter how rare (and arguably obsolescent) it is, it can occur in standard Esperanto—and not just in words like "ŭato" and proper nouns, but in the zamenhofa "ŭa!", and of course the name of the letter itself, "ŭo". I only refrained from doing so because it would have required more than just the insertion of one line for the article to be consistent, due to its assumption that "initial ŭ violates Esperanto phonotactics". I suggest that the table is incomplete without it (even if it needs to be flagged as "rare"), but it may involve changes elsewhere in the text. Vilcxjo 02:00, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The name of the letter ŭo is really the only word in the basic vocab. Onamatopoeia exists outside a language's normal phonology - English would be a click language (tsk! tsk!) with syllabic sibilants (shhh!) if it were included, for example. We should probably add ŭ as a footnote to the table. kwami 06:57, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orthography & pronunciation 

message: Would this count as a marginal loan phoneme considering it exist in some loanwords...?Cameron Nedland 15:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: More likely a consonant cluster. Covered under phonotactics. kwami 06:49, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pf affricate 

message: The article mentions that r, v, ĉ, ŝ, ĝ and ĵ can also be pronounced as [ɾ], [ʋ], [tʂ], [ʂ], [dʐ] and [ʐ] respectively, instead of their standard pronounciations as [r], [v], [tʃ], [ʃ], [dʒ] and [ʒ] respectively. I can't find a source that supports this claim. The most reliable source about Esperanto grammar is the Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko, and it mentions only the standard pronounciations, not the pronounciations as [ɾ], [ʋ], [tʂ], [ʂ], [dʐ] and [ʐ]. If no one provides a source that supports the current claims, I will remove them, so that the article represents the phonetic inventory in the same way as does the Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko. Marcoscramer 20:15, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since no one presented any sources, I have now removed these alternative pronounciations. Marcoscramer 14:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They reflected variants based on speakers' native languages. There's no end to that, of course, but considering they were Slavic, I thought them significant. No problem deleting them, though. kwami 06:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources 

message: Given the way the diphthongs are presented in the section "Inventory", a reader might think that the diphthongs are seperate phonemes in Esperanto. However, Esperantologists generally agree that the diphthongs are just realisations of phoneme-pairs. Maybe we should make this clear in the article. Marcoscramer 14:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sources? Is this because of plural j, with the idea that plurals are agglutinative rather than synthetic, as a phonemic diphthong analysis would suggest? kwami 06:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually, the question of whether they're phonemes or constrained by phonotactics is academic. kwami 02:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Yeah, that's better. — kwami (talk) 02:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diphthongs 

message: How are non-Esperanto sounds like [θ] and [ð] represented in Esperanto? Are Esperantized letters like t̂ and d̂ used? Or the Icelandic letters þ and ð? Or the Sami letters ŧ and đ? Or English digraphs th and dh? Or modified digraphs like tħ and dħ (with a bar through the h)? Did Zamenhof deal with this explicitly? -- Evertype·✆ 12:02, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: They aren't. The original orthography can be used, of course, or IPA, but there is no Esperanto phonetic alphabet. I suppose individual authors might come up with ad hoc systems, but the only addition to the Eo alphabet I've seen regularly is a dot subdiacritic for irregular stress in proper names, and that's not universal. (Final stress is commonly indicated by an apostrophe, by analogy to poetic elision, which leaves final stress.) — kwami (talk) 22:07, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-Esperanto sounds 

message: Really? It seems to me matĉo is almost as common, if not more common, than maĉo for “[sporting] match”. Some people criticize maĉo as seeming to imply chewing. (Sorry, kids, ludo kaj konkuro just don’t cut it.) Wiki Wikardo 21:19, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ma(t)ĉo 

message: The use of "bet" for the e vowel sound in esperanto is not universal across english. North American english speakers would pronounce bet as /bɛt/, not /bet/. In addition, many speakers of esperanto pronounce "e" as /ɛ/ in medial positions, but as /e/ in final positions (whether wrongly or correctly). Is there another word that can be used? It may simply be better to use a as in "gate" or "fate". Though these are not pronounced identically across english, and are actually pronounced as /eɪ/, they are better than "bet", in my opinion.
"War" may not be the best word for the o sound. Perhaps "bone" would be better, though this is also usually /oʊ/ in english.
The note regarding the pronunciation of "eŭ" is ridiculous, and nonsensical to many people. Many pronunciation guides use words equivalent to /ɛu̯/ rather than /eu̯/. About the best I've seen approximating the sound is "ayw" in "wayward." — ★Parsa ☞ talk 18:05, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Esperanto vowels are not diphthongs, so ā and ō are not appropriate.  "Wayward" would be a difficult guide to "Eŭropa", but it might be helpful.  "Bone" would work for a lot of people, actually.  — kwami (talk) 20:20, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowel pronunciation 

message: I found several doubtful assertions on this page.
* /ɲ/: it's true that PAG considers it a phoneme, but I have never seen a textbook saying that there's a nj sound, and PMEG says nothing about nj. So is /ɲ/ really worth mentioning?
* Same thing about /d͡z/: the article seems to imply that it's definitely a phoneme, but PMEG says "Kontraste la malofta sinsekvo DZ (ekz. edzo), kiu estas kvazaŭ voĉa C, estas en Esperanto sinsekvo de du konsonantoj, kaj oni ĉiam povas elparoli D kaj Z aparte". It should at least be mentioned that not everyone agrees with the status of /d͡z/ as a phoneme.
* "It has been argued that the Esperanto sequences kv, gv are also phonemes": the linked page says nothing like this, it just says that some people may have a tendency to pronounce them as kw and gw but that it's a mistake. (Personally, I have never heard this pronunciation.)
* The article seems to imply that everyone agrees that there are six diphthongs. However, this article analyses aj, ej, etc. as combinations of a vowel + the consonant j. It cites Wennergren which agrees with this view, as well as Wells which even considers aŭ and eŭ as vowel + w.
* "The Esperanto alphabet is nearly phonemic": why "nearly"?
Mutichou (talk) 11:32, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doubtful assertions 

message: The introduction of the article has the following sentence, which has had a "citation needed" label since May 2013: "Given that the comparison languages were not completely identical, he later advised that the pronunciation of Italian could be considered a model for Esperanto." In February 2014 I deleted the sentence with the following comment: "remove unreferenced claim: I tried to find a reference for it, and also asked my colleagues in the pronunciation section of the Esperanto Academy, but no reference could be found; hence the claim seems very dubious." Three days later, Kwamikagami re-entered the sentence with the comment: "can't find ref offhand, but still relevant". I suggest that if no reference for this claim is found within the next few days, this dubious claim should get finally deleted from the article. Marcos (talk) 09:50, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: As no reference has been provided, I have now deleted this sentence. Marcos (talk) 08:53, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Italian model 

message: "This inventory is rather similar to that of Polish, but is especially close to Belarusian"
Is it really? Most Esperanto sounds are found in most languages, especially Indo-European. The exceptions are:
* /t͡s/, which is indeed found in most Slavic languages, but also in German, Italian and Romanian
* /x/, beside Slavic languages found in Spanish and German
And other sounds are not even the same as in Belariusian and Polish: coronal consonants are alveolar, not dental; it's /ʃ ʒ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ (sounds found in English, French, Spanish, German, Czech etc.) rather than /ʂ ʐ ʈ͡ʂ ɖ͡ʐ/; mid vowels are /e o/, not /ɛ ɔ/; there is /x/, but there's also /h/ not found in Slavic languages (and for Slavic languages speakers it's probably more difficult to differentiate between the two than for an English speaker).
What I'm trying to say is that I don't see any reason why this inventory is "rather similar" to that of Polish or Belarusian. If I'd seen this inventory without reading about "Slavic origins" I would've thought that it's a generic Indo-European phonology.
Basically, if you take Belarusian phonology, and take away "minor differences" given in the article, i.e. 1) palatalization, 2) [ɣ], 3) absence of /h/, you get the following: /m n p b t d k g t͡s d͡z ʈ͡ʂ ɖ͡ʐ f v s z ʂ ʐ x w l j r/, which is an inventory (ʂ ~ ʃ, ʐ ~ ʒ, x ~ h) found basically in any Indo-European language (which is the point, as it's an auxiliary language).
Therefore, I think that that section should be removed, as it's really irrelevant and not necessarily true, unless there are sources that'd directly say Zamenhof was somehow inspired by Belarusian phonology.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.146.129.46 (talk) 16:48, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Few non-Slavic Indo-European European languages distinguish between the full set of /ĉ ĝ ĵ ŝ/. Portuguese doesn't; Spanish doesn't; French doesn't; Dutch doesn't; German doesn't; Danish doesn't; Norwegian doesn't; Swedish doesn't; Icelandic doesn't; Welsh doesn't; Irish doesn't; Scottish Gaelic doesn't; Greek doesn't; Latin didn't; and PIE probably didn't either. Thus you are clearly mistaken in your claim that the consonants of Esperanto are "found basically in any Indo-European language", and I would suggest that you not make any edits based on that idea.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.216.7.157 (talk) 23:53, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: German does distinguish that set of sounds. The following four German words contain these four sounds: "Deutsch", "Dschungel", "Journalismus", "Schule". I think there is some point to the comments of 188.146.129.46. Unless the claim about Polish and Belarusian can be sourced, it should be removed. Marcos (talk) 17:18, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

text: You don't show how you got those %ages. Apart from palatalization, which Z removed from his project before publication, Eo has the vowel system as Belarusian, not Polish. (Though missing the Belarusian diphthongs oŭ & iŭ.) The consonants are also closer; Polish has [w] which Esperanto doesn't have, whereas in Belarusian orthographic g is usually (but not always) [ɣ]. Eo does have the Polish-Russian pronunciation of g, as well as /h/ which doesn't occur in any of them. Actually, apart (as always) from palatalization, Eo has exactly the consonants of E.Yiddish. The vowels aren't as close, though that presumably depends on dialect, as Yiddish has a schwa and doesn't have all the diphthongs. Still, closer than Polish is. — kwami (talk) 23:27, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Slavic origins" - irrelevant? 

message: The article seems to suggest that there are words in Esperanto which are stressed on the last syllable and not the result of elision, and cites the example oĝalan. This is also found on the Esperanto article "Akcento"… and basically only in these two sources. A Quoran told me he looked it up in «il vocabolario più strutturato in Esperanto con circa 25.000 lemmi» (the most structured Esperanto monolingual dictionary with about 25.000 lemmas», and didn't find it. So what is it? Where is it from? Are there other words with stress on the last syllable that aren't the result of elision? What is the situation of anstat = anstataŭ, which I've found on that Esperanto article? Is it an alternate pronunciation happening in fast speech that isn't standard, or perhaps a slang variant? MGorrone (talk) 21:57, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: These would just be proper names where the author wishes to retain the original accent. "Oĝalan" is presumably someone's name -- looks like I added that and failed to spell it out -- maybe I just took it from the WP-eo article. We should probably replace with a confirmable example. Any Esperantized name has the stress on the 2nd-last vowel, with the exception of poetic elision of -o. "Anstat", if it were ever used, would be stressed on the first syllable. — kwami (talk) 00:50, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is oĝalan?