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Accents in Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 19 09 December 2010 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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How do you deal with accents in Esperanto? Do you each use your own national accent, so that the French, Germans and English each have different Rs, aspirated consonants are optional and you chose the L which would be natural in your own language, or are there common rules?
I assume there are some common rules, to avoid anarchy, but is there a universally accepted "RP" version of Esperanto? When I studied Latin, I refused to use the Norwegian pronunciation rules, and insisted on using the Spanish ones wich sounded better in my ear. When I told an American friend of mine this, he exclaimed: There is only one way to pronounce Latin, and said what in my ears sounded like "Ey too Brutey". I have no idea how Latin was pronounced, but I am sure it was not with a heavy American accent... What's the deal in Esperanto? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 19 09 December 2010 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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He was dead serious.
He is very intelligent (he teaches both History and Law at an American university) but it did not occur to him, that the pronunciation of your own language would influence the way you "speak" Latin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| michau Tetraglot Groupie Norway lang-8.com/member/49 Joined 6228 days ago 86 posts - 135 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, NorwegianC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish, Sign Language Studies: Burmese, Toki Pona, Greenlandic | Message 5 of 19 09 December 2010 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | ||
The Latin pronunciation has actually been reconstructed, so it is known, more or less, what is the correct way to speak it. But of course it is different from the ways it is usually pronounced nowadays. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5117 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 6 of 19 09 December 2010 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is supposed to be a standard pronunciation of each letter in Esperanto. I don't know how hard the pronunciation would be for speakers of other languages, so I'm not sure how much of an effect that would have. As a native English speaker I have no trouble with the sounds, though some English speakers can't roll an r. If you spoke Esperanto and didn't roll the r, that would be speaking it with an accent. So I wouldn't say that it's optional, though given the language's international nature I imagine it's more accepted when people can't quite get the sounds right.
As for Latin, I've always assumed it should be pronounced a lot like Italian, since Italian developed straight out of Latin. But I haven't studied Latin so I'm no expert there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 7 of 19 09 December 2010 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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The 'neutral' Esperanto accent is the one that naturally emerged when participants from
20+ countries met for the first congress in 1905. At the beginning of that meeting everyone had to get used to everyone's accent (they all learned Esperanto from a book without a benefit of tapes or teachers), but by the end of the meeting the people's pronunciation had adjusted. To learn it now, I recommend listening to Esperanto radio stations or the recordings that go with many courses. There is more leeway than in other languages, probably due to the fact that there are no native speakers (theoretically) whose ears you could offend. It's harder to even notice an accent in a language that is not your native tongue. Also, Esperanto's phonemes are quite distinct, so that there's little chance of confusion even if you had a heavy accent - as long as you read the hard-wired pronunciation rules somewhere and e. g. learned that "c" is to be pronounced as /ts/ ; if someone pronounced it as /k/ as in English then that would obviously cause problems. Here's a clip from a comedy night, two people reading the poem "la misvojo" with various exaggerated accents: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiOdOSTtaA0 . Read along at http://www.scribd.com/doc/25544965/La-Misvojo . This is a lot worse than it usually gets at Esperanto meet-ups. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 8 of 19 10 December 2010 at 12:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I've always been told that the pronunciation of sounds in Esperanto is quite like (and possibly based on?) Spanish and Italian. When pronouncing the words I use a Spanish-esque accent, but making sure to distinguish the 'v' and 'b' sounds, which is usually not done in Spanish. Recently I was listening to a recording of the Esperanto novel Gerda Malaperis and the actors were speaking with what sounded to me like a strong (Brazilian) Portuguese accent, but still perfectly understandable.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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