Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Pascal MacProgrammer)
Subject: Esperanto and spelling
Message-ID: <D6DB0q.M5o@indirect.com>
Sender: usenet@indirect.com (Internet Direct Admin)
Organization: Department of Redundancy Department
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 1995 17:53:14 GMT
X-Disclaimer: I have nothing to disclaim, deny, or disavow.
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Not so very long ago, wolfkir@ibm.net said...
>Pascal Macprogrammer asked if any language used 1 letter = 1 sound.
>Christopher Zervic offered Esperanto as an example.

  I believe I've been misquoted; I was not the one who asked the original 
question.  However, I pretty much agree with Christopher's answer, though 
we have to realize that "sound" is a rather vague term.  For example, 
English uses the letter "P" to represent one sound in the word "pan", and 
a different sound in the word "span".  Most English speakers will deny 
that there are two different sounds represented here, but many can be 
taught to hear the difference.
  Esperanto may, or may not, have the same phenomenon, depending on the 
accent of the speaker.

>Esperanto is not a language. It's a code.

  Huh?  Only in the sense that =any= language can be considered a "code" 
for any other language.  For example, during World War II, Navajo Indians 
were used in the US armed forces as "code talkers".  They agreed among 
themselves what phrases to use for military terms that they generally 
had no occasion to talk about in civilian life.
  The Japanese were baffled by this "code", and tried in vain to break 
it, since they believed that it was based somehow on English.
  However, the fact that it was =used= as a code does not cause it to 
=be= a code; it is a language.  Likewise, Esperanto can be used as a code 
between between people who speak it (just as my grandparents used Swedish 
as a code that their children could not understand); nevertheless, it is a 
language.

-- 
                              ==----=                    Steve MacGregor
                             ([.] [.])                     Phoenix, AZ
--------------------------oOOo--(_)--oOOo----------------------------------
        Help stamp out, eliminate, and abolish redundancy!
