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From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: languages with phonetic alphabets?
Message-ID: <D7A0tw.Eqz@tigadmin.ml.com>
Sender: usenet@tigadmin.ml.com (News Account)
Reply-To: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com
Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <D7369s.9wn@indirect.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 09:53:55 GMT
Lines: 33

In article 9wn@indirect.com, stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Pascal MacProgrammer) writes:
>Not so very long ago, jsera@scs.unr.edu (Joshua I. Sera) said...
>>So in fact, EVERYONE speaks esperanto with 
>>an accent, and there are always inconsistencies.
>
>  Well, =almost= everyone.  I read that an Italian actress some time in 
>the 20's or 30's spoke Esperanto with absolutely no accent whatsoever.

Everyone speaks every language with some kind of accent (e.g. English with
a coarsened BBC accent in my case) so what does "speak with no accent" mean?
I guess it means "speak with the accent that society deems the ``null
accent''" -- and there may not be such an accent: one person's "normal, educated
English" might be another's "talking posh".

However, I'd say there's a fairly broad consensus as to the "ideal" Esperanto
accent and there are many people who can get close to this ideal with little
effort.  Poles, Serbs and Croats and (I'm told) Greeks can open their mouths
and produce almost "perfect" E-o without trying.  Poles only lack one E-o sound:
`h' -- Polish only has `^h' and I've never met a Pole who couldn't produce
a reasonable `h'.

...and of course there are denaskaj Esperantistoj -- native speakers of Esperanto.

Sorry for waffling.

-- jP --
 


", there are lots of people who speak Esperanto with "no accent" -- wh



