Re: Pronunciation question


Marko Rauhamaa skribis:
> mman37x@xxxxxx:
> > I tend to use a (slight) glottal stop when I do that, even in English:
> > "he eats."
> > I know that's definitely wrong in some languages, like French.
> > Is it in Esperanto? Or doesn't it matter?
> There are three ways to go:
> 1. The French model: pronounce everything legato, no hiatuses, no
> glottal stops. This, I think, is ideal for Esperanto since there
> are no unmarked sounds.
> 2. The German model: use glottal stops as allophones of zero imitating
> the native language. Optionally place a hiatus in words like
> "teatro". Even though my own language, Finnish, treats the glottal
> stop as an allophone of zero (or even as a separate consonant), I
> think this way of pronouncing is nonideal for Esperanto.
> 3. Insisting about unambiguous pronunciation: place mandatory glottal
> stops between double vowels and pronounce double consonants truly
> doubly (that is, release the "k" sound twice in "ekkanti"). I would
> call this position hypercorrect.
> (I live in southern California and usually hear English without glottal
> stops: "What is it?" = /wə'dɪ-zət/.)

In "ne estas" there should be no difficulty, since the first "e" is
unstressed while the second is. So one can start by saying "ne", and
then simply starting to stress the "e": "neEStas".

In "ekkanti" I do not pronounce two _complete_ "k"s. In a stop (a
consonant such as p, t, k), the sound is produced by first closing the
mouth somewhere appropriate (in "p" both lips touch, in "t", the tip or
front of the tongue, depending on the language, touches the ridge or
the incisors, in "k" the back of the tongue touches the hard palate),
then releasing this stricture. In English, as in the Ancient Greek
"ph", this is followed by a "puff of breath" (actually an unvoiced
vowel). In French and German, the closure is immediately followed by
the release. In some languages such as Italian and Hungarian, the
closure is or is not held for a very short but still noticeable while,
which makes the distinction between "p" and "pp", "t" and "tt", and "k"
and "kk". In my opinion, this is how it should be done in Esperanto,
unless one insists on doing a sequence of
closure-release-closure-release.

> Marko

.

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