Roy McCoy | Re: “Imajinar”
Paul Bartlett wrote (May 4):
> Yes, 'religion' is closer in *written* structure to widely used
> *written* forms (including English), but, as George points out,
> 'relijion' is closer in *spoken* structure to *spoken* forms
> (including English, in my opinion as a native speaker). Do we
> go with speaking or with writing? LFN goes with speaking, and
> requires that writing conform to speaking. A defensible position.
Yes, but hardly consistently tenable. With the first three languages
I think of - English, French and Spanish - the sound of the "g" in
"religion" is different in each. In this and many other such cases,
you thus can't make writing conform to speaking in any event. If you
want to say something like that "religion" isn't pronounced with a
hard "g" in any language, then I would reply that you're wrong, since
it's pronounced with a hard "g" in Esperanto. Again, nobody has ever
in any degree suffered on that account, so if as you say it's necessary
"to pick some form and go with it", one does best to go for the form
that conforms to the written norm - and this form does in fact exist.
Esperanto is both an actually spoken language and a respectable source
for an IAL planned to supersede it.
Perhaps I should make it clear that my tendency to respect written
forms does not extend to double consonants or anything unphonetic.
I in fact wholeheartedly agree that writing should conform to speech.
>> - because it's somehow
>> inoffensive. "Imajinar" and "relijio", on the other hand, are jolting.
>
> That is not a universally held opinion. ;-)
As you should be aware, universally held opinions do not exist in this
arena, so your comment, while true, lacks significance. Another thing
you can say is that LFN fans don't find such forms jolting, but neither
is this very significant, given the likelihood that people who do find
them jolting may simply not become LFN fans - and given, I might add,
the relative smallness of the LFN community as one perceives it here.
What is to be desired, at least as far as I am concerned, is an IAL that
preserves the virtues of Esperanto, but in addition LOOKS GOOD and isn't
crippled by weird diacritics. If LFN loses its esthetic edge - as, for
example, by using "k" rather than "c" or even admitting this as an option
(which hits me as a fairly awful idea, for various reasons) - then it's
throwing away the only real advantage it may have.
Roy McCoy