Having covered Ido with my last entry, I began wondering what might have prompted such a large-scale departure from Esperanto. As a continuing series, I think that we might periodically revisit some of la kritikoj that people have of Esperanto, and assess whether they are valid or not. If any of you readers out there have anything to contribute, I encourage you to comment – assessing criticism is only worthwhile if it’s an ongoing konversacio!

This time, we’ll examine one complaint that focuses in on the phonology of Esperanto – that is, the way it sounds. An uncited criticism on Wikipedia notes that Esperanto shares a great deal of similarity with Belorussian. Apparently, Esperanto uses sounds that are rather indistinct outside of Europe. For example, the letter “C” in Esperanto is pronounced like the English “ts.” Also, the combinations “eux,” “hx,” and “jx” were claimed to fall under this category. It seems that the core problem is that these don’t sound “Esperanto enough.” The language as it is sounds a bit like Belorussian, and might not be distinct enough in its pronunciation for people whose native languages lie outside of European descent.

I suppose the only rebuttal I could offer here is that, once one learns Esperanto, one would be more apt to recognize when an Esperanto sound is uttered. It is a bit unfair to require people to discern the subtleties of pronunciation (any English speaker who has attempted to pronounce vowel-heavy French words knows exactly what I mean!), but it is not as though any conversation partner will be too critical if someone’s pronunciation is a bit off. Moreover, if written, there is no problem at all – pronunciation does not often interfere with one’s writing.

Any thoughts? Diru ilin, mi petas!