--- "Paul O. BARTLETT" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>     Iste message ha apparite in gruppos de novas.
> Esque alicuno
> ha un aviso o experientia, le qual io pote reportar
> in le gruppos?
>
> Paul Bartlett
> bartlett at smart.net
> PGP key info in message headers
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Andy <[log in to unmask]>
> Newsgroups: alt.language.artificial, europa.linguas
> Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 01:29:46 GMT
> Subject: Interlingua and spoken intelligibility
>
> Hello,
>
> I recently posted something similar to this on
> sci.lang, and it was
> suggested that a proportionately higher number of
> people here are likely
> to be familiar with Interlingua.
>
> I'm curious what the situation is like with its
> spoken form.
>
> Is there anyone here here who is proficient in
> Interlingua and who has
> tried listening to the radio or some other aural
> media recorded in a
> Romance language in which they were not proficient?
> If so, how
> intelligible was it?
>
> Also, how well would a monolingual
> French/Italian/Portuguese/Spanish
> speaker likely be able to understand spoken
> Interlingua? It was
> suggested that it would be similarly easy to
> understand spoken
> Interlingua as read it since Interlingua's phonemes
> are a reasonable
> compromise of those other Romance languages. Has
> anyone here who is a
> speaker of one of Fren/Ital/Port/Span but who has
> not studied
> Interlingua separately been spoken to in
> Interlingua? If so, in your
> experience, would it be reasonable to say that that
> assessment was
> correct?
>
> Andy

---

Dear Andy,

Interlingua was developed primarily as a written
medium, and Alexander Gode and others who worked on
the project did not give very detailed thought to how
it should be pronounced.

Unlike natural languages, which are spoken at first
and then written--usually these days on the basis of
their pronunciation--Interlingua does not have a body
of native speakers that a person can consult with to
find out exactly how it should be pronounced and what
its intonation contours should be.

The case of Latin as a written medium of communication
is useful to think about in this context.  When Latin
was first written, its spelling was directly based on
its pronunciation.  Some features of its
pronunciation, such as long versus short vowels, were
not represented in its spelling system, but this
circumstance did not interfere too greatly in
converting written Latin into intelligible speech.

As the Romance languages developed from spoken Latin,
the written version of Latin remained as a universal
medium of religious and scholarly communication in
Europe during the Middle Ages (and somewhat less so
during the Renaissance).

At this time the name Cicero, pronounced /kikero/ by
the Romans, became pronounced /chichero/ among
Italians and priests in the Roman Catholic
Church--with "ch" being pronounced like the first
consonant in "Charlie".  (This is the way it is
pronounced in Italian.)

Other European countries reacted to Latin orthography
according to pronunciation and spelling patterns in
their native languages.  The patterns that were most
deviant from the classical Roman were the ones used by
English intellectuals after the Great Vowel Shift took
place in English.

This circumstance made it rather difficult--at times
impossible--to use Latin as a spoken medium among
European intellectuals at that time, though frequently
they were able to make certain compromises as they
spoke that enabled them to talk to one another in
Latin, though their conversation apparently was
heavily labored.

While I have never used Interlingua in conversation
with anyone, it seems to me that pronouncing it today
would present similar problems.

The recommended pronounciation for Cicero/Cicerone in
Interlingua is [tsitsero]/[tsitserone], for example.
I expect a groups of Interlinguists speaking with one
another at the same time would start out not following
this recommendation completely, perhaps because they
aren't completely aware of it.

(They might have heated arguments about what the
"correct" pronunciation should be, the way they have
argued here on about whether we should write "ma" or
"mais", "iste"/"aqueste" "analysar"/analyzar", etc.
Such debates ultimately go nowhere.  I find them a
waste of time, and I participate in them only rarely.)

In time, no doubt, perhaps after a lot of discussion,
people speaking Interlingua with one another arrive at
a system of pronunciation that they find reasonably
serviceable.

From what I have gleaned from various written sources,
something similar to this happens whenever Interlingua
users gather in conventions.  (From time to time, I
have read appeals for tolerance and flexibility in
accepting pronunciation in Interlingua that deviates
from the recommended norms.)

I have also read that Scandinavian Interlingists, on
traveling to Romance-speaking countries, are able to
make these Romance speakers understand them, though
often--especially in cases like French or Continental
portuguese--they have a hard time understanding these
people when they reply in their native Romance
dialects.

I expect that if I ever used Interlingua in
conversation, my pronunciation of it would not be
completely understood at first by the people I was
talking to.  But knowing the general patterns of
development of the Romance languages, I would start
adapting my pronunciation to match more closely the
pronunciation of the people I was talking to.

I might even develop slightly different patterns of
pronunciation (and even slightly different vocabulary)
depending on the native languages of the people I was
speaking to.

Native English speakers, if they are linguistically
sophisticated, learn to adjust their grammar,
vocabulary, and pronunciation to make themselves more
easily understood in international contexts of
communication where a reduced subset of standard
English is the primary medium of communication.  Using
Interlingua effectively presents similar problems.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com