--- In
cybalist@... s.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@ ...>
wrote:
>
> I went to Dnghu.org and was astounded at what I found there. You
see, in my spare time as a hobby I "invent" or fashion languages that
theoretically could have evolved from Proto-Indo-European , with the
idea that they might one day become real, international languages
akin to Esperanto (even if
only in my dreams). So when I found that
there is a whole organization devoted to a very similar goal (they
use actual Indo-European rather than a hypothetical descendant of
it), I felt validated as a human being. I always thought that I was
probably the only human being who had this hobby, which I often feel
is somewhat silly and embarrassing. It's a tremendous vindication to
know that there are people who take this idea very seriously and have
done much work and publication towards this goal. Nevertheless, I
think modernized Proto-Indo-European is far too complicated, and has
sounds (voiced aspirates) that are too difficult to produce, to ever
succeed as an international
> auxiliary language. Languages like Esperanto, Ido, and
Interlingua are simply very much easier for the average European to
master, especially as regards vocabulary and (lack of) inflectional
endings.
>
> That said, where is your
translation of "Ode to Joy"? You said
you were uploading it, but it is not available at my computer,
through Yahoo!. I would very much like to read it.
It's in the Files section, and is named "PIE Ode to Joy.rtf"
Regarding the voiced aspirates, they take a bit of getting use to,
but they're still used in several Indian languages. Also, English has
voiceless aspirated stops when at the very start of a syllable, right
next to a vowel; compare the words "car" and "scar", and you'll hear
a difference.
I know all about the voiceless aspirates in English; that's a very well-known phenomenon. It's relatively easy to produce voiceless aspirates because they are stops followed by breath without voice, after which the voice begins and thus a vowel follows. The breath is equivalent to a voiceless vowel (like /h/). But voiced aspirates are stops followed by breath plus voice; this is therefore equivalent to a vowel in my
view, and thus I don't see how it is possible to distinguish voiced stop + voiced breathing from voiced stop + vowel. But nevertheless they are used in many Indian languages, so the difference exists. I have listened to recordings of Hindi many times ("teach yourself" - type tapes) where a speaker first pronounces a word with a voiced unaspirated stop, then pronounces a similar word with a voiced aspirated stop, to show the difference. I have to confess that to this day I am still unable to hear the difference between simple voiced stops and voiced aspirated stops. I think you have to be born into a language that distinguishes them to be able to successfully distinguish them. Then again, I'm sure many English and other European speakers have learned to produce and recognize the voiced aspirated stops of Hindi; kudos to them, because I really find them very difficult to distinguish from regular voiced stops, and I don't think I am at all
unusual in this respect, for a speaker of a European language.
