pkaiser@jaws.DEC (Pete Kaiser HLO2-1/N10 225-5441) (11/07/84)
Re phonetic spelling -------------------- Any natural language exists in a matrix of extents in time, space, and culture. Within these contexts the language may change in grammar, vocabulary, customary usage, and phonetics (and undoubtedly in other respects I haven't thought of here). So any language widely-enough spread over any chronological, spatial, or cultural extent will be impossible to represent in any static form -- phonetic alphabet, dictionary, or grammar book. Any such static form will always be inadequate to describe all a language's legitimate utterances. Of course, none of that applies to proscriptive forms, but such forms are widely agreed to be, at best, of limited use -- the Academie Francaise and Webster's Second notwithstanding. Any attempt to proscribe a language by describing it authoritatively is an attempt to freeze it, without respecting that all natural languages differ from day to day, from place to place, and from one set of social circumstances to another. If you describe a language as of today, it will have changed by tomorrow, by adapting to its users' needs as of tomorrow. Or it will be the same in this place, but different in that place, and in each location the natives will consider the others the devia- tionists. Perhaps conditions are different for "small" languages (I understand that Hungarian is actually written phonetically), but it seems unlikely to me that any old, widespread, culturally diverse language like English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Portuguese or Russian can possibly be accurately described in a static form. I can imagine some advantages to non-phonetic orthography. The cognitive faculties involved in using such an orthography must be different from those using a phonetic orthography, since you must understand deep structure to be able to pronounce the non-phonetically-written word. Children (or anyone learning to read) may profit by the exercise of those faculties. ---Pete
sra@oddjob.UChicago.UUCP (Scott Anderson) (11/07/84)
>Perhaps conditions are different for "small" languages (I understand that >Hungarian is actually written phonetically), but it seems unlikely to me that >any old, widespread, culturally diverse language like English, Spanish, French, >Chinese, Portuguese or Russian can possibly be accurately described in a static >form. Actually, Spanish *is* a phonetically written language (at least the way they teach it in the US). It is always possible to look at the written form of a word and pronounce it correctly -- provided one remembers where one is, as there are regional differences in how some of the letters are pronounced. For example, in Spain the letter 'z' is pronounced like a soft 'th', while in most of Latin America, it is pronounced like 's'. But this is consistently done, in every word which contains a 'z'. Scott Anderson ...ihnp4!oddjob
alan@allegra.UUCP (Alan S. Driscoll) (11/08/84)
> It is possible to legislate phonetic spelling. In the Ntherlends, > there have been a series of spelling reform laws... > Since there is no "legal" spelling in the US, one is presumably > free to spell in any way one wishes. "This court finds the defendant guilty of five counts of misspelling, four counts of improper punctuation, and one count of conspiracy to strand a preposition..." Maybe this should be in net.politics? -- Alan S. Driscoll AT&T Bell Laboratories
root@uwai.UUCP (11/09/84)
> Perhaps conditions are different for "small" languages (I understand that > Hungarian is actually written phonetically), but it seems unlikely to me that > any old, widespread,culturally diverse language like English, Spanish, French, > Chinese,Portuguese or Russian can possibly be accurately described in a static > form. > Excuse me, but Spanish and Portuguese are written is as close to a phonetic spelling as you're apt to find, thus proving that it certainly can work. Not that I am advocating changing things, since it would never be accepted, but God knows that French and English could use some help. Chinese we'll not even mention, since it doesn't even have an alphabet. As for Russian, didn't I once read that it's spelled phonetically as well?
mgv@duke.UUCP (Marco G. Valtorta) (11/09/84)
French *is* spelled phonetically. The rules may be odd for most Americans, but do not seem that strange to most Italians. Marco
grass@uiucdcsb.UUCP (11/10/84)
>Perhaps conditions are different for "small" languages (I understand that >Hungarian is actually written phonetically), but it seems unlikely to me that >any old, widespread, culturally diverse language like English, Spanish, French, >Chinese, Portuguese or Russian can possibly be accurately described in a static >form. Russian spelling is also largely phonetic. There are a couple of rule to learn about vowel reduction (o's to a's for example) when not stressed, and that voiced consonants become unvoiced before another unvoiced consonant (and vice versa). Once you've learned those rules, the only difficulty is knowing where the stress goes (when reading). It is fairly easy to write down a Russian word, even hearing it for the first time. Some of the Slavic languages are more phonetic then this: Serbian and Macedonian have the same voicing, unvoicing rules, but they express them in the written forms as well. I don't think this works out as well as the Russian system. It is a little easier to recognize common morphemes in Russian. Japanese has a very difficult writing system. They have the Chinese characters (1,850 officially goverment approved), two syllabaries (hiragana for Japanese words, grammatical endings, etc.; katakana for foreign words and exclamations), and make some use of the Roman alphabet as well (some abbreviations, odds and ends). The Japanese have made some efforts to simplify all of this. Many of the characters are not quite what they would be in Chinese, some of the strokes are simplified or otherwise modified. The government appears to have deleted a number of kanji from the approved list at various times. My favorite spelling reform story is the one about the Russian spelling reform of 1918. About 5 letters were removed from the alphabet because they were "extra" (two letters denoted the same sound). In old Russian spelling every word ended with a letter that indicated whether the consonant in front of it was "hard" or "soft". (Palatalized or unpalatalized). The reformers decided that only "soft" endings needed to be marked. This change alone resulted in Tolstoy's War and Peace going from three volumes to two. -- Judy at Univ. of Illinois
anne@digi-g.UUCP (Anne Chenette) (11/14/84)
<Ketu eshte nevojtorija? Jo, kjo eshte kafeneja.>
"Russian spelling is also largely phonetic. There are a
couple of rules to learn ... Once you've learned those
rules, the only difficulty is knowing where the stress
goes (when reading)."
"It is fairly easy to write down a Russian word, even
hearing it for the first time."
Perhaps for Russian speakers of a different ilk than I ...
I've studied Russian for 12 years or so, including courses in Slavic
Linguistics. I've spoken English for 26 years. Why is it that I have
no problem spelling in English but I have a terrible time in Russian?
(I was a straight-A student, so it's not just laziness - Russian is
NOT spelled the way it sounds!)
Down with logic! Up with convolution and obfuscation!
Anne Chenette
ihnp4!umn-cs!digi-g!annechabot@amber.DEC (L S Chabot) (11/15/84)
Has this discussion included anything about regional pronunciation differences? Which accent should we decide is standard? This is a serious question. We could choose California, since everybody seems to move there :-). Since it is such a melting pot, we could get a good average accent? Traditionally, standards for correct pronunciation have been built around what the nobility spoke. We lack nobles here, so what do we do? And, come to think of it, if we decide in favor one region we have placed them in a superior position to the rest of the english speakers in the US--they talk good, we talk like hicks or sloppy talkers or the unschooled. We can't base it on the educated class, because this isn't as perceptable as, say, Oxford attendance was (or is): if we arbitrarily decide upon the famous Harvard accent, but not many students really pick up a discernable accent any more. (My alma mater doesn't exactly have a characteristic accent, but if you talked like they do at MIT we wouldn't be having these problems--it's easy to spell numbers!) [Remember the difficulties you had learning to spell? I do (how come there aren't inny "r"s in "Warshinton"). And then, what do we suppose we're going to do with those homonyms that so many pronounce as homonyms ( there/their )?] It is a serious question, and it has interesting political and sociological effects. L S Chabot UUCP: ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot ARPA: ...chabot%amber.DEC@decwrl.ARPA USFail: DEC, MR03-1/K20, 2 Iron Way, Marlborough, MA 01752 shadow: [ISSN 0018-9162 v17 #10 p7, bottom vt100, col3, next to next to last]