kleine@ira.uka.de (Karl Kleine) (05/05/91)
davis@3d.enet.dec.com (Peter Davis) writes: > The two dots over a letter are called an umlaut. And more people wrote notes to the same effect. But, SORRY, that's plainly wrong! As already remarked, those two dots are called a dieresis and separate two adjecent vowels. This is needed in some languages. To all my knowledge of the English language, it can cope with that problem without this extra mark (maybe you use them in foreign words). An Umlaut (The correct German plural form is Umlaute, not Umlauts) is a completely different thing. It is a character of it's own, not a vowel with a funny accent. It is however closely related to the 'base vowel', which shows in the existance of an alternate form, the vowel with a trailing 'e' (which is however only legal, if the base form of the vowel with two marks on top of it is typographically not available), and in text sorting rules. The Umlaute are (in their replacement form, as this note is written in ASCII) `ae', `ue', `oe', and their uppercase Versions `Ae', `Ue', and `Oe'. Statistically, `ue' is the most frequent occuring Umlaut. The typographical placement of the two dots is a delicate issue. In the typesetting business, Umlaute were never composed from the base vowel and dots, but were always (and still are) letters of their own. Only desktop publishing with systems based on a purely ASCII view (read American made) brought us the idea that these letters could be composed on the fly. [ Aside to demonstrate the issue, not as a critique of the TeX-System as a whole, but I think it's the best and widest available demostration of the problem: Knuth's TeX had that idea of letter composition until recently (i.e. prior to version 3), where it otherwise took great pains to get well composed mathematical formula. Well, Knuth had his priorities this way, and he did a really excellent job. He has has learned better by now by feedback from Europe. To illustrate the point, look at some German text set in Computer Modern and using \"a. The dots are just not in the typographically right position for a proper a umlaut. They are too high above the a. ] Summary: (a) The correct plural form of Umlaut is Umlaute. You should follow the tradition of using the plural form of the foreign language in educated language, as you do without question for Latin, for example. (b) Umlaute are letters of there own, not letters with some additional funny mark on top of it. (c) Many fonts for non-professional typesetting (I do not have a proper term) are not suitable to set German text because of missing Umlaute. Professional systems and fonts do have Umlaute as they have characters specific to other languages, like the French cedilla. Karl Kleine kleine@fzi.uka.de FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10-14, D-7500 Karlsruhe, Germany
costello@stx.UUCP (Michael E. Costello) (05/06/91)
Two minor quibbles: In article <1991May4.190533.13629@ira.uka.de>, kleine@ira.uka.de (Karl Kleine) writes: > Summary: > (a) The correct plural form of Umlaut is Umlaute. You should follow the > tradition of using the plural form of the foreign language in > educated language, as you do without question for Latin, for example. In "normal, everyday English" words that have an English usage take English plurals. The plural of "umlaut" would be "umlauts". For example, no native English speaker would use "mavenim" as the plural for "maven". You are correct about Latin though. In "formal English" (which no one really uses), diereses are used, as you say, to separate adjacent vowels which are distinct (i.e.--not a dipthong). One will frequently encounter (in some journals, anyway) a dieresis over the second "o" in "cooperation." > (b) Umlaute are letters of there own, not letters with some additional > funny mark on top of it. > (c) Many fonts for non-professional typesetting (I do not have a proper > term) are not suitable to set German text because of missing Umlaute. > Professional systems and fonts do have Umlaute as they have characters > specific to other languages, like the French cedilla. > = Michael Costello, Meeting Director * costello@world.std.com = = BCS*Mac * The Boston Computer Society Macintosh User Group = = P.O. Box 2591; Woburn, MA 01888 617-631-8188 =
mbut0135@w203zrz.zrz.tu-berlin.de (Matthias Butt) (05/20/91)
Even at the risk of being very boring after some weeks of following occasional comments concerning the dieresis/trema/ umlaut issue I have to say something myself: 1. kleine@ira.uka.de (Karl Kleine) is not only thinking small but indeed dead wrong when saying: >(a) The correct plural form of Umlaut is Umlaute. You should follow the > tradition of using the plural form of the foreign language in > educated language, as you do without question for Latin, for example. Infact it is a funny perculiarity of German to retain foreign spelling and plural formation with many loan-words for at least a long period of time. However, not even in German the plurals e.g. of english loans are always formed "correct" (not even in educated language). E.g. nobody uses "Computers" as the plural form of "Computer" although this word was borrowed from English quite recently! 2. Let me just add that the lack of umlaut characters in international alphabets and in the ASCII code need noty disturb our national pride either. It just happens to be that the English writing system does not employ diacritics and therefore always gets along with the plain roman alphabet. However this does not mean that this alphabet is anglo- centristic. Its just the most natural "smallest common denominator" of all alphabets based on the roman alphabet. Scandinavians and the French for example share our trouble in getting along with such international character sets. So cool down! 3. I think the following use of the terms in question is most appriate (although outside scentific writing nobody will need to bother): -The two dots as a diacritical mark which can in principle be combined with any character are called *trema*. -The term *dieresis* (or *diaeresis*) actually refers to the pronounciation the adjacent letters as two (not necessarily distinct - cf. 'co/"operatin') vowels with an intervening syllable boundary as opposed to a diphtong (as in 'maid') or a single vowel (as in 'good', 'beast' or 'boost') which to indicate is one rather common use (but not the only one) of the trema. -The term *umlaut* which literally translates to something like 're-sound' (with the prefix 're-' indicating some change like in 'to rearrange') actually refers to the sounds which are the result of a historic change in vowel quality which took place in many germanic languages including German. Of particular interest with repect to the German writing system is the "fronting" of the vovels [a], [o] and [u] in certain environments which took place during the periods of Old-High-German (a.d. 750-1050) and Middle- High-German (a.d. 1050-1350). This process is still reflected in German orthography because the fronted vowels are written as /"a, /"o and /"u. In mani word stems the umlauted and non-umlauted vowel are alternating ('H/"ute' for example is the plural of 'Hut'). This is probably one of the reasons why we still have the letter /"a which would be unnecessary otherwise because it is pronounced like the letter e. Thus it seems appropriate to use the term *umlaut* or *umlaut character* for the German characters /"a, /"o and /"u because they reflect the an umlaut process in writing. In this case it is the whole character including the diacritics (which in turn may be called umlaut marks) which is referred to. The term doesnt seem to be appropriate to refer to characters with a trema denoting dieresis or some other property unrelated to umlaut as a phonological process. 4. Although umlaut characters (except for /"a possibly) do behave exactly like other chjaracters without diacritics in the German writing system I would still consider the trema a diacritic which is added to some base character. Hence I think K.K. is wrong again when stating: >An Umlaut (The correct German plural form is Umlaute, not Umlauts) is a >completely different thing. For traditional Typesetting there is certainly no other way of providing diacritics and accents than by casting an extra letter. Therefore K.K. is right when writing: >In the typesetting business, Umlaute were never composed from the >base vowel and dots, but were always (and still are) letters of >their own. However as far as I know the umlaut letters are usually exact copies of the base letter (except for the diacritics added). Correct me if I'm wrong! It is certainly true, that the placement of the trema is a delicate matter (wich is by the way true for all diacritic marks). In particular in writing this placement differs from mathematical typesetting because in math dots should always have the same height while in printing text their heigt must vary according to the height of the base character. Also the dots (like all diacritics) have to be centered corectly. This is certainly not easily accomplished if the base character and the diacritic are combined automatically. Matthias
tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) (05/20/91)
In article <617@mailgzrz.tu-berlin.de> mbut0135@w203zrz.zrz.tu-berlin.de (Matthias Butt) writes:
2. Let me just add that the lack of umlaut characters in
international alphabets and in the ASCII code need noty disturb our
[German] national pride either.
[...]
Thus it seems appropriate to use the term *umlaut* or *umlaut character*
for the German characters /"a, /"o and /"u because they reflect the
an umlaut process in writing. In this case it is the whole
character including the diacritics (which in turn may be called
umlaut marks) which is referred to. The term doesnt seem to be
appropriate to refer to characters with a trema denoting dieresis
or some other property unrelated to umlaut as a phonological process.
You should probably also have mentioned that the German umlaut
derives from two-vowel combinations. So, '\"a' used to be
spelled 'ae'. The "two dots" started out being a little 'e'
in Gothic script (which looks like two small parallel lines or
like a small 'n'), then was moved above the preceding vowel
(similar to the 'fi' ligature in English print), and finally
degenerated into two little dots. The German sharp-s, a character
that looks sort of like a beta, similarly, is simply a ligature
between an 's' and a 'z'.
Historically, it may have been nice to provide these ligatures to
improve the appearance of printed text. However, German can be
written perfectly well with only the standard 26 letter "English"
alphabet, and in this day and age of standardization, it would
probably be a good idea to make use of the umlaut and the 'sz'
ligature optional and eventually eliminate them altogether.
To add to the confusion, the official substitute for writing 'sz' when
the special character is not available is 'ss'. As far as I can tell,
this was a really bad decision, since 'ss' carries with it the idea
that the preceding vowel is short, whereas 'sz' indicates that the
preceding vowel is normal or long; there is no good reason not to
write the 'sz' letter as 'sz' when the letter is not available.
Thomas.bergmann@leland.Stanford.EDU (Bergmann) (05/21/91)
In article <TMB.91May20125338@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: > [...] > >To add to the confusion, the official substitute for writing 'sz' when >the special character is not available is 'ss'. As far as I can tell, >this was a really bad decision, since 'ss' carries with it the idea >that the preceding vowel is short, whereas 'sz' indicates that the >preceding vowel is normal or long; there is no good reason not to >write the 'sz' letter as 'sz' when the letter is not available. Hoho -- strong words! I'll give you one reason which seems good enough to me: the German "z" is pronounced "ts," so I, for one, read "dasts" when I see "dasz." (It's even worse with words that are less common, e.g. "saszen.") I'll grant you that much of this has to do with usage. Und frau gewoehnt sich bekanntlich an allem, selbst am Dativ. Annette
tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) (05/21/91)
In article <1991May20.190249.12782@leland.Stanford.EDU> bergmann@leland.Stanford.EDU (Bergmann) writes: In article <TMB.91May20125338@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: >To add to the confusion, the official substitute for writing 'sz' when >the special character is not available is 'ss'. As far as I can tell, >this was a really bad decision, since 'ss' carries with it the idea >that the preceding vowel is short, whereas 'sz' indicates that the >preceding vowel is normal or long; there is no good reason not to >write the 'sz' letter as 'sz' when the letter is not available. Hoho -- strong words! I'll give you one reason which seems good enough to me: the German "z" is pronounced "ts," so I, for one, read "dasts" when I see "dasz." (It's even worse with words that are less common, e.g. "saszen.") * German, like most other languages, uses two- and three letter combinations to express other sounds. It presumably doesn't bother you that 'c' is pronounced 'ts' or 'k' in isolation when you encounter it in words like 'Schnee' or 'Chemie'. * Historically, 'sz' _was_ written as two separate letters. This strongly suggests that there are no significant ambiguities arising from writing it as two separate letters (as far as I know the change was mostly made for typographic reasons). Furthermore, the combination is visually distinctive enough that it is easy to spot. * The convention of using 'ss' to indicate 'sz' is much worse, since it breaks the simple rules on which German pronunciation is based: you cannot determine the length of the vowel preceding the 'ss' anymore. Any rare pair would be better than 'ss' to indicate sharp-s in the absence of the special character, even 'xx', 'sx', 'qz', etc. 'sz' just happens to be an infrequent pair, somewhat meaningful (the 's' indicates the sound, the 'z' absence of voicing (in German)), historically accurate, and in agreement with usage in several other languages. Sure, words like "saszen", "Fuesze", and "Uebermasz", may look unusual at first if you are used to reading them with an umlaut and a sharp-s, but that doesn't demonstrate that indicating an umlaut and a sharp-s in that way intrinsically has to be confusing. Thomas.
dorai@titan.rice.edu (Dorai Sitaram) (05/21/91)
In article <TMB.91May20125338@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: >degenerated into two little dots. The German sharp-s, a character >that looks sort of like a beta, similarly, is simply a ligature >between an 's' and a 'z'. Really? The old fraktur script (cf. Greek) provides two ways of writing an s: one long like an f that starts syllables, the other more like the regular s to end syllables. The sharp-s ligature is formed from the long f-like s followed by the short one. There is no z anywhere in the picture. >To add to the confusion, the official substitute for writing 'sz' when >the special character is not available is 'ss'. As far as I can tell, >this was a really bad decision, since 'ss' carries with it the idea >that the preceding vowel is short, whereas 'sz' indicates that the >preceding vowel is normal or long; there is no good reason not to >write the 'sz' letter as 'sz' when the letter is not available. The use of ss for sharp-s could be confusing for the reasons you state: it suggests falsely that the preceding vowel is short. However, using sz is not unambiguous either. There are several cases where sz is used simply because it ends a word/syllable, regardless of whether is the preceding vowel is long -- e.g., Grusz -- or short -- e.g., Flusz. Thus, ss and sz szuck in different ways -- as the astute P.G. Wodehouse observes, "what you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts." What's the merit in that? (If you could legislate such that sz is used only when the preceding vowel is long, and ss is used everywhere else -- word/syllable end or no --, you _might_ be in business.) --d PS: Uebrigens, wer ist der PGW des Deutschen?
amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) (05/21/91)
tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes:
You should probably also have mentioned that the German umlaut
derives from two-vowel combinations. So, '\"a' used to be
spelled 'ae'. The "two dots" started out being a little 'e'
in Gothic script (which looks like two small parallel lines or
like a small 'n'), then was moved above the preceding vowel
(similar to the 'fi' ligature in English print), and finally
degenerated into two little dots. The German sharp-s, a character
that looks sort of like a beta, similarly, is simply a ligature
between an 's' and a 'z'.
This is true for all western European diacritical marks, which were
not particularly standardized until the printing press came along.
Diacrtical marks originated as scribes' "shorthand" for common
combinations of letters. German scribes used a trema for "following
e", French scribes used a circumflex for "vowel + s", ae and oe
diphthongs became ligatures, and so on. Relatively few of these have
actually survived; if you look at a medieval manuscript, you will see
all sort of diacritics and abbreviation marks (the most popular one in
Christian religious documents was probably "ds" with a macron, which
was the abbreviation for "Deus"). Ligatures were more common, and in fact
survived into printing for quite a while, as did contextual forms such as
the long "s". They only fell out of use in printing in the 19th century,
and are starting to make a comeback.
The situation for areas which weren't colonized by Rome gets more
interesting, since they tend to use non-Roman characters instead of
diacritics. For example, Scandinavian languages use a mixture of
diacritics and non-Roman characters (the Icelandic "thorn", for example,
which was also in common use for English until relatively recently).
Standardized orthography, and the corresponding treatment of
diacritics and ligatures, seems (to me) to be more of an artifact of
the printing press than anything else.
--
Amanda Walker amanda@visix.com
Visix Software Inc. ...!uunet!visix!amanda
--
"It can hardly be coincidence that no language on earth has ever
produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." --Douglas Adamstmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) (05/22/91)
In article <TMB.91May20125338@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: >degenerated into two little dots. The German sharp-s, a character >that looks sort of like a beta, similarly, is simply a ligature >between an 's' and a 'z'. Really? The old fraktur script (cf. Greek) provides two ways of writing an s: one long like an f that starts syllables, the other more like the regular s to end syllables. The sharp-s ligature is formed from the long f-like s followed by the short one. There is no z anywhere in the picture. No, it is a ligature of the "f"-like "s" and a "z" (that's why it's called an "ess-zett"). The "s" that ends a word in Fraktur looks more like the Roman "s", and I have never seen it word internal in German.
holley@sono.uucp (Greg Holley) (05/22/91)
In article <TMB.91May20125338@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: > Historically, it may have been nice to provide these ligatures to > improve the appearance of printed text. However, German can be > written perfectly well with only the standard 26 letter "English" > alphabet, and in this day and age of standardization, it would > probably be a good idea to make use of the umlaut and the 'sz' > ligature optional and eventually eliminate them altogether. What is the point of compacting the German alphabet, at the cost of hideous combinations of letters to represent a single vowel or dipthong (or do you like "laeuft"?), when virtually every other European* language uses diacrital marks of some sort or another? Do you also want to force the Spanish, French, Dutch, and Danish (who already have too many vowels for their alphabet) to use the "standard 26 letter alphabet"? There aren't that many diacrital marks and unique letters in the Western European languages, and many computer programs I use are able to use them. The only problem is that, in the absence of an international 8-bit standard, the programs can't trade umlauts and tildes with one another. The solution is to come up with a standard, rather than to ban the marks and make the world blander. [*Apologies to Greeks, Russians, and any other Europeans using non-Roman alphabets] -- Greg Holley sun!sono!holley holley@sono.uucp "My tale is so strange that, were it written with needles on the interior corner of an eye, yet would it prove a lesson to the circumspect."
lewis@bnrmtl.bnr.ca (Pierre LEWis) (05/22/91)
In article <HOLLEY.91May21183931@fog.sono.uucp>, holley@sono.uucp (Greg Holley) writes: > There aren't that many diacrital marks and unique letters in the > Western European languages, and many computer programs I use are able > to use them. The only problem is that, in the absence of an > international 8-bit standard, the programs can't trade umlauts and > tildes with one another. The solution is to come up with a standard, > rather than to ban the marks and make the world blander. Actually there are too many. IBM has one (based on EBCDIC) which our mainframe printers support, DEC has one with their VT-100 (which I use in the Unix world - even works in my xterm), and MS-DOS has the new code page 850 (works great for me with WP). Just to name a few. But it's unfortunate that foreign language support is quite weak on many machines and softwares. What Unix editor today supports diacritical marks? But that's a discussion for comp.editors. On eszet. Seems to me that in modern german they are often used where "ss" is also used: z.B. wir muessen, ich muB (B stands for eszet here). So if there is no eszet on the keyboard, I'll certainly prefer "ss" to "sz". Second, when on goes all caps in modern german, I learned that the eszet is replaced by "SS", not "SZ" and that is what I remember observing in print (UNREGELMASSIGE ENGLISCHE VERBEN just found in my dictionary, in lower case one would have unregelmaBige (both As are umlauts here of course)). Notwithstanding the origin of the eszet (as the name says). -- Pierre LEWIS +1 514 765 8207 Internet: bnrmtl!lewis@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU P.S. I enjoy(ed) this stream...
covert@covert.enet.dec.com (John R. Covert) (05/22/91)
In article <HOLLEY.91May21183931@fog.sono.uucp>, holley@sono.uucp (Greg Holley) writes... > >There aren't that many diacrital marks and unique letters in the >Western European languages, and many computer programs I use are able >to use them. The only problem is that, in the absence of an >international 8-bit standard, the programs can't trade umlauts and >tildes with one another. The solution is to come up with a standard, >rather than to ban the marks and make the world blander. There is an international standard. ISO Latin-1 (it has a four digit number I can't remember right now) handles the most common Western European languages. All currently sold DEC terminals (and many others) support the language, as does almost all software (editors, document preparation tools, mail programs, conference software) running under VMS. Unfortunately, the RFCs for internet mail, as well as almost all U*x software, insist on stripping off the eighth bit. /john
tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) (05/22/91)
In article <HOLLEY.91May21183931@fog.sono.uucp> holley@sono.uucp (Greg Holley) writes: In article <TMB.91May20125338@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: > and in this day and age of standardization, it would probably be > a good idea to make use of the umlaut and the 'sz' ligature > optional and eventually eliminate them altogether. What is the point of compacting the German alphabet, at the cost of hideous combinations of letters to represent a single vowel or dipthong (or do you like "laeuft"?), when virtually every other European* language uses diacrital marks of some sort or another? I don't think the combinations are any more hideous that what German and most other languages already have: "sch", "ch", "au", etc. It's merely a question of what you are used to. There aren't that many diacrital marks and unique letters in the Western European languages, and many computer programs I use are able to use them. The problem is not that computer programs are incompatible with it; _I_ am incompatible with it. It is a pain having to get used to different keyboards for different languages, having to deal with different string ordering conventions, etc. Furthermore, these diacritical marks eat up precious keyboard real estate; brackets and braces are in much harder to reach places on, say, a German keyboard (if they are there at all) than on an American keyboard. Do you also want to force the Spanish, French, Dutch, and Danish (who already have too many vowels for their alphabet) to use the "standard 26 letter alphabet"? No country can be "forced" to give up their orthograpy. In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. Thomas.
btiffany@pbs.org (05/23/91)
In article <TMB.91May22102757@volterra.ai.mit.edu>, tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: > In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more > vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than > Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. FOURTEEN? Well, when I was knee high from the floor in school they taught me only FIVE: A E I O and U! It was mentioned that sometimes Y can act like a vowel, but it is still a consonant. So at most you might say English has 5.5 vowels. But 14?? Where did you come up with such a figure? -- Bruce Tiffany btiffany@pbs.org
goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) (05/23/91)
In article <1991May22.141034.12747@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org writes: > >> In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more >> vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than >> Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. > >FOURTEEN? Well, when I was knee high from the floor in school they taught me >only FIVE: A E I O and U! Bruce, he's not talking about graphemes, i.e. the things you draw with pen and ink. He's talking about the vowels themselves. Don't for a moment sup- pose that the English writing and English sounds correspond very closely. In fact English has a much richer vowel inventory than its writing system is capable of representing - even using double vowels like au, ou, etc. in addition to our Latin vowel-symbols AEIOU and sometimes Y. Hope this helps. -- -Richard L. Goerwitz goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet goer@sophist.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer
rcharman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Robert Craig Harman) (05/23/91)
In <1991May22.141034.12747@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org writes: >In <TMB.91May22102757@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (T M Breuel) writes: >> In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more >> vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than >> Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. > >FOURTEEN? Well, when I was knee high from the floor in school they taught me >only FIVE: A E I O and U! It was mentioned that sometimes Y can act like >a vowel, but it is still a consonant. So at most you might say English has >5.5 vowels. But 14?? Where did you come up with such a figure? Fourteen vowel sounds, I believe he means; those being: ah in father/hot a in cat aw in bought/draw ai in pain/may eh in net/send ee in field/seal ih in bit/kill ie in pie/type o in hope/coal u in put/book oo in boot/cool uh in cut/bluff ow in dowel/scow @ in pencil (pen-s@l)/woman (wu m@n) [the schwa sound] These each have stressed and unstressed variants (e.g., "sigh" vs. "type"), as well as variations before "l" and "r", but, by and large, 14 is pretty accurate. craig no .sig go .fig
eager@ringworld.Eng.Sun.COM (Michael J. Eager) (05/23/91)
In article <TMB.91May22102757@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: > >I don't think the combinations are any more hideous that what German >and most other languages already have: "sch", "ch", "au", etc. It's >merely a question of what you are used to. > >In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more >vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than >Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. Doesn't it sort of muddy the waters to mix phonemes into a discussion of fonts and orthography? German has umlauts; it also has standard orthographic substitutions for them which do not use the dots: ae, oe, ue. Sch, ch, au, mentioned above, are not orthographic substitutions; they _are_ the orthography. English may have fourteen vowel sounds (I'd really guess at a higher number if you include pronounciations from New England, Manchester, Texas, etc.) but it has 5 (perhaps as many as 7) orthographic vowels: a, e, i, o, u and occasionally y and w. Orthography does not match phonetics in any language I am aware of. That is why there is an International Phonetic Alphabet. -- Mike Eager
cindy@solan.unit.no (Cindy Kandolf) (05/23/91)
bruce: calm down... remember each vowel letter in english on its own comes in two varieties, long and short. that makes ten right there. possibly the other 4 are diphthong sounds? not sure, but 14 isn't all that high if you remember we're talking about -sounds-, not spelling. i heard somewhere that english actually has 44 sounds. the speaker didnt mention anything about which brand of english he was talking about, though. and i've always been too lazy to count the number of sounds on charts in linguistics books. (memorize them, yes; count them, no.) -cindy kandolf cindy@solan.unit.no trondheim, norway
btiffany@pbs.org (05/23/91)
In article <1991May23.112541*cindy@solan.unit.no>, cindy@solan.unit.no (Cindy Kandolf) writes: > bruce: calm down... Whew!! OK, since it's you who's saying it ... :-) > ... remember each vowel letter in english on its own comes > in two varieties, long and short. that makes ten right there. Yeah, 10 SOUNDS. 5 vowels, 10 vowel sounds. > ... 14 isn't all that high if you > remember we're talking about -sounds-, not spelling. Right. In fact, as I already said, I bet there are a lot more than 14! I understand what they're talking about now: vowel sounds. Anybody wanna guess how many consonant sounds we have? (Not I!) -- Bruce
tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) (05/23/91)
In article <13863@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> eager@ringworld.Eng.Sun.COM (Michael J. Eager) writes: >In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more >vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than >Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. Doesn't it sort of muddy the waters to mix phonemes into a discussion of fonts and orthography? [...] English may have fourteen vowel sounds (I'd really guess at a higher number if you include pronounciations from New England, Manchester, Texas, etc.) but it has 5 (perhaps as many as 7) orthographic vowels: a, e, i, o, u and occasionally y and w. Please quote in a meaningful context. The poster that I responded to essentially said: "These languages have many more 'vowels' [vowel sounds] than English and therefore need diacritical marks to distinguish them." All I did was point out that among those languages using the Roman alphabet, English probably has close to the largest number of 'vowels' (sounds, phonemes), and yet, English seems to get by fine without diacritical marks. German has umlauts; it also has standard orthographic substitutions for them which do not use the dots: ae, oe, ue. Sch, ch, au, mentioned above, are not orthographic substitutions; they _are_ the orthography. Yes, and I am suggesting that "ae", "oe", "ue", and "sz" be restored to their original status as _being_ the orthograpy, rather than being substitutions. Thomas.
btiffany@pbs.org (05/23/91)
In article <9864@idunno.Princeton.EDU>, rcharman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Robert Craig Harman) writes: > In <1991May22.141034.12747@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org writes: >>In <TMB.91May22102757@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (T M Breuel) writes: >>> In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more >>> vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than >>> Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. >> >>FOURTEEN? Well, when I was knee high from the floor in school they taught me >>only FIVE: A E I O and U! It was mentioned that sometimes Y can act like >>a vowel, but it is still a consonant. So at most you might say English has >>5.5 vowels. But 14?? Where did you come up with such a figure? > > Fourteen vowel sounds, I believe he means; those being: ^^^^^^^^^^^^ > [...] > >These each have stressed and unstressed variants (e.g., "sigh" vs. "type"), as >well as variations before "l" and "r", but, by and large, 14 is pretty accurate. OK, five vowels and 14 vowel sounds. But if you're talking about the sounds vowels make, rather than the vowels themselves, I can't believe there are only 14. There must be many, many more. Maybe Peter Jennings uses only 14, but if you go to Maine, and then to the Appalachians of southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky, and then to Upstate New York (where they have a pretty unique way of pronouncing the sound made in words like "about" and "boat"), and then to Georgia and Alabama, you'll compile a lot more than 14 sounds! Our five vowels truly have many talents! But there are 5 vowels. :-) -- Bruce
grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) (05/23/91)
In article <1991May22.141034.12747@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org writes: > In article <TMB.91May22102757@volterra.ai.mit.edu>, tmb@ai.mit.edu > (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: > > > In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more > > vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than > > Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. > > FOURTEEN? Well, when I was knee high from the floor in school they taught me > only FIVE: A E I O and U! It was mentioned that sometimes Y can act like > a vowel, but it is still a consonant. So at most you might say English has > 5.5 vowels. But 14?? Where did you come up with such a figure? Elementary school spelling rules are simplifications that bear little resemblance to the english language. There are only 26 letters, but many more distinct vowells and consonants. These are encoded partly as letter combinations and partly by convention. -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing: domain: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com Commodore, Engineering Department phone: 215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)
roncalli@aurs01.UUCP (Guido Roncalli) (05/23/91)
>Orthography does not match phonetics in any language I am aware of. That >is why there is an International Phonetic Alphabet. > > >-- Mike Eager Mike, in the italian language, the orthography *does* match teh phonetics (at least for the 99.99% of the situations), that means: one letter (one orthographycal sign) one sound (one phoneme). In order to optimize the national alphabets for keyboard standardization purposes, I'd like to say that I think that too many standardizations can kill the differences that *DO* exist among populations. I like standardizations because they ease work and communications, yet I like to be challenged by dealing with such differences: they keep open my mind, making me aware of differences and reminding me that (for human related things) seldon exists "the perfect way". Ciao! * Guido RoncallI, RD&E -*- Internet Domain: <roncalli%aurgate@mcnc.org> * * Alcatel Network Systems -*- USENET Pathalias: <roncalli%aurs01.UUCP> * * 2912 Wake Forest Road -*- USENET !-Style: <...!mcnc!aurgate!roncalli> * * Raleigh, NC 27609 -*- Work Phone: +1 919 850-5375 *
kris@tpki.toppoint.de (Kristian Koehntopp) (05/23/91)
tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: >The problem is not that computer programs are incompatible with it; >_I_ am incompatible with it. It is a pain having to get used to >different keyboards for different languages, having to deal with >different string ordering conventions, etc. Well, then: _I_ am incompatible with alternative representations for the real german Umlauts (tm). No program and no book using german language with these poor excuses for real characters will survive any encounter with me with netnews being the only exception (and this is only, because otherwise I will have no news at all, which is even worse :-). This is my mother language and I will not tolerate any of these ASCII cruelties you do to it. Thank you. >No country can be "forced" to give up their orthograpy. Right. Kristian PS: Please excuse any cruelties I did to your mother language. Kristian Koehntopp, Harmsstrasse 98, 2300 Kiel, +49 431 676689 WATCH OU
btiffany@pbs.org (05/24/91)
In article <21835@cbmvax.commodore.com>, grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) writes: > Elementary school spelling rules are simplifications that bear little > resemblance to the english language. There are only 26 letters, but > many more distinct vowells and consonants. These are encoded partly > as letter combinations and partly by convention. Alas! I've been speaking this wondrous tongue lo these 3+ decades with apparent alacrity and aplomb, only to learn at this late stage that I didn't even know what I was doing! Oh, woe is me ... -- Bruce P.S. There's only one "L" in "vowel" ... :-)
holley@sono.uucp (Greg Holley) (05/24/91)
In article <TMB.91May22102757@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: > > In article <HOLLEY.91May21183931@fog.sono.uucp> holley@sono.uucp (Greg Holley) writes: > > Do you also want to force the Spanish, French, Dutch, and Danish > (who already have too many vowels for their alphabet) to use the > "standard 26 letter alphabet"? > > No country can be "forced" to give up their orthograpy. > > In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more > vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than > Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. I meant the parenthetical remark to apply only to Danish, which seems to have more vowels than all the rest of the Western European languages put together (either that, or it's a tonal language :-) ). As far as I can tell, Danish packs five vowels where any sane language would have only three, and then records them with a mystic code understood only by the true descendants of Vikings. The orthography is already so screwy that you have to memorize the pronunciations of half the words (as if any non-Dane could ever hope to pronounce them). If you took away the strange letters, even the Danes would probably find it hard to speak Danish. Ob. German: Has anyone noticed that the quality of Doener Kebabs in Berlin has improved over the last six years? -- Greg Holley sun!sono!holley holley@sono.uucp "My tale is so strange that, were it written with needles on the interior corner of an eye, yet would it prove a lesson to the circumspect."
grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) (05/24/91)
In article <1991May23.145439.12763@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org writes: > In article <21835@cbmvax.commodore.com>, > grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) writes: > > > Elementary school spelling rules are simplifications that bear little > > resemblance to the english language. There are only 26 letters, but > > many more distinct vowells and consonants. These are encoded partly > > as letter combinations and partly by convention. > > Alas! I've been speaking this wondrous tongue lo these 3+ decades with > apparent alacrity and aplomb, only to learn at this late stage that I didn't > even know what I was doing! Oh, woe is me ... Life is for learning. If you had bothered to look in the dictionary, you'll find the first definition for vowel is a member of a class of sounds, and the aeiou(y) bit comes in second. > > -- Bruce > > P.S. There's only one "L" in "vowel" ... :-) Two l's are alllllways better than one. 8-) -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing: domain: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com Commodore, Engineering Department phone: 215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)
grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) (05/24/91)
In article <1991May23.083815.12755@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org writes: > > OK, five vowels and 14 vowel sounds. > > But if you're talking about the sounds vowels make, rather than the vowels > themselves, I can't believe there are only 14. There must be many, many more. > Maybe Peter Jennings uses only 14, but if you go to Maine... Differences in pronunciation does not neccessarily expand the the number of vowels from a linguistic viewpoint. Though the sounds may differ, the number does not change much, nor to they create additional words nor consistant distinctions between homonyns. There are exceptions... > But there are 5 vowels. :-) Sorry, where I come from, they taught the aeiou and sometimes y and w rule. 8-) -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing: domain: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com Commodore, Engineering Department phone: 215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)
holley@sono.uucp (Greg Holley) (05/25/91)
In article <1991May23.083815.12755@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org (Bruce) writes: > > In article <9864@idunno.Princeton.EDU>, rcharman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Robert Craig Harman) writes: > > Fourteen vowel sounds, I believe he means; those being: ^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > [...] > > > >These each have stressed and unstressed variants (e.g., "sigh" vs. "type"), as > >well as variations before "l" and "r", but, by and large, 14 is pretty accurate. > > OK, five vowels and 14 vowel sounds. > > But if you're talking about the sounds vowels make, rather than the vowels > themselves, I can't believe there are only 14. There must be many, many more. > Maybe Peter Jennings uses only 14, but if you go to Maine, and then to > the Appalachians of southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky, and then to > Upstate New York (where they have a pretty unique way of pronouncing the sound > made in words like "about" and "boat"), and then to Georgia and Alabama, you'll > compile a lot more than 14 sounds! Our five vowels truly have many talents! > > But there are 5 vowels. :-) First, "vowel" has two definitions: it can be either the "vowel sound" or one of the letters used to write those sounds. My dictionary does not prefer one sense over the other, but if you talk with a linguist, he/she will much prefer the first meaning over the second. So, use the second definition (the characters used to transcribe sounds) if you must, and if you make yourself clear, but don't insist that we are wrong to talk about 14 vowels. Second, English uses a lot of diphthongs as well as vowels. Roughly speaking (I'm sure someone will correct me), a diphthong results from running together two relatively "pure" vowels. Thus many of the sounds not on Craig's list, such as "oy" in "toy" (and probably "ow" in "scow") are diphthongs, not vowels. I'd also guess that regional accents tend to replace one vowel with another, rather than adding a vowel, so that while English as it is spoken around the world may include more than 14 vowels, any native speaker would use 14 or fewer vowels. -- Greg Holley sun!sono!holley holley@sono.uucp "My tale is so strange that, were it written with needles on the interior corner of an eye, yet would it prove a lesson to the circumspect."
arktik@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Ryan Daum) (05/26/91)
btiffany@pbs.org writes: > In article <TMB.91May22102757@volterra.ai.mit.edu>, tmb@ai.mit.edu > (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: > > > In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more > > vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than > > Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. > > FOURTEEN? Well, when I was knee high from the floor in school they taught me > only FIVE: A E I O and U! It was mentioned that sometimes Y can act like > a vowel, but it is still a consonant. So at most you might say English has > 5.5 vowels. But 14?? Where did you come up with such a figure? > > -- Bruce Tiffany btiffany@pbs.org Easy! Just include all the different ways of saying vowel combinations... For example, the "au" combination is not pronounced "a-u" ... it's a single sound therefore it's a seperate vowel? ___________________________________________ -=- arktik@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca -=- |||---------------------------------------||| ||| Ryan Daum -- Professional Human ||| |||---------------------------------------||| -=- -=-