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The most phonetic languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| stephen_g Groupie Canada Joined 6331 days ago 44 posts - 84 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Italian | Message 17 of 96 19 May 2009 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sanskrit in Devanagari is 100% phonetic, probably more so than any other writing system apart from IPA. The writing system includes Sandhi! When sounds come together in any spoken language, there are slight changes made to make things flow more easily. Sanskrit reflects this in writing. For example:
graamaat + jaayate = graaamaajjaayate The dental "t" is assimilated into the "j" in speech, and so it is written down this way. Let's take an English example of Sandhi. I speak Canadian English of the variety dominant in Toronto. "I fought him" sounds more like "I foughddim", with the double "dd" being a flap similar to the "r" in Spanish. If I were to actually write out "I foughddim" in written English, I'd be doing what is done in Sanskrit! It'd be much less precise, however, as English doesn't have a character to represent this phoneme. While this can all be a bit of a headache for Sanskrit students doing translation work, especially when the sound combination creates something which looks like an independent word, it's really quite wonderful when one gets used to it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5926 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 18 of 96 21 May 2009 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with those who claim that Finnish is spelled phonetically, one phoneme really does seem to equal one sound. There are very few consonant clusters, mostly from recent loanwords, and though there are many diphthongs they always sound the same. I do sometimes struggle with pronouncing the double consonanats, but that's only because English makes no distinction between, to give just two examples, how "r" and "rr" or "p" and "pp" should sound; while Finnish requires double consonants to be lengthened which is always evident from the spelling of a word.
As for Indo-European languages, I believe German is spelled phonetically, but I thought I read somewhere that this is only true for High German as taught in schools, the various dialects may not be as phonetic. Afrikaans is also pretty close , because of it's simplified Dutch spelling, but the "ê" has more than one sound. I think I read somewhere that Swahili is also pronounced exactly as it is written, but I'm not sure about this one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6274 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 19 of 96 23 May 2009 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Modern Turkish is very phonetic. The Arabic script used for Ottoman Turkish was much less so. The change to the Roman alphabet is too recent for sound changes to arise that are different from the written language.
Less-educated speakers still spell words wrongly. I have found the spelling anatar - "key". The correct spelling is anahtar. However, I think the h often gets lost in pronunciation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sakvaka Triglot Newbie Finland Joined 5666 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Finnish*, Swedish, English Studies: Italian | Message 20 of 96 23 May 2009 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Finnish has only two "exceptions":
1) the velar nasal sound "ŋ" between syllables: nk = ŋ ng = ŋŋ for example "kenkä" (shoe) is pronounced [keŋ.kæ], NOT [ken.kæ] and kengät (shoes) is pronounced [keŋ.ŋæt], NOT [ken.gæt]. 2) the aspiration or the glottal stop "ʔ" in compounds, between wovels: for example "hääyöaie" (wedding night intention) is pronounced [hæ:ʔyœʔaie], NOT [hæ:yœaie]. But I think these sound quite natural. EDIT: Now I remembered the words magneetti (magnet) [maŋ.ne:t.ti], NOT [mag.ne:t.ti] and signaali (signal) [siŋ.na:li], NOT [sig.na:.li]. But even native people may pronounce it "wrong". Edited by sakvaka on 23 May 2009 at 4:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6261 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 21 of 96 23 May 2009 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
I entered this thread to say the same thing :) It's not phonetic only, but it is also very logical. There are one or two irregularities only! [[[ When you started posting here? In the last weeks, I visit the forum rarely, and it seems that you wrote many things here :) Your posts increased from 2 to 21 within 3 weeks only I think! I think you are learning Turkish now, so do your best :) I hope you didn't stop learning Arabic :) ]]] 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6374 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 22 of 96 24 May 2009 at 4:15am | IP Logged | ||
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The correct answer is:
no language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6896 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 96 24 May 2009 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Of the languages I know anything about Finnish clearly comes closest to perfect. It's one letter one sound consistently, with just a couple of isolated exceptions that were mentioned above.
Spanish is also phonetic to some degree, but with many exceptions, such as many letters (c, g, b, v, n, y, d, s, z) being pronunced differently depending on what letter combination they are found in etc. Not phonetic: English, German, French, Scandinavian languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6188 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 96 24 May 2009 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't studied Hawaiian, but I've lived there for 13 years. As far as I know, it's 100% phonetic. The closest thing to an exception is W, which is pronounced like an English V unless it's at the beginning of a word, in which case it's pronounced like an English W. With my basic knowledge I cannot think of any exceptions to that rule though.
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