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Language features you wanted in your.... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6788 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 17 of 52 16 January 2010 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Something I've always thought would be neat would be a language that had both ingressive and egressive sounds in a manner that would allow one to talk continuously, using the ingressive parts to breathe. I think the idea might be more along the lines of using the egressive/ingressive distinction as a prosodic feature of sorts. Using fewer ingressive "breaks" (while still not pausing to breathe) might be a source of prestige.
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| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5523 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 18 of 52 16 January 2010 at 11:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
So, what is the point then?I never consciously care about word classes in my native language, so how could it help? Can't you just explain it for us poor mutts that don't get it?
So books like that are coming, are they? Could you provide some links? Perhaps you already have some documents prepared in this way that we could peruse?
Well, I have studied both Japanese and Chinese, and in those languages it is no inconvenience. The major difference between punctuation and coloured words is that punctuation is something that is indicated in speech, by prosody and pauses, whereas word class isn't. I don't really think it makes any sense to mark things in writing that are unmarked in speech, since the spoken word is the basis. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5526 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 19 of 52 16 January 2010 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Also Uhm-Uhm/Auh-Auh as in 'No' (while shaking your head usually) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6261 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 20 of 52 16 January 2010 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The idea of using colors for printed words has many applications. For example, in reciting religious texts like the Quran, some words should be pronounced with emphasis or with prolongation of certain vowels: 
Colors can also reduce the ambiguity from "garden path" sentences, if we use certain colors for verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. E.g.: The old man the boat. Intially, the reader usually starts to parse this sentence wrong = The man who is old does something. But actually it means: The boat is manned by the old people. Other examples: a) The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi. b) The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi. a) The government plans to raise taxes were defeated. b) The government plans to raise taxes were defeated. a) The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. b) The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6770 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 21 of 52 16 January 2010 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The thing about spaces is that you need them most for alphabetical languages — especially morphologically
weak ones like English — and not so much for languages like Chinese and Japanese. Latin and Greek, originally written without spaces, were normally meant to be read out loud — and indeed, you'd pretty much have to read out loud to make sense of where words began and ended. The Romans went so far as to have reading rooms where one could read aloud in privacy without disturbing the rest of the household. Spaces were an innovation by monks in the later Medieval period who found it made the innovation of silent reading possible. Of course, now, we consider silent reading the "normal" way to read, and it doesn't occur to us how much this has to do with the invention of spaces in European languages. References: http://www.amazon.com/Space-Between-Words-Origins-Medieval/d p/080474016X http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/LatinBackground/Sile ntReading.html 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| AlexL Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7086 days ago 197 posts - 277 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 22 of 52 16 January 2010 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not convinced that most people indicate word boundaries in their speech. Even so, I think there is value to including information in written text that is not available/unmarked in speech. You say you've studied Chinese. Most native Chinese have a hard time reading Pinyin, which includes all the phonetic information of speech. They need the characters, which contain semantic information--hints to the character's meaning and function-- to read quickly. I think that colored texts or something similar could certainly make reading easier / more pleasurable if done well, in the same way that punctuation, paragraph breaks (those don't exist in speech!), section dividers, chapter titles, etc. all help us get the most out of our reading experience. I'm not sure that colored texts would be the best way to go--it sounds like it would be an eyesore--but I could be wrong. Either way, I think some sort of extra mark-up, so long as it's unobtrusive, would certainly change the way we read. Edited by AlexL on 16 January 2010 at 7:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5523 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 23 of 52 16 January 2010 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Ah, but you wouldn't need characters if you wrote down conversations, would you? The spoken vocabulary is much smaller, and to some extent probably different. Still, I see your point, but I don't think word class is something that I would indicate, since it seems so very irrelevant. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 24 of 52 16 January 2010 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Wow! Those are some great examples. It took me several tries for each of those examples to understand what was trying to be communicated. Colors (or something...) would most definitely help in situations like this. Here's a color-coding scheme that is a bit more in-depth, using those sentences. NOUN ADJECTIVE VERB ARTICLE PREPOSITION CONJUNCTION The old man the boat. The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi. The government plans to raise taxes were defeated. The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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