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The most phonetic languages

 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
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sans-serif
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 4544 days ago

298 posts - 470 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish
Studies: Danish

 
 Message 81 of 96
05 December 2012 at 8:09pm | IP Logged 
Josquin wrote:
Pisces wrote:
I've never seen a Swedish dictionary that marks the pitch accent of a word in any way.

Have a look at Langenscheidt's Swedish-German/German-Swedish dictionaries. They give the pitch accent for every single word -- which is absolutely necessary for learners. Monolingual Swedish dictionaries may not mark the accents, because native speakers know them already.

Pisces, like most Finns, probably learned/speaks finlandssvenska, which doesn't have pitch accent, explaining the shortcomings of our dictionaries. There are a couple monolingual Swedish dictionaries that include pitch accent, however, and I've seen them in bookstores here in Helsinki. A favorite of mine, Lexin, is available online and also has sound clips of many of the most common words. A great resource.

What I actually came here to say, though, is that Swedish word melody is quite predictable once you get the hang of it—and that can take a while, as the rules are not entirely straight-forward. After my initial puzzlement, I worked through two pronunciation guides I got from the library, which helped a lot. In fact, I'd strongly recommend all Swedish learners to take the time to read about the pitch accent. Sure, it's a bit of a bore, but it all pays off in the end.
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jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
Moderator
SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6894 days ago

4250 posts - 5711 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French
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 Message 82 of 96
05 December 2012 at 9:45pm | IP Logged 
Can you give any examples of a dictionary entry where pitch accent is included? How is it notated? Numbers? Accent markers such as ´ and `? Just the term "grave" and "acute"? High/low? Are there any hints about how the pitch is different in each regional accent?

As a matter of fact, as long as one know the difference between grave and acute, that will do. Olle "Speech doctor" Kjellin has written a lot about the two accents, how to identify them and to (learn how to) produce them.
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sans-serif
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 4544 days ago

298 posts - 470 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish
Studies: Danish

 
 Message 83 of 96
05 December 2012 at 11:32pm | IP Logged 
There's no generally agreed upon convention, but here's the format Lexin uses:

kontrast [kåntrạs:t]
last|bil [²lạs:tbi:l]

Briefly:
- words with a falling tone are marked with a superscript "2"
- primary stress is marked with a small dot
- long sounds are marked with a colon
- the script used is a kind of "phonetic Swedish", where each sound is represented by the letter most commonly associated with it, with the exception of the sje sound and the retroflex consonants, which have their own symbols

I'm only aware of dictionaries that list the pitch patterns as they appear in standard Swedish.

Edited by sans-serif on 05 December 2012 at 11:35pm

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Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5366 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 84 of 96
06 December 2012 at 8:28pm | IP Logged 
Josquin wrote:
So, my theory that marking the pitch accent is only necessary for learners is valid after all?

Japanese also has pitch and as far as I know, the average speaker will never look up the pitch. However, people who come from areas outside the large Tokyo area tend to speak with non-Standard pitch, so anyone wishing to work in communications or with the public is required to use the right pitch. As for how many people look words up as opposed to learning them on the spot, I have no idea.
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Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5366 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 85 of 96
06 December 2012 at 8:32pm | IP Logged 
stifa wrote:
An ideal phonetic written system for Japanese would have one character representing each more and some sort of pich mark on morae with raised pitch, or at least show where the pitch changes.

No system is entirely accurate in its representation of the pronunciation of words unless it also address pitch, tones or stress. In that respect, even hiragana Japanese is not effective. Same applies to German, Russian, Dutch, etc.
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Zireael
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 4636 days ago

518 posts - 636 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish
Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English

 
 Message 86 of 96
14 February 2013 at 5:59pm | IP Logged 
I agree that there is no entirely phonetic language in the broad sense, but in the strict sense, there are several. Hawaiian has been put forth. Many Slavic languages are pretty much phonetic. So is Spanish, if we discount the dialectal variation. And Japanese, if we forget about the kanji.
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hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 5115 days ago

1871 posts - 3642 votes 
Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe

 
 Message 87 of 96
14 February 2013 at 6:57pm | IP Logged 
From the little bit of Ojibwe I've looked at, the language seems quite phonetic, at
least if we're talking about the "double vowel system" of writing. I can't speak to the
syllabary at all. But the language itself is pretty phonemically limited.

The only trouble spot I could see is accurately representing what's called "metrical
feet" - where every group of two syllables is used to mark where stress falls within a
word or phrase.

R.
==

Edited by hrhenry on 14 February 2013 at 8:09pm

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MarlonX19
Diglot
Groupie
Brazil
Joined 4150 days ago

40 posts - 51 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, English
Studies: French

 
 Message 88 of 96
04 July 2013 at 11:15pm | IP Logged 
I think Portuguese is very phonetic, not 100% phonet but it is when you compare it to English or French for example...
I found the french spelling the worst one!


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