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Cyrillic versus Latin script | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Nuuskamuikkunen Triglot Newbie Finland Joined 4317 days ago 21 posts - 43 votes Speaks: Finnish*, Polish, English | Message 57 of 66 08 February 2013 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
That Polish L is not a particularly soft L, definitely not the same as Russian ль. I guess it probably was as soft historically, but when its harder counterpart became the /w/ sound, it had no reason to keep soft. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 58 of 66 08 February 2013 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think thse are small variations in pronunciation of the sound, not something principal. Its hard counterpart became w not long ago (in the 19 ctnt.). One can say that Russian soft N is not soft because it is harder than the Polish one. Do you actually hear the difference between the Russian and the Polish soft L? Some people still pronounce it as the velarized L, I'm sure that the Russian л is not perceived by Polish speakers as l. Edited by Марк on 08 February 2013 at 12:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Nuuskamuikkunen Triglot Newbie Finland Joined 4317 days ago 21 posts - 43 votes Speaks: Finnish*, Polish, English | Message 59 of 66 08 February 2013 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
The Polish L is the same as in many Western languages, and yes, it is completely different from the Russian soft one. The change from Russian hard L to the /w/ sound dates back to the XVI century. It was preserved up to few decades ago in actors. I suppose you can also hear it in the Eastern dialects. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 60 of 66 08 February 2013 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think it's not completely different. On the perceptual level these are variations of one and the same sound. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 61 of 66 08 February 2013 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In Portuguese some dialects have a final l which has moved in the same direction as the Polish velarized ł, namely in the direction of an English w. Maybe both the Portuguese and the Polish hear these sounds as simply different aspects or variants of a general l-sound - but in the completely hypothetical situation where the Polish decided to change to a Cyrillic alphabet, it would be a bad idea NOT to mark that there now is a considerable difference. If on top of that there are minimal pairs with l and ł then it would even more logical to separate the representations of these two sounds because they then would represent different phonemes - but My Polish is too rudimentary to come up with an example here and now.
Much of the chaos in different orthographies are caused by wellmeaning attempts to show past historical stages in a contemproneous orthography, even in cases where a distinction has been lost or two elements have lost any shred of past identity. But as I suggested above, it is not likely the Polish will be written in Cyrillic letters tomorrow. Edited by Iversen on 09 February 2013 at 12:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 62 of 66 08 February 2013 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, it would make a hypothetical Polish Cyrillic orthography less phonemic if a Cyrillic version represented current l and ł with just л. In this instance the Cyrillic alphabet could accommodate for the distinction just as well as the Latinic one by adding some diacritic on л or having a new grapheme altogether. That ł is clearly distinct from l and sounds a lot like English w or the final в in some western Ukrainian dialects. Compare the pronunciation of łódź "boat" and lód "ice". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 63 of 66 08 February 2013 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Why? In Bulgarian they represent everything with л. I don't see any problem with this. Why can't we write луђ and люд, for example? The velarized l is not more different from w, than from the palatalized l. Don't ł and l replace each other in certain positions. Young Bulgarians pronounce л as w, do you suggest inventing a new letter for them? Edited by Марк on 08 February 2013 at 4:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 64 of 66 08 February 2013 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
What's done in Bulgarian is fine, but in Polish, the sounds are marked by different graphemes and indeed the sounds are distinct. If you really want to take the tack that l and ł can be justifiably represented by one grapheme because they're variations of one sound, then it shouldn't bother anyone that sz and ś also should be represented by just one grapheme (akin to suggesting that Russians should merge ш and щ to one grapheme only because they're perceived as variations of one sound). Seriously, in Polish there's a distinction between these sounds and it's been helpful to assign distinct symbols to them. ł and l do alternate with each other in certain positions (e.g. Chung czytał "Chung read" vs. Chung i Mark czytali "Chung and Mark read") but then there are all of the words for which the sounds appear but whose rationale is much less clear or simply unknown - i.e. there's no predictable alternation unless you expect everyone to bone up on Slavonic etymology. See the example of łódź "boat" and lód "ice" again. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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