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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 9 of 28 07 February 2013 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
While the first part of the sentence may be true, the second one unfortunately isn't. Especially the different ways to mark short and long vowels give some people a hard time. In order to mark a long vowel you can either write the vowel as such ("schon"), add an -e ("Tier"), add an -h ("Bahn"), or duplicate the vowel ("Boot"). In order to mark a short vowel you can either write the vowel with a single consonant following ("das") or with a double consonant following ("nass"). And then there are the rules for using ß, which are quite straightforward but often ignored. Especially the difference between "das" and "dass/daß" is frequently not observed by many people. Moreover, there are the rules for capitalization, compound spelling, and punctuation, which have been confused even more by the recent spelling reforms. I really don't think it's easy to write flawless German! Edited by Josquin on 07 February 2013 at 6:49pm 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 10 of 28 07 February 2013 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
I was referring to DerDrache who started Cyrillic versus Latin script. Based on other responses in that thread, I suspect that the original post was:
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| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 11 of 28 07 February 2013 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good point. I've found myself in the past comparing the Polish and Russian writing systems before and feeling more comfortable with the Russian system, but now I think that's mainly because Russian written with Cyrillic has an orthographic depth closer to what is found in English and German. It's not like the Polish system doesn't make sense. Certain sounds that are related are made of digraphs (and up to what look like tetragraphs, IIRC) that both indicate a sort of "sound family" (e.g., related to tongue/lip positions, varied by voicing/not voicing) as well as the precise sound (information that Cyrillic might not express explicitly). The biggest discrepancy I noticed was that Cyrillic replaces a "tetragraph" with a single character (e.g. szcz --> щ), but the Cyrillic letter also includes redundant information in its graphical similarity to ш. They're different approaches to the problem that stress certain virtues over others. (Apologies if I've unintentionally misrepresented Polish phonology, I know that I'm less familiar with it than with Russian.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6904 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 12 of 28 07 February 2013 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In Polish "szcz" stands for two sounds, not one, so it's not a real tetragraph even though this combination of sounds is quite common.
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| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 13 of 28 07 February 2013 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure I agree. You continued this post by recounting the great variety of rules you need to understand to figure out how something needs to be spelled, and these do indeed take work to learn. But the distinction is that rules do, in fact, exist in German, unlike in English, and they cover the great majority of the standard language. My experience as a language learner has been that 95%+ of the time, if I hear a German word that I do not know on the radio, I spell it perfectly when I go to look it up in the online dictionary. (And if I don't spell it right, it's almost always because I didn't catch the exact sounds of the word, not because the spelling is irregular.) That's not because I'm a genius--it's because German orthography is (mostly) regular. With English, on the other hand, I could spend all day listing examples of spellings that are completely unpredictable, no matter how much you know about spelling and grammar rules, including homophones like "hire" and "higher," or "peace" and "piece." 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 14 of 28 07 February 2013 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One could use one letter - ш, to represent both ш and щ sounds: щ - шь, ща - шя and so
on. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 15 of 28 07 February 2013 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the clarification; I wasn't sure. While my old "Mastering Polish" book presented it as such, I didn't see "szcz" listed under the WIkipedia entry on Polish phonology, so I tried to hedge a little and called it a "tetragraph" and not just a tetragraph. Am I at least correct in thinking that "szcz" in Polish corresponds to the sound of the Cyrillic letter щ? 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 16 of 28 07 February 2013 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
To my ears in Ukrainian it definitely does but it doesn't seem so in Russian, per vonPeterhof's post. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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