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The efficiency of Latin script. | ||
Tags: Writing System | Latin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5178 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 1 of 32 10 September 2011 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Latin script is used by the overwhelming majority of people. let's say 2 and half billion of people. but is it the best script in the world? I doubt it. It's actually on of the worst. let's take an example "don't". the t is pronounced as t here. but when it is followed by y you pronounce it as ch. At least in Pussy cat dolls song doncha. In Korean and Thai you don't have such a problem at all! ch in final position is reduced to t. Is Latin easy to learn? so so. You have to learn majuscule and minuscule. most scripts don't have such an useless thing! is it well suited to different languages? It has tree letters for /k/: c,k,q but has no letter for ch! The letter order - it's a nonsense! abc? why? Devanagari and other Indic scripts have more logical order of letters. It's not that I dislike Latin. but what I want to say is that it is not better at all than other scripts. It is as good as any other writing system in the world. I just dislike the fact that some people claim that it's so wonderful and superior to other scripts like Chinese characters. it may look like to response to the efficiency of Chinese characters", but it's not. It's just inspired by it. The author of the previous post actually didn't say anything about Latin being better. it's only an response to those people who criticize hanzi . If we can criticize hanzi why not criticize Latin or other scripts? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| floydak Tetraglot Groupie Slovakia Joined 4854 days ago 60 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Slovak*, English, German, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 32 10 September 2011 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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and what exactly is the point of this thread?
if it is why we are not using some other more efficient script I would say it can be an example of path-depencence theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5009 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 4 of 32 10 September 2011 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Advantage of the Latin script is the relatively low amount of characters. You can write everything (everything needed in european languages at least) by just their combination. Sure there are specific characters for various languages but there is not that many of those.
The trouble with different pronunciation of the same letter is rather trouble of certain languages such as English (which I dare to say is an extreme in this). But it is not a disadvantage of latin script, it is just the matter of the historical and linguistic agreement of the kind "we, french, will read this letter (in combination with that letter) this way" which is the same as "we, japanese, will read this kanji this way". Perhaps chinese and japanese are in advantage where it comes to sms. They can fit much more content in the 160 letters. :-) The letter order has no other sense that it is a tradition and I'd say this order is just as good as any other. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Dr. POW Groupie Canada Joined 4965 days ago 48 posts - 58 votes Studies: German, English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 32 11 September 2011 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I'm pretty sure that some Latin script systems have fewer characters then others.
Doesn't Italian have only 21 inherent characters? I haven't started learning it yet, just reading about it, so I don't know about diacritics in Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 5086 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 6 of 32 11 September 2011 at 8:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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You are confusing two things.
1) The English way of using the Latin script. 2) The Latin script itself. The result is that you are not only making a post ranting about the spelling system of English (something that has been beaten to death), but you are mislabeling it. Furthermore, a pussycat dolls song is not a good source of linguistic analysis, and the fact that "don't you" is sometimes pronounced as "doncha" has absolute nothing to do with the script but is rather a result of fast speech, and is just as likely to happen if English was written with any other script. Finally, to round off the problems with your post, comes the comparison between English and Mandarin script. Which one is "better" is completely impossible to determine, there are advantages to both. But if we're talk about memorization efficiency, English script is quite clearly the winner. Memorize 52 characters (including the capital letters) and you can spell every word in the language (albeit with somewhat complex spelling rules with many exceptions). With Chinese... it's kind of like everything is an exception. You have to memorize every word. Now, I find that rather beautiful. But efficient... probably not. 16 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4834 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 7 of 32 12 September 2011 at 4:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
The best for what? You're ignoring the very important details that the Latin alphabet was created to write a very specific language and its typical sounds, that that language is considered to be dead, and that there are many versions of the latin alphabet.
So, let me see if I got this right. You think it's OK that Hangeul has this predefined pronunciation rule that, for instance, the characters that represent the ch or s sounds are pronounced like t when in the final position of a syllable but think there's something wrong with the existence in English of a pronunciation rule that says that a final t sound followed by an initial y must be pronounced ch? How can you justify this double standard?? It seems to me the point of this thread is to criticize those that have double standards when it comes to criticizing the efficiency of a writing system but then you go and do exactly the same mistake.
Do you have any evidence to support this or are you basing it in your personal experience? If you are, I have to question your objectivity here. According to your language profile, you speak Polish as a native language, which, as far as I know, uses the Latin alphabet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing this means you learned the Latin alphabet as a child. On the other hand your post suggests you can use or at least have studied the Thai alphabet, Hangeul and Devanagari which I bet you learned much later in life, probably as an adult or maybe a young adult, when your interest for foreign languages developed. I contend that these are very different circumstances and comparing the way you learned the Latin alphabet with the way you learned others is very unfair.
Absolutely agreed.
Definitely agree that it's redundant to have 3 letters for the same sound. As for your comment on the existence of a letter to represent the ch sound, well I have to once again emphasize that you're taking the latin alphabet for a whole that it simply isn't. There are several versions of the latin alphabet. Granted, they have a lot in common but this sound is definitely not one of the cases. The languages that even use that sound are not at all a majority and it's up to their speakers to decide how they represent it. Why should a speaker of Portuguese or Italian bother to learn that extra letter or symbol even if they use a script that can be classified as the latin alphabet? Still, I do agree that the representation of the ch sound could be streamlined but I don't agree that introducing yet another letter is necessary. You don't have to learn the letter h specifically for using it in the ch cluster so you don't have to learn any extra letters. The only real problem is the fact that it occupies more space than it would if it were represented by a letter (even if, and I think you'll agree, this is a very very small problem). However, the k and the ch/kh sounds are clearly related. As such, using some sort of diacritic over the letter k should be enough. It would both save space and avoid learning an extra letter.
First of all I have to thank you for the heads up here. I didn't know they used a specially designed letter order. Yet I have to question that this order actually brings any improved efficiency. Why do I doubt this? Well, according to wikipedia: "The letter order of Devanāgarī, like nearly all Brahmi scripts, is based on phonetic principles which consider both the manner and place of articulation of the consonants and vowels they represent." This seems to be a very sound principle but I highly doubt that this is mentioned to children when they're learning Devanagari at school or that they themselves notice it. So in their minds the alphabetic order of Devanagari is most likely just another random order of letters that they have to memorize and probably do it just as fast (i.e., in probably no more than a few minutes) as kids learning the Latin alphabet do. Bring me evidence to support the claim that this nonrandom alphabetic order improves learning times even further, though, and I will wholeheartedly support a change in the current order.
Well I'm glad I made that point clear. I also hope my posts in that thread and in this one too made it pretty clear that I'm just as ready to criticize things I'm familiar with (such as I did with my native Portuguese, the English spelling, the existence of grammatical genders, etc) as I'm ready to criticize Hanzi and that, therefore, I'm not one of the persons this thread is a response to. Edited by MarcoLeal on 12 September 2011 at 4:38am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 8 of 32 12 September 2011 at 4:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Gah, another one of these hypothetical-technical threads.
Latin script is working well enough for the likes of Norway and Germany to have well-functioning societies with healthy economies and substantial cultural output. Just as I defended Chinese characters by merit of the existence of the prosperous societies that use it, so will I defend the Latin script by merit of all the prosperous societies for whom it has proved sufficient to make advances in science, economics, literature, etc. I personally think Hangul is more logical and rationale than Latin script, but Korea has yet to produce output as world-changing as from the likes of Germany, France, the UK, and the US, so perhaps the underlying assumption that the "efficiency" of a script even *matters* is itself erroneous. The point is, without repeated controlled experiments, we'll never know. And suffice to say, there will never be a controlled experiment on this matter. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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