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The efficiency of Latin script. | ||
Tags: Writing System | Latin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| JLA Triglot Newbie France Joined 4901 days ago 25 posts - 33 votes Speaks: French*, English, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 25 of 32 17 September 2011 at 9:58am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, but the keyword is "adapt". It was very well done in some languages, even non Romance one like for example German, not so well in others like English or French. But I agree it has nothing to do with a weakness of the alphabet itself, but much more with how well or badly they were adapted and, funnily enough, to political decisions. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 5085 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes  Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 26 of 32 21 September 2011 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The problem IS NOT the Latin alphabet. The problem is the way languages are spelled
(irregularities). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5232 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 27 of 32 28 September 2011 at 5:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been thinking about this. I think most of us agree that an alphabet with twenty odd letters suffices for most
languages. If that's enough letters, you can always make digraphs or add diacritics. But as to ways to actually improve the alphabet itself, the only thing I can think of might be somehow encoding the type of sound into the letter itself. For instance, "o" is a wonderful letter--it approximates the shape of your mouth when you make that sound, at least in some circumstances. A more elongated oval for "a." That's obviously a limited strategy. Other possibilities are, for example, using a loop to represent every stop. "b" "p" would suffice. Or indicate the voiced, unvoiced status of the sound by something intrinsic to the letter--an added horizontal stroke for voiced, perhaps. All vowels dip below the line, all nasals have a serif, stuff like that. To be sure, I don't think this would really make the alphabet more efficient--I think any twenty odd characters, suitably different from each other, suffices. But it might make for a more artistically satisfying script. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5232 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 28 of 32 28 September 2011 at 5:43am | IP Logged | |||||
It was actually done pretty well for English and French. Old English and Old French are much more phonetic. Alas, it didn't adapt with the languages. That's not hard to understand--people naturally resist changing spellings they've always known, even as the sounds change. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Leipzig Hexaglot Newbie Wales Joined 4807 days ago 22 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchC2, Lowland Scots, SpanishC2, Portuguese, Catalan Studies: Welsh, Tok Pisin, German, Italian | Message 29 of 32 01 October 2011 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I consider most arguments as to whether a writing system is efficient to be rather
moot. Any writing system - be it an alphabet, an abjad, a syllabary or whatever you like - is only as efficient as the languages that use it. Whilst you may think that how the Latin alphabet is used in English is inefficient, one could argue that other scripts may be even moreso, particularly those that do not cover the range of English syllables. Imagine a syllabary where the syllable characters were only (optional consonant) + one of the five basic vowels + (optional consonant). It would be incredibly efficient for that language, but not quite so for a language with words the likes of 'sixth' dotted around it, to give one example. I believe all writing systems to have worth as examples of human ingenuity and as an insight into the culture in which they originated. Whilst the basic Latin script minus digraphs, diacritics etc may not suffice for some languages, it's a fine fit for many languages. It's highly customisable; and whilst the OP rather unfairly uses English s n example of how the Latin script can be less than accurate or efficient, there are dozens more examples of very phonetic uses of the Latin alphabet to map languages' phonemes. Some of the most regular orthographies that I know of have Latin as their base, and whilst it's not a perfect fit for some languages, it's a fairly powerful writing system. The extended Latin alphabet could feasibly be used to write any language (though some would be less pretty than others in transliteration!) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Renaçido Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5088 days ago 34 posts - 60 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, French Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin | Message 30 of 32 02 October 2011 at 9:07am | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 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 31 of 32 28 October 2011 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, it was more of an provocation post.
Of course Latin is a script with history (over 2000 years old?). but I was discouraged by seeing some posts on pinyin.info this guy gives a link to a book "why Asian scripts harm creativity" or something like this. by Asian scripts, the author meant not only Eat Asian ones, but also Burmese! I think people who write such books probably think that they culture is better than the other ones. Anyway, I didn't say anything about English spelling being bad! Actually if you think about Polish spelling, there were people who wanted to reform it, after WWI, but if you think a little that would be a catastrophe for foreign Polish learners! for example ó in some words changes into o, how would you know when you change u into o, when the writting would not show it? What about Korean? Korean is actually very irregular, if you think about it, really. The fact that it uses hangul makes it easy, and you think it's pretty regular. but if you would write it phonetically, you would see what I mean. 맛 =맏 맛있다 = 마싣다 맛있는 마신는 it's not so phonetic, but once you remember few rules, it will pay off making Korean very regular language to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| xander.XVII Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5058 days ago 189 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC1 Studies: French | Message 32 of 32 08 November 2011 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
Italian has the following diacritics: à è é ì ò ù î 1 person has voted this message useful |
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