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Orthography making grammar regular | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| 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 11 17 November 2011 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have noticed there exist some orthographies that make grammar easier to learn.
Especially Korean, but also Polish, Japanese etc. So I wonder, can there be an orthography that will make a language completely regular? or almost? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 2 of 11 17 November 2011 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Of course, it can't. Although, for example, French could be simplified by a spelling reform. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 11 17 November 2011 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course there can, hypothetically. If you have a language that is completely regular except for the word "boy" which acquires a silent 'e' in the plural, and you change the orthography to remove that 'e', you have made the grammar completely regular.
That's a pretty unlikely scenario. The answer is "yes", if you speak hypothetically, but probably "no" if you mention a particular language. Can you give examples of how Korean and Polish make grammar easier to learn? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 4 of 11 17 November 2011 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't imagine how any orthography could make an irregular morphology regular without dropping any ambitions about reflecting the language as it is. At most it can force people to take elements seriously which mostly disappear in sloppy speech, but sometimes are pronounced.
On the other hand a bad orthography (someby mentioned French) can certainly add complications which aren't present in the spoken language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6659 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 5 of 11 17 November 2011 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Toki pona is entirely regular and very easy to both pronounce and spell, though well, it’s a conlang.
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| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 6 of 11 17 November 2011 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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But then the grammar is already regular, and the orthography just has the decency not to spoil it
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| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5599 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 7 of 11 17 November 2011 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sometimes the orthography masks sound varieties. E.g. the plural of English nouns is sometimes pronounced [s] like in cats, sometimes [z] like in girls, but always written /s/. Or take the arabic article. You always write uniformely ال, but in reality you have sometimes to do assimilations, when followed by a sun letter.
In such a way orthography can smooth phonetic changes, but the grammar will stay as it was, even if the written form seems simpler. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 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 8 of 11 10 December 2011 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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SOrry for late reply.
Actually, for example let's start with Polish. There exist letters in Polish orthography that are pronunced in the same way. Some people could say: "so why bother? discard one, and it all will be much simpler". but he would be wrong. u and ó are all pronunced the same, but in some cases (noun cases), ó changes into o. u does not change. Another example is Korean. Korean is generally regarded as a very regular language in comparision to European langs. but if you think about it, it is actually not the case. For example, ass verbs in Korean end with 다 but not all of them are pronunced the same. it may be 다 or it may be 타. for example 좋다 is pronunced as 졷타 or something like this. ㅎ turns ㄷ into ㅌ. Why they didn't simply use the letter ㅌ from the very beginning? because that would make it much more irregular! 있다 - to exist. 있 - the stem never changes its form, but the pronuntiation does change. you have to learn the sound change rules (they are listed on sogang Korean). but once you learn them... Korean grammar is easy. Think about learning Korean spelled phonetically! that would be really hard! 이 여자가 학교에 있어요 =이 여자가 항교에 이써요 also, that makes the 한자 having only one spelling, even though they can be pronunced differenty according to their position. What about French? they don't pronunce the plural s. but if a vowel follows you do pronunce it. without this spelling would be confusing. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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