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Reforms that you want to see in languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5855 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 1 of 72 06 April 2010 at 9:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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A lot of language learners have diffculty learning their target languages because of orthographical or lexical issues. Therefore, I opened this thread to discuss what (orthographical or lexical) reforms that learners want to see, which make language learning easiler or pleasent. Here are some of my thoughts:
Chinese: Each character should only have one pronuncation. Each character should only represent one thought or meaning. New characters should be formed from the existing characters. English: Each consonant or vowel (and their combinations)should represent only one sound. This will make English phonetic and easiler to pick up. French: Same as English. In addition, liasions should be written down whenever it occurs. What are your thoughts? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5811 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 2 of 72 06 April 2010 at 10:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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Phonetic spelling for English is completely illogical. To take a simple example, consider simple past tenses. "I celebrated" is pronounced with a d. "I decamped" is pronounced with a t. Do you really want to make the grammar and spelling more complex by requiring "decampt"? English is a rich language with a very complex history in terms of word origin, and I don't really think that should be smoothed over just to make things easier for learners.
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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 3 of 72 06 April 2010 at 10:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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It is almost impossible to make fundamental changes in the really complicated ortographies (say English or even worse: the Celtic languages), - too many people have spent too much time learning their nooks and crannies. Besides any orthography based strictly on pronunciation would have to be either a compromise between different dialects or it would offend speakers of all but one dialect.
I don't agree with Woodpecker's argument about -ed, which can be pronounced as -d or -t: it would definitely be better for those who learned English from scratch to be able to trust the orthography. It is also clear that etymological/historical arguments are totally irrelevant for this group of persons. But the English orthography was not established to help learners of the English language. It has come into being by a slow and laborious process, formulated by past generations of English teachers and scholars who already spoke the language and who for psychological reasons hesitated to drop the etymological ballast, and now we are stuck with it in more or less its present form. In a way it is akin to bureaucracy: once you have got it you can't get rid of it Edited by Iversen on 06 April 2010 at 10:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| oz-hestekræfte Senior Member Australia Joined 5678 days ago 103 posts - 117 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish | Message 4 of 72 06 April 2010 at 11:00am | IP Logged | |||||
The T ending for a past tense is very common in English, and often used in spelling. eg: "Learnt" "burnt" Why would it be so confusing to write it like it's "spelt" <--- Besides the OP actually said it's the vowels that should be reformed, and with this, I totally agree. With some new vowel combinations and fixing up of existing words, there's no reason every vowel sound couldn't have its it's own letter (letter combination) I think there should be a provision to keep homophones spelt differently though. It'll never happen. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5811 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 5 of 72 06 April 2010 at 11:27am | IP Logged | |||||
Not in the United States. This is exactly my point. In the US, we both spell and say "learned" and "burned" and "spelled." So how exactly are you going to decide whose pronunciation is correct? I personally think it makes more sense to have one suffix and let people say it however they want. Do you actually say spelt in Australia? I've never heard that before, even in Europe.
Vowels have the most varied pronunciation of anything, though. If English were spelled with phonetic vowels, British and American English would on sight at least resemble completely separate languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Przemek Hexaglot Senior Member Poland multigato.blogspot.c Joined 6475 days ago 107 posts - 174 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, SpanishC2, Italian, Portuguese, French Studies: Turkish, Hindi, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 72 06 April 2010 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, they try to unify the spelling of Portuguese words of Portugal and Brazil, but they have taken the Brazilian forms because they seem simpler. That cause many Portuguese people to feel offended, because a younger version is in a privileged position.
As to "t" endings in English past forms, I guess that would complicate the matter, because you would have to learn two endings in spite of one. Such a situation is in fact present in Turkish - well, even more complicated because of the vowel harmony in the language, e.g. endings of the past tense for the first person singular may be: -dim, -dım, -düm, -dum or -tim, -tım, -tüm, -tum depending on the last vowel and the consonant of the verb stem So it looks like that: Vermek (infinitive) – verdim Yazmak - yazdım Görmek – gördüm Bulmak – buldum Gitmek - gittim Yapmak – yaptım Dökmek - döktüm Konuşmak - konuştum Turkish has vowel harmony for many postpositions and endings, so you really have to learn many endings. Of course after some time it becomes second nature, but at first it's not so easy. Edited by Przemek on 06 April 2010 at 1:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5765 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 7 of 72 06 April 2010 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
No. But imagine if we still write Turkish à l'ottomane, we will then write -dir, and learn to PRONOUNCE it as -dir, -dür, -tır... That is much, much harder than what we do now. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5469 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 8 of 72 06 April 2010 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm British and I say 'spelt', 'learnt' and 'burnt'. I don't think I would ever say 'spelled' or 'learned', though I would in 'a well learned person'. I might say 'burned' on occasion.
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