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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4256 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 17 25 October 2014 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is about spelling and not pronunciation though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5133 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 10 of 17 25 October 2014 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Except in an answer upthread he suggests that it is about pronunciation, too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Glossaphile Pentaglot Newbie United States youtube.com/TranslatRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4742 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin Studies: Ancient Greek, German, Old English | Message 11 of 17 25 October 2014 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hennkles, an acute accent on "bi" would be redundant, because the vowel is not followed by a consonant. In that position, it can only ever be long, so there's no need to mark it as such.
Daegga, the use of 'ø' for schwa seemed to be the overall best option available on the US-International keyboard layout, to which I restricted myself so that RLS would not require any specialized typing hardware or software. Eyðimörk, no spelling reformer to whom I've spoken is interested in prescribing pronunciation. In order to be useful, any phonemic orthography must necessarily choose a particular accent to serve as its basis, which inevitably means that it will not be perfectly consistent with respect to other accents. This does not mean that everyone has to start speaking as the spelling dictates. It simply means that they will have to become diglossic, with a command of both the agreed-upon standard accent and their own local vernacular. This is a common phenomenon anyway, and writers would be free to choose which accent to write depending on social context (e.g. academic papers in the standard, personal letters in the vernacular). The trick is to minimize the discrepancies between the accent reflected in standard spelling and that of the user's regional dialect. I elaborate on this in my academic paper, quoted and linked below: One of the first issues to be addressed in the design process was a question posed by many opponents of alternative orthography. Whose accent should the new standard code reflect? I quickly realized that this could be resolved by hybridizing the national standards of the two most influential Anglophone countries in the world: the United States and the United Kingdom. The result is an artificial accent which deviates sufficiently little from every major natural dialect, especially General American (GA) from the U.S. and Received Pronunciation (RP) from the U.K., as to be the most easily and widely understood. It would be politically neutral and provide a common model for hundreds of millions of non-native learners to follow without having to arbitrarily choose at the onset of their studies between American and British forms… The only notable disadvantage of this solution is that any spelling based on this hybrid dialect would not quite attain absolute phonemicity from the perspective of any existing dialect. Americans would have to learn to distinguish /ɒ/ and /ɑː/ orthographically despite the merger of the two into a single /ɑ/ in GA, while British citizens would have to continue writing <r> even where no /ɹ/ is pronounced in RP. Still, regionally specific discrepancies such as these would undoubtedly be far fewer than the multitude of universal discrepancies which characterize traditional orthography. Furthermore, such minor detractions are virtually inevitable in one region or another no matter which dialect a reformer chooses as a basis. An Americocentric proposal would present more such quirks for British students, while a Britanocentric proposal would present more such quirks for American students. In short, no single orthographic paradigm will be able to please everyone perfectly. By postulating an approximately equal compromise between the two most prominent contenders, however, we stand a good chance of minimizing these challenges across the broadest proportion of the Anglophone world. Full Paper: http://www.hsmespanol.com/RestLatSpellSite/Spelbaund.pdf Edited by Glossaphile on 25 October 2014 at 10:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4102 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 12 of 17 26 October 2014 at 12:16am | IP Logged | |||||
This is where you completely lose me. I understand what you're saying, but I don't understand the point of the exercise. If a phonemic orthography demands that people become diglossic, it is in so way superior to, say, etymological orthography, it's only different. And if the point is for me to one day get so used to this new orthography that I can finally detach it from its phonetic origins and stop being annoyed by the fact that it's telling me to pronounce things differently*, what is the point of making it phonemic in the first place? It's just a different way of not writing the way you speak. * NB! I am not saying that it is a goal of spelling reformers to prescribe pronunciation, but description of pronunciation is in itself a form of prescription the moment it is read, even if only for that moment. This is true even when the writer isn't looking to reform any orthography. In Breton, there are a lot of people who dislike the six or so orthographies already in use because they feel that standardisation does not correctly describe the way they speak... They aren't trying to tell anyone else how to speak, they just want their own dialect to be written like it's their dialect. They don't pronounce the word "bloaz" the way anyone else spells it, so they write "blé", and they don't say "e-barzh", so they write "ba", etc. They just want to be faithful to their language. Even so, when I read this, I am following prescriptions. I have to read it out the way it's written, in my head, to be able to make the connection. The act of writing supposes a reader, so pronunciation description, when it comes to orthography, is always prescription... even if it isn't intended to go beyond this one particular reading experience. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4102 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 13 of 17 26 October 2014 at 12:26am | IP Logged | |||||
Spelling that is explicitly based on pronunciation. I have apparently not been clear enough. I don't think this thread or this project is primarily about pronunciation. I don't think this project in any way is about telling people how to pronounce anything. I think that new orthographies based on pronunciation are by their very nature annoying to those of us who do not share the "standardised" pronunciation of choice, because until we have been trained enough in these new orthographies to completely disregard that they were once based on pronunciation they are prescriptive for the moment of reading. Not forever. Not five minutes later. For the moment of reading only. That is enough, though. So yes, it is about pronunciation, because it's an orthography based on pronunciation and because the act of reading something written based on pronunciation is an act of pronunciation. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Glossaphile Pentaglot Newbie United States youtube.com/TranslatRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4742 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin Studies: Ancient Greek, German, Old English | Message 14 of 17 26 October 2014 at 3:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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To Eyðimörk:
Yes, orthographic standardization inevitably involves some degree of prescription. With phonemic orthographies, however, there is bound to be much less that has to be prescribed, at least if the accent chosen as a basis is already widely familiar. With a phonemic orthography, the only words that would present any challenge at all would be those whose standard pronunciation differs from the reader's/writer's regional pronunciation. On average, such words would make up a relatively tiny proportion of any text, at least in comparison to the proportion of words that are currently spelled in ways that are not intuitive for anyone regardless of local vernacular. In other words, while there will still be words that you'll have to "detach from [their] phonetic origins," they'll be far fewer than they were in traditional spelling. That is where the worthwhile advantage lies. From the perspective of any single local accent, a new spelling system would not completely eliminate divergence between spoken and written form, but it would bring about a drastic reduction of them, and that is why it would still be worth it without imposing any pronunciation code as strict as you seem to think. Edited by Glossaphile on 26 October 2014 at 7:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4035 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 15 of 17 26 October 2014 at 7:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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The schwa symbol is a good start for British and Australian English where all vowels reduce to that only, but not
American English. The spelling of English is heinous! You would have only a slightly better chance of changing our spelling than convincing China to give up their system. Edited by Stolan on 26 October 2014 at 7:33am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4752 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 16 of 17 26 October 2014 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Any phoneticization is accent-dependent,
if we were to follow the accents of Vermont, St. John's NF, Lake Placid NY: song = sahng wrong = rahng long = lahng all = ahl caller = kahler collar = kahler Don = dahn dawn = dahn mom = mahm involve = invahlv dolphin = dahlfin doll = dahl etc. if we were to follow Boston and Pittsburgh accents: song = sawng wrong = rawng long = lawng all = awl caller = kawler collar = kawler Don = dawn dawn = dawn mom = mawm involve = invawlv dolphin = dawlfin doll = dawl Edited by Camundonguinho on 26 October 2014 at 3:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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