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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5926 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 17 of 25 10 June 2009 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||
EDIT: I made a mistake Faroese only uses Þ. Edited by mick33 on 30 June 2009 at 6:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Halie Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6112 days ago 80 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 18 of 25 11 June 2009 at 4:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Why not just let languages evolve naturally?
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| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6852 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 19 of 25 11 June 2009 at 8:54am | IP Logged | ||
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As far as Chinese or Japanese using romanized spelling: why? Where would it get you? Japan with it's three writing systems has a very high literacy rate (99%), so a purely phonetic system wouldn't help there. Besides, the kana are phonetic, they just aren't Latin characters.
Chinese doesn't make much sense when written in pinyin. The characters convey meaning so it's easy to understand what's written (the spoken language isn't exactly the same as the written language, so homophones aren't such a problem). And that isn't even touching poetry or literary Chinese. The poem 施氏食狮史 (Shī Shì shí shī shǐ), or "The Lion-eating Poet in the Stone Den" illustrates the need for characters pretty well I think. Here it is in Chinese: 石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食 十獅。 氏時時適市視獅。 十時，適十獅適市。 是時，適施氏適市。 氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是 十獅逝世。 氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。 石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。 石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。 食時，始識是十獅，實十石 獅屍。 試釋是事。 And in pinyin: Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī. Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī. Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì. Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì. Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì. Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì. Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì. Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī. Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī. Shì shì shì shì. And now in English: In a stone den was a poet Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten. He often went to the market to look for lions. At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market. At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market. He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die. He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den. The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it. After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions. When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses. Try to explain this matter. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6852 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 20 of 25 11 June 2009 at 9:00am | IP Logged | ||
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And for English: hundreds of millions of people would have to re-learn how to spell. And it is obviously not a barrier to learning the language, as evidenced by the fact that the aforementioned hundreds of millions can already read and write it. If people can't write any way other than text-speak, it's their own damn faults. Don't change the language to suit the morons.
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5926 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 22 of 25 27 June 2009 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
I've never seen any reason to learn text-speak; when cell-phones, Blackberries etc become either more advanced or obsolete text-speak will also either gradually change or disappear. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5926 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 23 of 25 27 June 2009 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
Edited by mick33 on 27 June 2009 at 10:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Drabant Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5636 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Japanese Studies: Latin | Message 24 of 25 30 June 2009 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's great that I, as a non-native reader of English, can read texts written in the 16th century, more or less fluently, without any special schooling whatsoever. Even though I agree the English spelling is horrendous, I think the advantages of being able to stay in touch with history far outweighs that.
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