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The most phonetic languages

 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
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daniela
Newbie
Romania
Joined 5292 days ago

18 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: Romanian*

 
 Message 41 of 96
07 July 2010 at 11:48am | IP Logged 
MäcØSŸ wrote:

Those rules doesn’t seem very hard actually. You just use Î at the beginning or end of a word and  in the middle, which
(usually) makes sense ethnologically and it’s also aesthetically more appealing.


If the word was formed using a prefix you should use î after the prefix too. It's unnecessary complicated, it's not even etymologically correct (because some of the â where i, e , o or u in Latin) and disapproved by linguists. The sound is more closely related to i than to a, but this is not important. What is important is that from one letter for one sound they made two letters for one sound. As for aesthetics, you like it, I think is ugly.    

Edited by daniela on 07 July 2010 at 12:00pm

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Raчraч Ŋuɲa
Triglot
Senior Member
New Zealand
Joined 5829 days ago

154 posts - 233 votes 
Speaks: Bikol languages*, Tagalog, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 42 of 96
07 July 2010 at 1:35pm | IP Logged 
zerothinking wrote:
The correct answer is: no language.


I find it incredible that I've reached the sixth page and only one poster here noticed an
apparent misuse of the word 'phonetic'. zerothinking is quite right, there is no existing
language with a phonetic script at all.

For a language to be phonetic, it must represent in its script even allophonic
differences in its phonology. I thought what the original poster meant would be
'phonemic' which contrasts with 'phonetic'.


Edited by Raчraч Ŋuɲa on 07 July 2010 at 1:36pm

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egill
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5707 days ago

418 posts - 791 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin, English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

 
 Message 43 of 96
07 July 2010 at 10:45pm | IP Logged 
Raчraч Ŋuɲa wrote:
zerothinking wrote:
The correct answer is: no language.


I find it incredible that I've reached the sixth page and only one poster here noticed
an
apparent misuse of the word 'phonetic'. zerothinking is quite right, there is no
existing
language with a phonetic script at all.

For a language to be phonetic, it must represent in its script even allophonic
differences in its phonology. I thought what the original poster meant would be
'phonemic' which contrasts with 'phonetic'.


Strictly speaking, yes. Only X language written in narrow transcription IPA orthography
is phonetic. But that's not the broader usage of the word. The broader sense of the
word phonetic predates the phonetic/phonemic distinction and is clearly what the
OP meant and judging from the responses, what was clearly understood by most posters
here.

On the other hand, we do purport to be language enthusiasts and should strive to use
correct technical terminology when it is useful. Hence, I would have been more
comfortable with something along the lines of "Which language has the most phonemic
orthography" But, that a looser sense of the word was used, which didn't impede
understanding, is not a particularly major transgression in my book.
8 persons have voted this message useful



chucknorrisman
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5459 days ago

321 posts - 435 votes 
Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish
Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French

 
 Message 44 of 96
08 July 2010 at 7:17pm | IP Logged 
If pinyin was the official system for actually writing Mandarin (as opposed to simply a learning tool), it would be the most phonetic script.
1 person has voted this message useful



NuclearGorilla
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6797 days ago

166 posts - 195 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Japanese, French

 
 Message 45 of 96
08 July 2010 at 8:12pm | IP Logged 
Tibetan spelling's a bit of a nightmare, having been standardized some time around 1000 years ago. However, it didn't seem all that difficult to predict the pronunciation from the spelling, which I believe is more important than the reverse.

Leading me to a tangential point, it seems that some believe that a language with a direct correspondance between grapheme and phoneme such that one can predict spelling or pronunciation given the other would be ideal. However, while this would likely favor learners and those writing in the language, it actually provides a hindrance to the reader, who can use alternate spellings to more quickly recognize the sense of the word and thus to read more quickly. Most people spend more time reading a language than learning to read it or writing in it.

Finally, a relevant link, http://www.zompist.com/spell.html, where the author demonstrates English pronunciation to be predictable from spelling 85% of the time.
1 person has voted this message useful



Ubik
Senior Member
United States
ubykh.wordpress.com/
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147 posts - 176 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish

 
 Message 46 of 96
10 July 2010 at 12:18am | IP Logged 
Actually Arabic is pronounced exactly as it is written as well. Dont let the transliterations fool you. Those arent official whatsoever. They are just there because your average person wants to be able to say something without learning their alphabet first. Its the same thing in Cyrillic or any language that uses an alphabet that we arent used to.

I really cant offer much else that hasnt already been said except that from what Ive learned so far, Basque is another language where its a 1:1 ratio. If thats incorrect, please someone correct me.
1 person has voted this message useful



horshod
Pentaglot
Groupie
India
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74 posts - 107 votes 
Speaks: Hindi, Marathi*, Bengali, Gujarati, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Turkish

 
 Message 47 of 96
11 July 2010 at 6:59am | IP Logged 
Raчraч Ŋuɲa wrote:
zerothinking wrote:
The correct answer is: no language.


I find it incredible that I've reached the sixth page and only one poster here noticed an
apparent misuse of the word 'phonetic'. zerothinking is quite right, there is no existing
language with a phonetic script at all.

For a language to be phonetic, it must represent in its script even allophonic
differences in its phonology. I thought what the original poster meant would be
'phonemic' which contrasts with 'phonetic'.


I would still say Sanskrit is 100% phonetic.
1 person has voted this message useful



galindo
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5218 days ago

142 posts - 248 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Portuguese

 
 Message 48 of 96
24 August 2010 at 1:04am | IP Logged 
A few people mentioned Japanese. Of course it's very phonetic, since each letter is a syllable. It's impossible to have irregular vowels or anything weird like that. It's definitely convenient, since you never have to wonder about how something is spelled. Of course, you still have to learn the kanji.


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