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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5327 days ago 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.
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horshod Pentaglot Groupie India Joined 5781 days ago 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. |
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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'.
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I would still say Sanskrit is 100% phonetic.
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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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