There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Mathieu Roy
1b. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Mathieu Roy
1c. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Adam Walker
2.1. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
From: John Q
3a. Re: Quoting dialog
From: Charles W Brickner
4.1. Conlang Writing (was Re: So, about Ithkuil...)
From: David Peterson
5a. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
From: Jim Henry
6a. single words for concepts for which other languages paraphrase
From: A. da Mek
6b. Re: single words for concepts for which other languages paraphrase
From: Leonardo Castro
7a. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
From: J. M. DeSantis
7b. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
From: James Kane
8a. Orthography congruous to pronunciation
From: A. da Mek
8b. Re: Orthography congruous to pronunciation
From: Gary Shannon
8c. Re: Orthography congruous to pronunciation
From: James Kane
8d. Re: Orthography congruous to pronunciation
From: Leonardo Castro
Messages
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1a. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 9:43 am ((PST))
Georges: <<It would probably be easier to learn *to read* Chinese if it used
an alphabetic script, but that doesn't affect how easy or hard it is to
learn to speak. Reading and writing are different skill from speaking and
listening.>>
But it is easier to learn how to pronounce words when you read phonological
text, so your speaking is also improving faster by reading a phonological
alphabet. But I understand what you're saying.
Georges: <<I do see your point, however, on how switching modalities would
cause some problems in learning a new language. Would these hypothetical
ASL-only humans have difficulty with a spoken language? I don't know. To
some extent, I think it may be a moot point -- hearing humans who only speak
a sign language is highly unlikely. In fact, considering that I have only
heard of sign languages arising where there are significant numbers of Deaf
individuals, it may well be that humans default to using spoken languages
when possible, probably because of the inherent advantages of auditory
communication (you don't have to be facing the speaker, for example -- and
it can be understood over longer distances).>>
Can't sign language communicate over longer distance than spoken language?
Well, maybe not in a dense forest. Anyway, I also wonder why we end up
speaking with the mouth and not with the arms; maybe it's because we needed
to use our arms more often than our mouth for non-language relating things.
But that makes me think... (see point below)
Another hypothetical situation could be the opposite. 1000 people that have
a spoken language and that get a virus that will make all of them deaf in 30
days, so they decide to create a sign language. How would that end up? We
could actually do this experiment in real life with let's say 50 people
(which might have results different than with 1000 people) and then after 30
days we cover there ears so they cannot hear and let them start
communicating only with signs (and consciously or unconsciously trying to
improve the language) for another 30 days. However, we would need very
committed people, and these would probably be people more interested in
languages than the average person, so the results might be a little bit bias
there, but that would still be interesting IMO. In fact, we could do that on
an ever smaller scale for entertaining purpose: let's say 5 people (that
don't know any signs language) meeting for 10 days (5 days to create a
language and 5 days speaking it). Who wants to do that with me? :)
-Mathieu
Messages in this topic (16)
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1b. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 10:13 am ((PST))
(in continuation to my previous email)
Or the situation could be a planet with only a spoken language and no
writing system. Then for some reason, one day everyone becomes deaf (without
warning; so they were not prepare). At first they would have to mime more
and make 'transparent' signs. Maybe they would start by meeting and pointing
or mimicking things and give them a word to start building a basic common
vocabulary. How long do you think it would take before they get to something
similar to our natural sign languages?
-Mathieu
-----Message d'origine-----
De : Mathieu Roy [mailto:[email protected]]
Envoyé : lundi 21 janvier 2013 18:43
À : 'Constructed Languages List'
Objet : RE: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical
language (was RE: Loglan[g] VS Natlang))
Georges: <<It would probably be easier to learn *to read* Chinese if it
used an alphabetic script, but that doesn't affect how easy or hard it is
to learn to speak. Reading and writing are different skill from speaking
and listening.>>
But it is easier to learn how to pronounce words when you read
phonological text, so your speaking is also improving faster by reading a
phonological alphabet. But I understand what you're saying.
Georges: <<I do see your point, however, on how switching modalities would
cause some problems in learning a new language. Would these hypothetical
ASL-only humans have difficulty with a spoken language? I don't know. To
some extent, I think it may be a moot point -- hearing humans who only
speak a sign language is highly unlikely. In fact, considering that I
have only heard of sign languages arising where there are significant
numbers of Deaf individuals, it may well be that humans default to using
spoken languages when possible, probably because of the inherent
advantages of auditory communication (you don't have to be facing the
speaker, for example -- and it can be understood over longer distances).>>
Can't sign language communicate over longer distance than spoken language?
Well, maybe not in a dense forest. Anyway, I also wonder why we end up
speaking with the mouth and not with the arms; maybe it's because we
needed to use our arms more often than our mouth for non-language relating
things. But that makes me think... (see point below)
Another hypothetical situation could be the opposite. 1000 people that
have a spoken language and that get a virus that will make all of them
deaf in 30 days, so they decide to create a sign language. How would that
end up? We could actually do this experiment in real life with let's say
50 people (which might have results different than with 1000 people) and
then after 30 days we cover there ears so they cannot hear and let them
start communicating only with signs (and consciously or unconsciously
trying to improve the language) for another 30 days. However, we would
need very committed people, and these would probably be people more
interested in languages than the average person, so the results might be a
little bit bias there, but that would still be interesting IMO. In fact,
we could do that on an ever smaller scale for entertaining purpose: let's
say 5 people (that don't know any signs language) meeting for 10 days (5
days to create a language and 5 days speaking it). Who wants to do that
with me? :)
-Mathieu
Messages in this topic (16)
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1c. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 11:02 am ((PST))
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]>wrote:
> (in continuation to my previous email)
>
> Or the situation could be a planet with only a spoken language and no
> writing system. Then for some reason, one day everyone becomes deaf
> (without
> warning; so they were not prepare). At first they would have to mime more
> and make 'transparent' signs. Maybe they would start by meeting and
> pointing
> or mimicking things and give them a word to start building a basic common
> vocabulary. How long do you think it would take before they get to
> something
> similar to our natural sign languages?
>
> -Mathieu
>
>
I think it would take them 1-2 generations (what ever time period that
represents for their biology). The First Generation stricken by the
disease would never achieve something like natural signed languages. The
Second Generation would have something very like a creole of the First's
pidgin-like language. The Third Generation would likely have a
fully-fledged language on par with any language they had used prior to the
disease.
Adam
Messages in this topic (16)
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2.1. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
Posted by: "John Q" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 9:49 am ((PST))
And. Rosta wrote:
>The most special bit of Ithkuil is the Content half (i.e. syntactic
>(semantically interpreted) form and its semantic substance). >The Expression
>half (i.e. phonological (phonetically interpreted) form and its phonetic
>substance) is simply driven by the >goal of compactness, overriding
>considerations of speakability and learnability.
>
>I think it could make sense for real-world would-be Ithkuil-users to do the
>following:
>
>(1) Devise a nonphonological "algebraic" (e.g. Geek-code-like) notation for
>Ithkuil Content.
>(2a) Devise an ergonomic phonology
>(2b) Devise an ergonomic morphology (e.g. taking into account learnability as
>well as compactness)
>(2c) Define rules for translating (2b) into (1) (and vice versa)
>
>(2c) would ensure the result was a true version of Ithkuil, but (2a-b) would
>make it more usable.
>
>A different but related point: I've turned over in my mind the idea of
>devising a derviational morphological system in >Livagian that takes the
>Content of Ithkuil words and gives them morphological expression in Livagian,
>while preserving >Livagian syntax and inflectional morphology. I doubt I'll
>ever implement the idea, but I like the idea that in principle the >Livagian
>lexicon could have the expressive power of Ithkuil (by virtue of having
>incorporated Ithkuil's map of semantic >space).
_______________________________________
That's quite a compliment, And., that you would consider basing aspects of
Livagian on Ithkuil. I'm honored.
You and Alex are quite correct that the phonological and morpho-phonological
component of Ithkuil is completely separable from Ithkuil morphology,
lexico-morphology, and (morpho-)syntax. That is how I was able to redesign the
original version of Ithkuil into Ilaksh so quickly (in less than a year) and to
redesign it again into the 2011 version of Ithkuil.
I have often given thought to privately creating a version of the language
which would be phonologically beautiful but, as you and Alex point out, I would
be completely giving up phonological compactness. The language would become
quite long-winded.
In fact, if there were enough conlangers interested, it might be a fun
challenge for conlangers to figure out new morpho-phonologies for Ithkuil that
do make it more learnable (e.g., splitting up the 5-morpheme "Ca" affix into
more manageable chunks) and to submit them for either my approval or an
at-large vote as to which one should be considered the "official alternative"
manifestation of Ithkuil. This is essentially what I did with the Ilaksh
design, but I ended up dissatisfied with it due to its limited phoneme
inventory and its over-reliance on tones. Plus, Ilaksh words, while easier to
pronounce than the original Ithkuil, weren't really any "prettier"-sounding (in
my opinion).
--John Q.
Messages in this topic (29)
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3a. Re: Quoting dialog
Posted by: "Charles W Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 11:04 am ((PST))
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of George Corley
3) If you are inventing a conscript, feel free to create whatever punctuation
you like, so long as it has proper rules and seems reasonably natural. Also
realize that you actually don't need punctuation at all. Or spaces between
words. Or majuscule vs miniscule forms. Many, MANY scripts do just fine
without some or all of those things.
=================================
In the beginning Senjecas did not use punctuation, other than a space between
words. Senjecas is SOV, so when you come to the indicative finite verb,
voilà, youâve reached the end of the sentence. In formal documents an
interpunct was often used between words and may still be found in legal
documents.
But, eventually, it was felt that some form of punctuation was needed. So the
following was adopted: a period for a comma, a colon to mark the end of a
sentence, and three vertical dots (â®) to mark the end of a paragraph.
Neither question marks nor exclamation points are used in transliteration. The
Senjecan question is marked morphemically by suffixing â-râ to the final
finite verb. The Senjecan exclamation is marked lexically by following the
final finite verb with âkèâ.
The Senjecan quotation is signaled by the use of âá¹a(á¹)â before and
after the quoted words. In transliteration I use the guillemets â¹...⺠and
«...».
For my own personal use, I separate subordinate clauses and absolute
constructions from the main sentence with an em dash (â).
Transliterated Senjecas is unicameral, i.e., no capital letters.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (14)
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4.1. Conlang Writing (was Re: So, about Ithkuil...)
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 11:28 am ((PST))
This has been bothering me for a little bit, so I wanted to respond.
On Jan 20, 2013, at 10:44 AM, selpa'i <[email protected]> wrote:
> Well maybe it would make an interesting article if a person had not only
> tried, but also succeeded. Just "Person X is trying to learn Ithkuil" doesn't
> sound very interesting until there is some evidence that Person X is actually
> making noteworthy progress. (Not to mention how anticlimactic it would be to
> announce in the next article that Person X failed!)
I could not disagree more. Provided you could detail what it is you're
attempting, what specific challenges you're having, what you attempt to do to
overcome them, etc., it would prove a *very* interesting article, even if you
could claim no success in the endeavor. Indeed, if you *did* fail in your
estimation, the record would validate the entire endeavor!
This, I think, is one of the problems with conlangers learning from each other.
Those of us who've been on the Conlang-L for a while (and the same would be
true of any other single forum that one conlanger could keep track of) have
seen others struggling with different goals or attempts at a conlang, trying
different tacks, eventually succeeding, etc., and I think anyone who is able to
follow that experience gains invaluable insight into the endeavor. That
insight, though, generally doesn't go beyond those who were paying attention.
It is fantastic that the Conlang Archives are public, but that's only so
helpful if you don't know what you're looking foreven if you just want to
browse.
As a result, when new conlangers emerge in one of the many, many venues now on
the internet, they end up retreading many of the paths that have been tread
before. While that experience isn't worthless, it's not necessary. The
catalogues of those early endeavors, though, are all but inaccessible, even if
they're available. I think it would be great if this information could be put
up in a more complete and permanent form. This is one of the very purposes I
wanted to have Fiat Lingua up. If it existed earlier, I would have put my essay
on Megdevi (my first conlang) up there:
http://dedalvs.com/megdevi.html
I hate tooting my own horn, but I think that essay is valuable in that it
details a lot of my beliefs about language and conlanging when I was just
starting out, and what the practical consequences of those beliefs are. Among
other things, it goes over how I came to kitchen sink conlanging (something we
now have a term for, but a term which I was completely unaware of when I was
*doing* it), and what it means to create a language like that. In the end, it's
not good or bad, unless your goal was to *not* doing something like thatin
which case, it would be nice to know it sooner rather than later.
So that's my pitch. Fiat Lingua isn't the greatest depository for conlang
trials and wisdom, in that it's not that well known, and I'm sure many
conlangers don't want to sit down and read a .pdf, but at least it's permanent,
searchable and a bit easier to sift through than, say, the entire archives of
the Conlang-L. I'd love to see more of the discoveries we've had on the list
translated to articlesand, in fact, if anyone wanted to take a particular
thread from the past and, essentially, summarize, I'd love to put that up.
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (29)
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5a. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 11:29 am ((PST))
On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On 20 January 2013 16:37, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Bad social engineering. English with its unreformed orthography allows
>> the engaged reader to read (though not necessarily understand) everything
>> ever written all the back to the Beginning of History when Julius Caesar
>> invaded England, thus causing the English language. The more "reformed"
>> we make an orthography, the harder it will be for anyone brought up on
>> the new version to read anything in the old version.
....
>> translation into the new orthography. If language informs culture, then I
>> as a Central Planner could determine the way future culture moves by the
>> nature of the orthographical Reform and the content of the literature
>> that gets "translated". Or at least make an attempt at the same.
> What a load of nonsense! When orthography is reformed, you don't stop
> reading old books: they just get reprinted with the new orthography! And
> any central planner has nothing to say about what does or doesn't get
> reprinted, since publishing companies are private! If there is demand for
> it, it will be reprinted.
Padraic is exaggerating for rhetorical effect -- arguably to an
excessive degree -- but I'd argue that there's a grain of truth in
what he says. I don't think orthography reform by itself it would
lead to deliberate political censorship such as he describes, but it
would reduce the number of old books that are easily accessible to
readers educated with the new orthography. The more radical the
orthography reform, the more labor-intensive the transcription into
the new orthography becomes, and as costs of reprinting old books
rise, publishers will be more selective about which titles to reprint,
and reprint fewer of them. Not through political considerations, as
Padraic argues (unless some completely unrelated political
developments are going on at the same time, which is possible, but not
to be blamed on the orthography reform) but for purely commercial and
pragmatic reasons. You might not have publishers like Dover, for
instance, doing so many low-cost facsimile editions of old books if
most readers under 30 were unable to read the old orthography. Such
publishers and such facsimile editions would still exist, but because
they would be aiming at a smaller market, they would have to print
fewer copies of each book and charge higher prices. And the more
complex the reform, and the more dialectical variation there is in the
language, the more subjective judgment is involved in transcribing
from an old chronolect into some modern dialect: so new transcriptions
would be copyrighted, for the most part, and each publisher that wants
to do a new edition of a public-domain book might do their own
transcription, or else pay a license fee to another publisher for the
right to reprint their transcription.
And libraries, at least local non-university libraries, would probably
over the course of a generation or less get rid of all or nearly all
of their old books printed in the old orthography and replace them
with books (re)printed in the new. That would put a strain on their
budgets, and libraries already tend to be underfunded. Some books for
which there's no new-orthography edition would thus be unavailable to
low-income readers, when without the orthography reform they might
have been. University libraries would be more conservative about
keeping old books in the old orthography, but they don't have
unlimited space and would have to make some hard triage decisions.
Of course, you would probably get people like Project Gutenberg doing
crowdsourced public domain transcriptions into the new orthography,
but because such transcription would be far more labor-intensive and
error-prone and above all more subjective than the current work
process at Distributed Proofreaders[*], it would be a botleneck and PG
would produce far fewer books per year than they produce now.
[*] -- In general (there are exceptions for particular books), one
person scans all the pages of the book and uploads the images. Then
each page is proofread by three different people, then formatted by
one person, then the formatting is double-checked by a second person.
Then a post-processor stitches all the pages together and converts
from the internal DP formatting markup to HTML, ePub, plain text, etc.
I expect if we had a radical orthography reform, there would be added
two or three transcription rounds in between the proofreading rounds
and the formatting rounds; one person transcribes it, then one or two
people double-check the transcription for errors. And because such
transcription is sometimes uncertain and subjective (involving
research and guesswork about how specific words were pronounced in a
particular author's dialect, for instance, or questions of whether to
transcribe things based on the way they were pronounced 300 years ago
or the way they're pronounced now in Britain or the way they're
pronounced now in the U.S. or....) there would be a lot of arguing
about transcription judgment calls in the fora. If such transcription
rounds were to add less than 50% to the average time it takes to
produce a book, I'd be pleasantly surprised.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (14)
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6a. single words for concepts for which other languages paraphrase
Posted by: "A. da Mek" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 11:44 am ((PST))
> the Czech author Milan Kundera doesn't understand how non-Czech languages
> could possibly do without an equivalent to the Czech word "litost," to
> which an English speaker sort of just shrugs when he/she hears the word
> translated as "a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own
> misery."
Do not take him too seriously. This is only one of possible meanings, and
the
more precise word for it would be rather "sebelítost", self-pity. "Lítost"
simply means regret, pity or sorrow (there is a German cognate "Leid"); it
is not a specialised word for cry in one's beer.
A better candidate for a single word for a concept for which other languages
paraphrase could be "prozvonit" - literally "to ring trough",
with the meaning "to give a missed call", "to call someone but only let it
ring once so that the other person will call you back". I wonder whether
other
languages have single word for this concept.
Messages in this topic (2)
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6b. Re: single words for concepts for which other languages paraphrase
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 1:36 pm ((PST))
2013/1/21 A. da Mek <[email protected]>:
>> the Czech author Milan Kundera doesn't understand how non-Czech languages
>> could possibly do without an equivalent to the Czech word "litost," to
>> which an English speaker sort of just shrugs when he/she hears the word
>> translated as "a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own
>> misery."
>
>
> Do not take him too seriously. This is only one of possible meanings, and
> the
> more precise word for it would be rather "sebelítost", self-pity. "Lítost"
> simply means regret, pity or sorrow (there is a German cognate "Leid"); it
> is not a specialised word for cry in one's beer.
As you said this, I'm encouraged to say that I feel that the
Portuguese word "saudade" is much more generic than a feeling of
wistful longing for something one once knew and which might never
return (as also cited in the original message). It would be very
natural for me to call my wife now an say "Tô com saudade! Vamos comer
uma pizza?!" ("I miss you! Let's eat a pizza?!"). But I'm talking
about Brazil; I don't know about Portugal, Angola, etc.
> A better candidate for a single word for a concept for which other languages
> paraphrase could be "prozvonit" - literally "to ring trough",
> with the meaning "to give a missed call", "to call someone but only let it
> ring once so that the other person will call you back". I wonder whether
> other
> languages have single word for this concept.
In Braz. Portuguese, an appropriate way of saying this could be "só
dar um toque" or, more precisely, "só dar um toque para ligar de
volta".
Messages in this topic (2)
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7a. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
Posted by: "J. M. DeSantis" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 12:10 pm ((PST))
On 1/20/2013 8:33 PM, Rich Harrison wrote:
>> Some of the language, to me, sounds very good to my ear, though, as
>> usual with my conlangs, I find concentrating on the language first
>> results in awkward names. Whereas, creating names first, makes the
>> language difficult to build properly.
> Do names have to mean something in your languages? Can't names just be
> arbitrary, semi-random, pleasant sounding strings of phonemes?
Well, everyone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the
impression that all names, the world over do have some meaning behind
them, even if from older forms, parent languages or borrowings from
other languages. If there are exceptions to this rule, I'd certainly be
willing to hear them.
Oh, and I tried sending this message yesterday, but apparently I hit the
limit of allotted posts for the day.
Sincerely,
J. M. DeSantis
Writer - Illustrator
Official Website: jmdesantis.com <http://www.jmdesantis.com>
Messages in this topic (14)
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7b. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
Posted by: "James Kane" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 1:41 pm ((PST))
It is true that most names meant something originally, even names that
seem made-up or recent are often revivals of old names. But that
doesn't mean they have to have a transparent meaning. The single
syllable name James doesn't readily mean anything, but according to
Wikipedia it is derived from the three-syllable name Iacomus (Latin)
from Iakobos (Greek) from Ya'akov (Hebrew). James is cognate to Hamish
and Santiago, among others, which don't readily seem to be related.
On 1/22/13, J. M. DeSantis <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 1/20/2013 8:33 PM, Rich Harrison wrote:
>>> Some of the language, to me, sounds very good to my ear, though, as
>>> usual with my conlangs, I find concentrating on the language first
>>> results in awkward names. Whereas, creating names first, makes the
>>> language difficult to build properly.
>> Do names have to mean something in your languages? Can't names just be
>> arbitrary, semi-random, pleasant sounding strings of phonemes?
>
> Well, everyone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the
> impression that all names, the world over do have some meaning behind
> them, even if from older forms, parent languages or borrowings from
> other languages. If there are exceptions to this rule, I'd certainly be
> willing to hear them.
>
> Oh, and I tried sending this message yesterday, but apparently I hit the
> limit of allotted posts for the day.
>
> Sincerely,
> J. M. DeSantis
> Writer - Illustrator
>
> Official Website: jmdesantis.com <http://www.jmdesantis.com>
>
--
(This is my signature.)
Messages in this topic (14)
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8a. Orthography congruous to pronunciation
Posted by: "A. da Mek" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 12:32 pm ((PST))
I wonder whether anyone ever considered the opposite approach to the reform:
not to write what is pronounced, but to pronounce what is written. In the
Age of the Internet, there are more people knowing written English than
spoken English.
Messages in this topic (4)
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8b. Re: Orthography congruous to pronunciation
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 12:45 pm ((PST))
A brilliant idea!
Surely "cafe" and "cake" should both be pronounced as two-syllable
words with the accent on the second vowel.
All that is needed for such a proposal to take effect is a simple,
consistent set of pronunciation rules for each vowel, consonant, vowel
cluster and consonant cluster, as well as rules for placing stress
consistently. That solves the entire problem instantly!
Well played.
--gary
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:32 PM, A. da Mek <[email protected]> wrote:
> I wonder whether anyone ever considered the opposite approach to the reform:
> not to write what is pronounced, but to pronounce what is written. In the
> Age of the Internet, there are more people knowing written English than
> spoken English.
Messages in this topic (4)
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8c. Re: Orthography congruous to pronunciation
Posted by: "James Kane" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 1:25 pm ((PST))
Well there already are spelling pronunciations that are incredibly
common throughout English. I know very few people who pronounce
'forehead' as 'forrid', for example. This is a big problem with words
that are often read but rarely heard; I pronounced epitome as three
syllables E-pi-tome with stress on the first syllable for a long time
and never equated it with the word e-PI-to-me that I would hear.
On 1/22/13, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> A brilliant idea!
>
> Surely "cafe" and "cake" should both be pronounced as two-syllable
> words with the accent on the second vowel.
>
> All that is needed for such a proposal to take effect is a simple,
> consistent set of pronunciation rules for each vowel, consonant, vowel
> cluster and consonant cluster, as well as rules for placing stress
> consistently. That solves the entire problem instantly!
>
> Well played.
>
> --gary
>
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:32 PM, A. da Mek <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I wonder whether anyone ever considered the opposite approach to the
>> reform:
>> not to write what is pronounced, but to pronounce what is written. In the
>> Age of the Internet, there are more people knowing written English than
>> spoken English.
>
--
(This is my signature.)
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
8d. Re: Orthography congruous to pronunciation
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 1:46 pm ((PST))
2013/1/21 A. da Mek <[email protected]>:
> I wonder whether anyone ever considered the opposite approach to the reform:
> not to write what is pronounced, but to pronounce what is written. In the
> Age of the Internet, there are more people knowing written English than
> spoken English.
The problem is "How to convince people to change how they speak?". It
sounds nearly impossible to me.
2013/1/21 James Kane <[email protected]>:
> Well there already are spelling pronunciations that are incredibly
> common throughout English. I know very few people who pronounce
> 'forehead' as 'forrid', for example. This is a big problem with words
> that are often read but rarely heard;
BTW, many people in Brazil don't believe when I say that the usual
pronunciation of "recipe" is not something like /rÉs'aip/. They can't
believe that it's /ËrÉsɪpi/. "Just like we would pronounce it in
Portuguese?! No way!!! You know nothing about English!" In fact, in
br.PT it would be pronounced as /rÉs'ipi/.
Messages in this topic (4)
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