Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
Meta-observation: For a bunch of English speakers (or maybe *because* we're a bunch of English speakers), I find many educated Indians' interest in phonetic literalness and comprehensiveness amusing. Of all the Indian language scripts that I have come across (admittedly not many) the Kannada script seems the least ambiguous and the most phonetic. Just because you're hung like a moose, doesn't mean you have to do porn! - Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle. Having the symbols doesn't necessarily mean they are actually used in practice. One example is how the generic nasalization consonant anusvara (ಅಂ) is used even when specific nasalizations like ಙ, ಞ etc are available. The anusvara is also used for both - soft nasalization sound (eg ಗಂಜಿ), and also as a hard-m sound as in ತಂಬಾಕು. Uday...it's getting more and more painful to go to the end of a thread on Gmail and tack on my additional comments. So...sorry...top-posting, even though I agree that one has to read from the bottom, upwards, to get the context of a thread! Yeah, it's been a while since I was in a mailing list as well. I hope I'm doing it right this time.
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Rajesh Mehar rajeshme...@gmail.com wrote: The little I know of the simplified Chinese character set is that it is a set of 2 dozen or so pictograms that are then combined with each other to get other pictograms for other sounds. Could anyone else elaborate or correct my notions? Your description is a bit of an oversimplification. The components of simplified Chinese (sometimes called radicals) are usually semantic classifiers, used in dictionary lookup, rather than phonetic. While some radicals are used to indicate sound mostly they are related to meaning albeit sometimes only loosely or fancifully. Those pictograms do not represent sounds, so much as words or parts of words. One of my favorite examples of why trying to represent Chinese phonetically is the poem Lion Eating Poet In the Stone Den http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den in which every word has the sound shi (though with varying tones). There are 189 official radicals in simplified chinese, quite a few more than 2 dozen! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xinhua_Zidian_radicals -- Charles
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
Thanks for the corrections Charles. Anybody knows enough about Arabic to explain? And maybe Meera can clarify the meaning of her original question?
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
You're welcome - and to fix a bad sentence above one of my favorite examples of why trying to represent Chinese phonetically is nearly impossible is the poem... which means it's also a great example of the disconnect between written and spoken Chinese languages. Famously in the past sometimes Northern and Southern Chinese would have to write notes in order to communicate - their spoken dialects were not mutually intelligible, but the written language was. -- Charles On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 10:08 PM, Rajesh Mehar rajeshme...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the corrections Charles. Anybody knows enough about Arabic to explain? And maybe Meera can clarify the meaning of her original question?
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
Tamil, like French, relies on fairly strict contextual rules for when the same symbol (example, க in Tamil, c in French or g in Italian) should be pronounced as k or g. So, there may not be a one-to-one symbol to sound mapping, but mapping within the prescribed context is always consistent. For example, the க (k) that appears after the nasal ங (ng), will always be pronounced as g. Many languages also adapted, rather than developed their own scripts. Brahmi, the precursor of almost all Indian scripts, was most likely adapted from an aramaic-like script. If you've ever, like me, wondered why k kh g gh/ c ch j jh are not similarish symbols, that's why. Different languages also use symbols differently. For example, the Malayalam script has a full repertoire of voiced, aspirate and unvoiced variants found in the Sanskrit varnamala. However, written Malayalam still tends to prefer Tamil-style contextual sound changes, especially for Dravidian words. Example, Pongal is written as, പൊങ്കൽ (not പൊംഗൽ), which strictly pronounced by symbol only, would be ponkal. Kannada also exhibits this same tendency to a lesser extent - I've come across a few examples, but nothing comes to mind immediately. Kingsley Joseph On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Charles Haynes charles.hay...@gmail.com wrote: You're welcome - and to fix a bad sentence above one of my favorite examples of why trying to represent Chinese phonetically is nearly impossible is the poem... which means it's also a great example of the disconnect between written and spoken Chinese languages. Famously in the past sometimes Northern and Southern Chinese would have to write notes in order to communicate - their spoken dialects were not mutually intelligible, but the written language was. -- Charles On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 10:08 PM, Rajesh Mehar rajeshme...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the corrections Charles. Anybody knows enough about Arabic to explain? And maybe Meera can clarify the meaning of her original question?
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Kingsley Jegan Joseph k...@kingsley2.com wrote: . Kannada also exhibits this same tendency to a lesser extent - I've come across a few examples, but nothing comes to mind immediately. Of all the Indian language scripts that I have come across (admittedly not many) the Kannada script seems the least ambiguous and the most phonetic. It even has the distinction between the short eh and long ey vowels, and the short ohh and the long oh vowels (see how difficult it is to write it in Roman script!), as well as the difference betwen the labial la sound and the more upper-palate La sound. I've always felt that if only zha, that wonderful consonant that Tamizih and Malayalam have, were included, it would be pretty completeoh, sorry, it needs to include the vowel that occurs in the words wary and carry. I actually do use, when writing lyrics of songs, my own version of Devanagari, with the short eh and oh and the long ey and Oh, and the zha and a (of carry) added on. I find that I am able to read the words perfectly as they are pronounct ed. But since I don't read or write French or other European languages, I don't know whether any vowels in such languages would need more coverage. This is not a scientific or learned analysis, only my observation Uday...it's getting more and more painful to go to the end of a thread on Gmail and tack on my additional comments. So...sorry...top-posting, even though I agree that one has to read from the bottom, upwards, to get the context of a thread!
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
Since this also applies to Arabic and Chinese, it’s probably an issue for a majority of literate humans. On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Meera meerak...@gmail.com wrote: Which are the languages which have a huge disconnect between written and spoken versions? Like Tamil/thamizh... And why do such languages evolve like that? -Meera -- - Tim Bray (If you’d like to send me a private message, see https://keybase.io/timbray)
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Meera meerak...@gmail.com wrote: Which are the languages which have a huge disconnect between written and spoken versions? Like Tamil/thamizh... And why do such languages evolve like that? The wikipedia article on Diglossia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia is a good starting place. Thaths -- Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? Carl: Nuthin'. Homer: D'oh! Carl: Unless you're crooked. Homer: Woo-hoo!
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
To let the thread drift just a little, I feel that written language must have evolved by writing down the sound. How did languages evolve non-phonetic scripts? On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 9:21 PM, Thaths tha...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Meera meerak...@gmail.com wrote: Which are the languages which have a huge disconnect between written and spoken versions? Like Tamil/thamizh... And why do such languages evolve like that? The wikipedia article on Diglossia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia is a good starting place. Thaths -- Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? Carl: Nuthin'. Homer: D'oh! Carl: Unless you're crooked. Homer: Woo-hoo!
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
Evidence suggests that written language evolved from business accounting records, and I suspect that other early applications were also formal in their flavor, for example religion and law. So capturing vernacular usages may not have been that big a deal. On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 9:03 AM, Deepa Mohan mohande...@gmail.com wrote: To let the thread drift just a little, I feel that written language must have evolved by writing down the sound. How did languages evolve non-phonetic scripts? On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 9:21 PM, Thaths tha...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Meera meerak...@gmail.com wrote: Which are the languages which have a huge disconnect between written and spoken versions? Like Tamil/thamizh... And why do such languages evolve like that? The wikipedia article on Diglossia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia is a good starting place. Thaths -- Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? Carl: Nuthin'. Homer: D'oh! Carl: Unless you're crooked. Homer: Woo-hoo! -- - Tim Bray (If you’d like to send me a private message, see https://keybase.io/timbray)
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
BTW, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diglossic_regions is fascinating. I think there is diglossia in Wodehouse's Jeeves books. Jeeves speaks the H dialect and Bertie the L. S. On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 8:51 AM, Thaths tha...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Meera meerak...@gmail.com wrote: Which are the languages which have a huge disconnect between written and spoken versions? Like Tamil/thamizh... And why do such languages evolve like that? The wikipedia article on Diglossia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia is a good starting place. Thaths -- Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? Carl: Nuthin'. Homer: D'oh! Carl: Unless you're crooked. Homer: Woo-hoo! -- Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? Carl: Nuthin'. Homer: D'oh! Carl: Unless you're crooked. Homer: Woo-hoo!
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
Is it the same for Arabic and Chinese as it is for Tamil? I'm not sure. I know for Tamil it is a severe paucity of written symbols for the various sounds in the language. So the same symbol is used to represent the sounds cha, sa, sha, and ja in the symbol set of the traditional script. More recently, symbols have been added to 'fill the gap' but they are clearly demarcated as 'outside sounds'. The little I know of the simplified Chinese character set is that it is a set of 2 dozen or so pictograms that are then combined with each other to get other pictograms for other sounds. I know nothing about the Arabic script. Could anyone else elaborate or correct my notions?
Re: [silk] Written vs. spoken version
Also, Sri Lankan Tamil sounds significantly closer to the written form (to me). Was it always spoken that way? On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 11:27 PM, Rajesh Mehar rajeshme...@gmail.com wrote: Is it the same for Arabic and Chinese as it is for Tamil? I'm not sure. I know for Tamil it is a severe paucity of written symbols for the various sounds in the language. So the same symbol is used to represent the sounds cha, sa, sha, and ja in the symbol set of the traditional script. More recently, symbols have been added to 'fill the gap' but they are clearly demarcated as 'outside sounds'. The little I know of the simplified Chinese character set is that it is a set of 2 dozen or so pictograms that are then combined with each other to get other pictograms for other sounds. I know nothing about the Arabic script. Could anyone else elaborate or correct my notions?
