2014-05-12 23:58 GMT+02:00 Richard Wordingham < [email protected]>:
> In mainland SE Asia the distinction is made. The independent vowel > whose vowel is the implicit vowel has been reinterpreted as the > consonant for a glottal stop, and is combined with the dependent > vowels. Several scripts, e.g. Tibetan and Thai, have largely done away > with the independent vowels. > Also Arabic with Alef in many uses. So has also Greek in an ancient time. And this goes further than the simple matres lectionis for "half-vowels" that still ahve remains in the Latin script (in the orthographic systems due to the phonology and assimilation of regional "accents" variations and their evolution). In fact it is in the alphabets (rather then abjads and abugidas) that the distinctions between consonnants and vowels (which are still clear in the phonetics) has become the most fuzzy: this is a large departure between the spoken language and the written one assimilating more and more local or historic phonetic variations and evolutions Up to extreme points like in English whose orthography is very far from the spoken language and obeys absolutely no rule: lots of exceptions, lots of mute letters, it is completely counterintuitive, only partly ompnsated by the (over?) simplification of grammatical rules and the syntax (and creating many interpretation ambiguities in written texts whose understanding require mich more contetual analysis; it is a fact that many English texts are difficult to translate due to these frequent multiple interpretations, non marking the tense of verbs, and this has become even worse with some arbitrary conventions in the written text like capitalization, and then these have also contaminated the spoken language). Even the basic SVO syntax is threatened in English by the SSS model: if there was not a few auxiliary verbs kept, English would be now just a justaposition of nouns, with a syntax reduced so much that it's difficult to distinguish a verb, a noun, and basic verb modes like infinitive and imperative, and the intended target of imperatives. Pronouns are also disappearing. This is only compensated by a large increase of the vocabulary (with lots of strange borrows from other languages, frequently with very irregular orthography. And it is probably the base for the promotion of "Simple English" which could become a new language far from the English we read today that could become a et of related languages for specialists in their own domain. More or less the world has learnt to work with written English, but has difficulties (including within the Englosphere) with the spoken language. But at the same time, native English speakers write less and depend more on the spoken language. Children no longer use a pen, they use a computer, and read less : they look at videos or listen audio records in their more local community. With the huge separation between the oral and written language, a new written form appears and grows fast in popular usage (but these texts are more difficult to parse and understand by others living or working in different contexts). Could English become tomorrow like Church Latin? Today when I read at a few short news headlines in English, it's hard to see what the article really speaks about, or what is the real intent.
_______________________________________________ Unicode mailing list [email protected] http://unicode.org/mailman/listinfo/unicode
