LL-L: "Orthography" LOWLANDS-L, 06.AUG.2000 (02) [E]

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 06.AUG.2000 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Orthography

There is a little puzzle which asks: "What English word is pronounced
differently when it is written with a capital letter?" The usual answer
given is "Job", the biblical inventor of cigarette papers. But it occurred
to me that there is an interesting double example: Maria/maria and
Mare/mare. "Mare". of course, is used in the names of "seas" on the Moon
and
Mars, which collectively are "maria". I wondered if there might be examples

in other Lowland languages, but I suppose that in the case of orthographies

which use capital letters for all nouns the question would have to be asked

differently.

Have I just used "orthographies" in Ron's sense, extending it from
"spelling" to mean the whole way a language is written?

May I sneak in a question about German? This is often thought of as a
language with a highly phonetic orthography: most words can be pronounced
according to fixed rules, though there are ambiguities in writing down a
word (ä/e, äu/eu, etc). A word which I find difficult is "hübsch".
According
to my Langenscheidt dictionary it is pronounced "hYpsh" but when I have
pronounced it like that I have been told that it is correctly  pronounced
as
if spelt "höbsch". I have recently discovered that this is the way Martin
Luther spelt it. So have I been unfortunate in meeting too many people from

Mitteldeutschland or is this a case where the spelling does not match the
standard pronunciation?

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Orthography

John, you wrote about German above:

> A word which I find difficult is "hübsch". According
> to my Langenscheidt dictionary it is pronounced "hYpsh" but when I have
> pronounced it like that I have been told that it is correctly  pronounced
as
> if spelt "höbsch".

It most definitely is not, not in Standard German and not in any dialect I
am aware of.  The only possibility I can think of is a foreign "ccent,"
especially a Dutch "accent."  Dutch, and apparently also some of the Low
Saxon dialects of the Netherlands, do not have the sound [Y] (i.e., short
/ü/), and what in Dutch is written as short _u_ is pronounced close to what
in German and most Low Saxon (Low German) dialects of Germany is the short
/ö/.  Thus, the vowel in Dutch _grut_ is lower than the vowel in German
_Grütze_ and Low Saxon (Low German) _Grütt_.  If someone from Germany hears
the Dutch word pronounced without reading it, he/she would want to write it
_Chrött_.

Your question applies to most German and Low Saxon (Low German) dialects of
Germany (so you are safe).  English does not have either sound, and that
may be why it is hard for you to distinguish them.  They are two different
creatures to a native speaker.  The short /ü/ (written as a small capital
"y" in the IPA system) is higher than short /ö/ (written as digraph "oe" in
IPA).  They are the rounded equivalents of short /i/ (as in English _pit_)
and short /e/ (as in English _pet_), and they are the frontal equivalents
of short /u/ (as in English _put_) and short /o/ (as in English _pot_):

Short vowels:
i       ü               u
e      ö               o
                 a

Northern Low Saxon (Germany):
in              Fründ                funnen
denn        Pöppel              Hoff
                                Mann
(in, friend, found, then, poplar, yard, man)

Standard German:
in              hübsch             Kunde
denn        Körbe                Koffer
                               Mann
(in, prretty, customer, then, baskets, suitcase, man)

Pronunciation in Northern Low Saxon (Low German) of Germany:

Mid-level vowel dialects:
If you say Southern British English _pot_ you get the pronunciation of
_Pott_ 'pot'.  If you round your lips while saying the vowel in _pet_ (or
front the vowel in _pot_) you get the pronunciation of _Pött_ 'pots'.

High-level vowel dialects:
If you say Southern British English _put_ you get the pronunciation of
_Putt_ 'pot'.  If you round your lips while saying the vowel in _pit_ (or
front the vweol in _put_) you get the pronunciation of _Pütt_ 'pots'.

These short vowels are the same as those represented as /ö/ and /ü/
respectively in Standard German, as in _können_ 'to be able' and _kündigen_
'to resign' respectively.

I hope this helped.

Regards,
Rreinhard/Ron

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