LL-L "Orthography" 2003.09.22 (07) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 22.SEP.2003 (07) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: botas <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: othogrprahy


hree is an itnreetsnig pciee of ifno
for erevy lngiust:

>Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
>waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
>frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses
>and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not
>raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
>
>Initsereg!!

gerenigts to all
Mike Wintzer

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography

Uilleam wrote:

"I've been following this discussion on orthography with interest. But I
have a question for you all: If, right now, all the orthographies for all
the languages in the world suddenly became exact in representation of
sounds, wouldn't it soon enough (that is, in a few decades or so) become
obsolete, and need a new orthography? I do not offer a solution, just a
question."

This is a very interesting question, and quite simply I think the answer is
no! Written norms of language seem to have something of a stabilizing
influence on the languages they represent. A few days ago Ron mentioned the
glottal stop in Finnish that is not represented at all in the Orthography
and the fact that in such a highly literary society its absence in the
writing was leading to its disappearance in the spoken dialects. Any
Orthography, actually, is by its very nature an artificial system, because
you either have to choose the dialect of a single place (and of a single
social group living there), or you have to create a new dialect from a whole
gamut of other dialects. When William Caxton introduced printing to England
in the second half of the 15th century, he more or less chose the dialect of
London as his standard, a dialect that would have been radically divergent
from the spoken language in so many other parts of the country.

Not long after the English Orthography had become more or less standardized
the language went through a series of changes that rendered the spelling
archaic. There was the Great Vowel Shift, whereby all 7 vowels became
higher, and two became diphthongs; <k> and <g> before nasals were dropped
(as in <knee>, <gnash>); Middle English <u> split further into two vowels,
according to whether it followed a labial or not; and <r> more or less
disappeared after vowels. Now some of these changes still have not occurred
in all modern dialects of English (though I don't know any dialect that
pronounces <knee> with an initial /k-/ !), but the Orthography still serves
speakers of all dialects without too many problems.

It might be useful in trying to answer your question to look to a language
that changed its alphabet recently: Turkish. In some ways I am hesitant to
use Turkish as an example, because in my opinion the Turkish languages have
desplayed a remarkable degree of conservatism (with a few notable
exceptions), and have remained fairly inert phonologically down the
centuries. The Turkish of Turkey, however, is more prone to change than some
other Turkic tongues, so perhaps it may be instructive to us. Turkish was
formerly called Ottoman and was written in the Perso-Arabic script, but in
1928 the leader Kemal Atatürk proclaimed that Arabic script was forbidden
and that henceforth Turkish should be written in a new script, a modified
form of the Latin alphabet. Very few alterations have been made to this
system since it was introduced, and over seventy years later it faithfully
represents spoken Turkish, despite the fact that the pronunciation, at least
in urban ! centres such as Istanbul, appears to be changing.

Another example that springs to mind is that of Romanian.At one time
Romanian was written in a version of the Cyrillic alphabet, but in 1859 a
modified version of the Latin alphabet was introduced. I think the
originators of the system must have been Classical scholars and wanted to
stress the fact that Romanian was decended from Latin, because they included
many unnecessary diacritics and historical forms. In 1881, however, the
Orthography was reformed again, and with the exception of one further minor
alteration, the system used then remains intact and efficient today. The
'minor alteration' I referred to was probably a backward step: previously
circumflex < Â > was only used in the word < România > and derivatives from
it, but in 1993 it was reintroduced in words such as < câmp > (field). Since
 is pronounced the same as Î (more or less = Russian central i [ Ы! ; ],
this seems to be a backward step initiated only in an attempt to make the
Latin origin of certain words more transparent. There are other
inconsisitencies too, such as the inclusion of mute e's and i's that do
however change the sound of the consonants preceding them. On the whole
theough, the Romanian Orthography has served its people well for over a
century, and there is no real necessity for any major overhall of the
system.

Actually, I think the problem with English Orthography is its internal
chaos. To make things worse 400 of our most common words are spelled
eccentrically! Many languages have more internally consistent systems that
work very well despite the fact that their phonetic systems have changed
from what they were when their orthographies were codified. If anyone ever
takes the bull by the horns and seriously creates an officially-backed
orthographic reform of English he will have to base it on an artificially
unified phonology that pays homage to the widely divergent local standards
of the anglophone world.If he failed to do this, he would be paving the road
towards the creation of widely divergent standards (in the UK and the US for
instance) that would easily develop into separate languages.

Regards,

John
Preston, UK.

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Orthography

John (above):

> ... the Turkish languages ...

TurkiC languages

"Turkish" is only for Turkish (of Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, Germany, etc.).
The group of languages is "Turkic."  Sorry to come across as even more
pedantic than usual.

> The Turkish of Turkey, however, is more prone to change than some other
Turkic tongues, ...

How so?  I wasn't aware of this.  All Modern Turkic languages have some very
innovative features, and virtually each one has conservative features of its
own, so that reconstructions (beyond knowledge from ancient documents)
requires a comparative approach.  Turkish is particularly innovative
(regularizing) with regard to morphology, though, yes, it is fairly
conservative phonologically.  However, as in most Turkic languages, the
phonology has been "disturbed" by new phonemes and by apparent vowel harmony
violation in the wake of foreign influences (mostly Iranian, Arabic, French,
English and in Germany also German).  One of the common flaws of Turkic
orthographies, including new or recently reformed ones (e.g., for Uzbek,
Uyghur, Turkmen), is non-distinction of phonemic vowel length distinction.

> Actually, I think the problem with English Orthography is its internal
chaos. To make
> things worse 400 of our most common words are spelled eccentrically!

Isn't this due to being a highly historic system?  Or are these words
spelled in a truly excentric, unpredictable way?

As I mentioned before, as far as degree of "historicalness" is concerned,
English ranks up there with traditional (non-Cyrillic) Mongiolian and
Tibetan.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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