LL-L "Orthography" 2008.12.28 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

===========================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 28 December 2008 - Volume 03
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please set the encoding mode to Unicode (UTF-8).
If viewing this in a web browser, please click on
the html toggle at the bottom of the archived page
and switch your browser's character encoding to Unicode.
===========================================


From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2008.12.26 (02) [E]

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

Hi, Paul!

"Christ stood by the bier".

Try spelling that one phonetically!


Phonetic? That would depend on the dialect; e.g.

IPA: kraɪst ˌstʊdætðə ˈbɪɚ
SAMPA: kraIst %stUd{dD@ "bI@`

IPA: kɻaɪst ˌstʊdætðə ˈbiːɻ
SAMPA: kr\`aIst %stUd{dD@ "bir\`

*Kraist stud at ðə bir.*
or you could make it more "historical" and without "special" characters:
*Kriist stud at dhe bir.*
or with "special" characters:
*Krīst stŭd at ðĕ bir.*



Hi Ron,   My point, admittedly somewhat tongue-in-cheek, was what beer was
he standing by?   And my reference to Irish and French was to question why
English gets singled out for its "irrational" spelling when there are far
worse culprits out there? Those of us who have managed to learn to read and
write English aren't some sort of geniuses; we just did it. If the World is
truly desperate for an international language with a completely regular
grammar and spelling, learn Esperanto.

Paul


---------

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

Hey, Paul, mi mayt!

How about this: we could turn this into a positive by confirming that we *
are* geniuses and letting the world wonder what we could have accomplished
with the time we spent on memorizing the spelling of practically each and
every word. ;-)

Besides, I personally do not single out English for "irrational" spelling.
It has company: Tibetan and (traditionally written) Mongolian.

These spelling systems are not "irrational" at all. They are "the most
extreme cases of historical spelling." Most spelling systems are at least
somewhat historical. And that's the main problem with sound-based written
representation. Phonologies constantly change, and thus spelling would have
to be reformed periodically, even if allowance for dialectical variations
are made. But, while retaining historical elements, most of them (such as
your examples Irish and French) have predominantly predictable spelling
because the *systems* remain mostly intact.

A system such as the Chinese one avoids all this, since it is quite
independent of sound (at least nowadays). But the price you pay for this is
that you have to learn thousands of characters, a pretty large percentage of
which are pretty complex. So it pretty much boils down to the same thing ...
except that a system such as the Chinese one could, at least in theory, be
used for all languages of the world. (Not that I would advocate that, mind
you.)

Cheerio!

Reinhard/Ron
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20081228/dceccc58/attachment.htm>