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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">===========================================<br>
L O W L A N D S - L - 15 December 2008 - Volume 05<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
From: <span class="ep8xu"><span><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Paul Finlow-Bates</span></span></span><span class="hccdpe">
</span><span class="ldacoc"><<a href="mailto:wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk">wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span><br>
Subject: <span class="hccdpe">LL-L "Orthography" 2008.12.17 (01) [E]</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">You'd also
have to have spellings with medial and terminal "r"s for Scots and
Americans, and many southwest English, and different versions without that
sound for most other British, Australians and New Zealanders.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Personally
I like relicts like "night" and "light" (and for some
Scots, they're not relics at all). These words link us to our history and
to other Germanic languages. It's much easier to see the connection
between "dogter" and "daughter" than with something like
"doata".</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">We saw the
situation in China,
where the revised characters rendered many older books almost unreadable
to many new learners. Of course, when it was introduced the Chinese Communist
Party was keen to expunge the "Four Olds", so that didn't matter, but
I wouldn't want to see a similar thing in English.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">As for
making it easier for foreigners to learn, I haven't noticed the Greeks, Thais
or Russians bending over backwards to make their writing more accessible
to me, nor should they. The Germans have made revisions to what I always
thought was a pretty logical system anyway, but in any case they did it for
their benefit, not mine.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">I suspect a
lot of this difficulty with learning is a smokescreen for other difficulties;
are we going to change our irregular verbs and plurals too? (I gived the
mans some sheeps and gooses).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Nobody is
holding a gun to the world community's head to speak English. OK, we sort of
did once, and our historical heirs seem keen to keep up the tradition, but the
rest of the world either threw us out or we left. The world is free to adopt
Klingon as the international language if they want to. And I've no idea
how you spell that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Paul </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">You'd also
have to have spellings with medial and terminal "r"s for Scots and
Americans, and many southwest English, and different versions without that
sound for most other British, Australians and New Zealanders.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Personally
I like relicts like "night" and "light" (and for some
Scots, they're not relics at all). These words link us to our history and
to other Germanic languages. It's much easier to see the connection
between "dogter" and "daughter" than with something like
"doata".</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">We saw the
situation in China,
where the revised characters rendered many older books almost unreadable
to many new learners. Of course, when it was introduced the Chinese Communist
Party was keen to expunge the "Four Olds", so that didn't matter, but
I wouldn't want to see a similar thing in English.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">As for
making it easier for foreigners to learn, I haven't noticed the Greeks, Thais
or Russians bending over backwards to make their writing more accessible
to me, nor should they. The Germans have made revisions to what I always
thought was a pretty logical system anyway, but in any case they did it for
their benefit, not mine.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">I suspect a
lot of this difficulty with learning is a smokescreen for other difficulties;
are we going to change our irregular verbs and plurals too? (I gived the
mans some sheeps and gooses).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Nobody is
holding a gun to the world community's head to speak English. OK, we sort of
did once, and our historical heirs seem keen to keep up the tradition, but the
rest of the world either threw us out or we left. The world is free to adopt
Klingon as the international language if they want to. And I've no idea
how you spell that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Paul<br>
<br>
----------<br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">From: R. F.
Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>>
<br>
Subject: Orthography<br>
<br>
Hi, Paul!<br>
<br>
Not to detract or distract from your argument, let me just add that Greek
orthography was in fact officially reformed in 1982. A single accent sign is
now being used in place of the old polytonic diacritics.<br>
<br>
Please read here: <br>
<a href="http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/ellinika-info.php">http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/ellinika-info.php</a><br>
<br>
Please compare the Wren text versions:<br>
<br>
Monotonic (reformed) as originally supplied:<br>
<a href="http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/ellinika.php">http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/ellinika.php</a><br>
<br>
Polytonic as "reconstructed" by yours truly:<br>
<a href="http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/ellinika2-utf.php">http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/ellinika2-utf.php</a><br>
<a href="http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/ellinika2.php">http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/ellinika2.php</a><br>
<br>
However, reform did not include graphemic simplification of homophones, such as <i>η</i>, <i>ι</i>, <i>υ</i>,
<i>ει</i>, <i>οι</i> and <i>υι</i> now being pronounced [i], <i>ε</i> and <i>αι</i> now being pronounced [ε] ([E]),
and <i>ο</i> and <i>ω</i> now being pronounced [</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">ɔ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">] ([O]).<br>
<br>
An argument in favor of reforming is that Greek lost tonality and developed a
single stress system at the latest by the early Christian era (1st century CE, within the
Hellenistic era: 300 BCE – 300 CE), and tonal diacritics became
meaningless and were considered an educational burden by many. There is now a
movement advocating reinstatement of tonal diacritics, the main argument being
that they are a part of the heritage and link today's Greek with earlier forms.
An argument against this is that the absence of tonal diacritics does not change
spelling to the degree of making older spelling illegible, and those who
wish to write earlier forms of Greek have plenty of specialist resources to learn
to do so.<br>
<br>
This latter argument is also being used with regard to simplified versus
traditional characters for Chinese, except that many (though not most) traditional
characters are unrecognizable to those that learned only simplified characters,
and <i>vice versa</i>. However, nowadays many Mainland Chinese, certainly better
educated ones, teach themselves to read or even write traditional characters (especially China's numerous calligraphers), and traditional
characters are more and more featured in publications as if for decorative
purposes. All this seems to indicate that there is widespread private regret
about simplification, though official opposition would be problematic for
obvious reasons. In my Chinese language program in Australia we had to master both
systems simultaneously. Many people, including Chinese, find this very rigorous
when I tell them this. Yes, we did have to work extraordinarily hard and a good
number of students fell by the wayside. But it was certainly possible, and I am glad that I had this opportunity
that now turns out to have been a rare one. I feel equally "at home" in both
systems.<br>
<br>
In the case of Mongolian, the traditional vertical (Uyghur) script was replaced
with a Cyrillic-based systems with the beginning of the communist era in Mongolia and Kalmykia, not in Southern ("Inner")
Mongolia
(which is under Chinese rule). Two or three generations did not learn the old
system; only specialists did. So the link with pre-communist-era literature has
been broken for the average person. Mongolia is now trying to
reintroduce the old system, but this proves to be problematic because the spelling
is based on the Mongolian language of the 12<sup>th</sup> and 13<sup>th</sup> centuries.
It is excellent as an inter-dialectical system, since pretty much all modern
dialects are derived from that earlier form. But it takes a lot of studying,
especially for writing purposes. In other words, the spelling of each and every
word has to be learned, which requires life-long learning for most people. It
shares this with the Tibetan and English systems.<br>
<br>
The inter-variety utility of spelling systems oughtn't be undervalued. It
certainly is an option and may be found preferable to a system that represents
only a "high" dialect. This is not to say that only older systems can be used
inter-dialectically. Theoretically speaking, new systems can be devised or
older systems can be reformed for such a purpose. But such proposals tend to be
rejected and older systems tend to be preferred for various reasons, including
emotionally based ones.<br>
<br>
Personally, I don't much care what systems are used as long as they have at
least some consistency and internal integrity. I do have a problem with
imposing a system onto a language (typically a minority language) from another
language (typically a power language) if such a system is not suitable for the
recipient language, in other words, has not be adapted to the recipient
language to properly represent its native structure. And there is the
additional symbolic aspect of treating minority languages as though they were dialects
or appendages of the respective power languages.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Reinhard/Ron</span></p>