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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 - 22 December 2008 - Volume 10<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);">Sandy Fleming</span></span></span><span class="hccdpe"> </span><span class="ldacoc"><<a href="mailto:sandy@scotstext.org">sandy@scotstext.org</a>></span><br>
Subject: <span class="hccdpe">LL-L "Orthography" 2008.12.22 (08) [E]</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">> From:
R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>><br>
> Subject: Orthography<br>
></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">> If ordinary spelling does not fully indicate it,
pronunciation ought<br>
> to be shown in some other way in reference and teaching material.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">I remember
owning a Dutch-English English-Dutch dictionary where the<br>
English-Dutch half gave the English pronunciations but the Dutch-English<br>
half didn't give the Dutch pronunciations. Perhaps one of the main<br>
reasons for me skipping Dutch at a time when I was trying to learn as<br>
many languages as possible!<br>
<br>
I agree that there are languages where a pronouncing dictionary isn't<br>
absolutely necessary (Italian and Welsh spring to mind), but Dutch isn't<br>
one of them!<br>
<br>
----------<br>
<br>
From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>>
<br>
Subject: Orthography<br>
<br>
Italian and Welsh orthographies are pretty close to be phonemically based, but
then have flaws also.<br>
<br>
Welsh orthography does not distinguish long and short "y" (the long
version being written with a circumflex in better older dictionaries and
textbooks).<br>
<br>
In Italian, unpredictable stress is inconsistently marked, being unmarked
particularly often in proper names (e.g. <i>Bartoli</i> should be <i>Bártoli</i>).
Except in word-final position (where they are written <i>é</i> vs <i>è</i> and <i>ó</i>
vs <i>ò</i>) tense [e] and [o] are not distinguished from their lax
counterparts [</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: "MS Mincho";">ɛ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">] and [</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: "MS Mincho";">ɔ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">] respectively, phonemic differences that occur only in stressed
syllables.<br>
<br>
Russian stress assignment, which is unpredictable, has important ramifications
in that unstressed syllables undergo more vowel reduction the farther away they
are from the stressed syllable, which in the case of /o/ involves unrounding.
This can make words sound very different, often unrecognizable to native
speakers, if the wrong syllable is stressed. This is why it is really important
that the learner be given stress assignment information, and the native speaker
too in cases of newly learned words and names. I would expect to find it in all
reference and teaching material and am therefore pleased that in this regard
the Russian team plays an exemplary role in the Wikipedia family with its
predominance of sloppiness when it comes to orthography and phonology. <br>
<br>
Unfortunately, this sort of sloppiness predominates among all sorts of on-line
dictionaries as well. Try to find a Hebrew or Arabic dictionary with vowel
diacritics, for instance! If I as a non-native speaker look for Hebrew or
Arabic words in dictionaries I expect to find them spelled with vowel
diacritics. How else would I know how to pronounce them? Well, I guess I could
go to printed dictionaries to find out what the vowels of found words are. But
what good is the on-line dictionary then except for native speakers that know a
given word already? In that case I may as well go straight to printed
dictionaries, most of which do provide vowel diacritics. Online you can even find
Polynesian language dictionaries without vowel length diacritics, in
languages in which use of these diacritics is mandatory! ("I don't know how to type those vowel letters with macrons. Ah, well ... I s'pose I'll just ignore them then ... never mind that I'm presenting a dictionary.")<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Reinhard/Ron<span class="apple-style-span"></span></span></p>