Welsh is not as distant as Basque, Maltese, or Apache

[W Brewer]

Kate wrote:   What is the difference between orthography and spelling? I
thought they were the same thing.
WB:  As I look at James?s diagram, I see he scores French 1 for orthography
and 4 for spelling:  I.e. French uses a writing system (Roman letters)
very familiar to Anglophones; but French spelling is not efficient, in that
the sound-to-symbol relationships are messy. This is why my Larousse has to
have an IPA apparatus for each and every French word. (James was concerned
with EFL, BTW.)  Russian orthography gets a 4 (Cyrillic is a bit weird to
Americans: PECTOPAH is restaurant? [PECK-to-pah]); but its spelling is 2
(once I learned the Cyrillic letters, it was easy, but I could not always
predict stress, so it is not a 1). Chinese orthography consists of
thousands of separate abstract sinograms (vs. a modest handful for
English): this must put Chinese on the Outer Limits of my comfort zone;
Chinese spelling? I can relate this concept to the classifier+phonetic
composition of the vast majority of sinograms, wherein a part of a symbol
gives a really vague idea of the category and the so-called phonetic was an
Old Chinese pronunciation which was reminiscent of another sinogram. (It
was truly a Great Wall to my learning.) Now, I am sure that there are other
definitions of orthography (cf. Wikipedia article), but the above seems to
be what James had in mind. I used to have Daniels & Bright somewhere. Keep
in mind I am an aging amateur and these ADS guys are going to tear me to
shreds. (;^o)

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