Tim Saunders: Irish Lenition & Orthographic Depth
Elizabeth J. Pyatt
ejp10 at psu.edu
Wed Apr 16 16:14:33 UTC 2003
>From: Tim Saunders <tim.saunders at tinopolis.com>
>To: "'The Celtic Linguistics List'" <CELTLING at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
>Subject: RE: Antony Green: Irish Lenition & Orthographic Depth
>Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 16:19:24 +0100
This is all *very* reminiscent of some of the orthographical disputes in
Cornish. In Breton, it has sometimes been asserted by supporters of a given
orthograpy that the other represents a reprehsnsible political option
(French regionalism, fascism, etc.). One or two people have tried this out
with Cornish, but with no success as far as I can see. The arguments often
centre on an (undefined) 'authenticity', with appeals to an (also undefined)
'academic recognition'.
Has anybody ever done any systematic comparisons between linguistic reforms
of this character?
Tim
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Elizabeth J. Pyatt [mailto:ejp10 at psu.edu]
>Sent: 16 April 2003 14:16
>To: CELTLING at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>Subject: Antony Green: Irish Lenition & Orthographic Depth
>
>
>>Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 16:00:43 +0200
>>From: Antony Green <green at ling.uni-potsdam.de>
>
>>> So this "I don't/can't read the new spelling" has to be code
>>> for something else, I think.
>>
>I'm sure of it. I've observed this here with German, which has just
>gone through a spelling reform -- a very minor one compared to the
>Irish spelling reform. The new German spelling is easier to learn
>and has fewer peculiar exceptions than the old spelling, and is still
>easily readable to anyone who grew up with the old spelling.
>Nevertheless, I heard the most bitter, vitriolic statements from
>people when the new spelling was introduced. One linguistics
>professor I knew told me he refused to use the new system and would
>write papers in English before allowing anything he wrote to be
>printed in the new German orthography. One of the leading
>newspapers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, went back to the old
>orthography after a few months of the new, because it got such
>hate-filled letters from its readers. And people throughout Germany
>were denouncing the new orthography as destroying the language of
>Goethe and Schiller -- conveniently forgetting that Goethe and
>Schiller themselves used an even more old-fashioned orthography.
>It's very hard for linguists to get other people to understand that
>the written language isn't the language, it's just a representation
>of the language. I once tried to explain that to someone using the
>analogy of the Magritte painting of the pipe with the words "Ceci
>n'est pas une pipe" under it. I said, by the same token that
>Magritte can say of the painting of a pipe, "This is not a pipe"
>(it's just the representation of a pipe), I could point to those
>words he painted and say, "This is not French, it's just the
>representation of French." But orthography is what people get all
>worked up and emotional about.
>>
>>> This interests me because I suspect that this failure to teach
>>> the spelling system explicitly is part of their problems in
>>> making the language flourish. People are left unable to really
>>> read or write the language with confidence because the relationship
>>> of the spelling to its pronunciation remains a mystery to them.
>>
>>
>Part of the problem may be that the relationship of spelling to
>pronunciation in Irish really is quite mysterious. In many cases
>it's almost as bad as English. I think this is largely because Irish
>has a standardized spelling but no standardized pronunciation (all
>due respect to the Larchanuint). So if a learner is using, say, Cois
>Fhairrge pronunciation because he is using Micheal O'Siadhail's
>"Learning Irish" or because his teacher is from C.Fh., then he's
>confronted with such problems as the plural endings <-anna> and
><-acha> being pronounced [@Ni:] and [@xi:], or the prepositions <do>
>and <de> being pronounced [g@], or (if one is using purely standard
>spellings instead of O'Siadhail's Cois-Fhairrgized spellings) <dul>
>being pronounced [gel'] and <tuigim> being pronounced [t'ig'im'],
>etc. Or, to switch dialects to Donegal, I remember when I was at
>Oideas Gael, being totally baffled by the fact that <bain> was
>pronounced [bwin']. No wonder people think they have to learn the
>pronunciation of each word individually!
>
>Finally, to return to the original topic of this thread, Elizabeth
>brought up the problem of using buailte letters on the computer...
>someday if we're lucky, Unicode will be widely accepted as *the*
>format of preference for people interested in languages and
>linguistics. The largest Unicode fonts (e.g. Arial Unicode) include
>b, c, d, f, g, m, p, s, and t, with dots over them, both capital and
>lower case. Not in the old uncial letters, to be sure, but in a
>modern sans serif font. So maybe someday people who prefer the
>buailte letters will be able to use them even in e-mails!
>
>beirigí bua,
>Tonio Green
>
>
>To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility
>as a means of transportation.
> --Yann Martel, "Life of Pi"
>========================================================================
>Antony Dubach Green green at ling.uni-potsdam.de
>Universität Potsdam
>Institut für Linguistik Tel. +49 331 9772936
>Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, Haus 35
>14476 Golm Fax +49 331 9772087
>Germany
>
> http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~green/
>
>--
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D.
>Instructional Designer
>Education Technology Services, TLT
>Penn State University
>ejp10 at psu.edu, (814) 865-0805
>
>228A Computer Building
>University Park, PA 16801
>http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10
>http://tlt.psu.edu
>
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