LL-L "Orthography" 2003.09.22 (05) [E/S]

[Lowlands-L]

======================================================================
L O W L A N D S - L * 22.SEP.2003 (05) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
http://www.lowlands-l.net * lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
Rules & Guidelines: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules
Posting Address: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org
Server Manual: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html
Archives: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8) [Please switch your view mode to it.]
=======================================================================
You have received this because you have been subscribed upon request.
To unsubscribe, please send the command "signoff lowlands-l" as message
text from the same account to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or
sign off at http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================
A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
=======================================================================

From: Holger Weigelt <platt at holger-weigelt.de>
Subject: "Orthography"

> From: Friedrich-Wilhelm Neumann <Fieteding at gmx.net>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2003.09.22 (01) [E]
>
> Ron,
>
> You wrote:
>
>
> > From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Orthography
>
> > What is
> > interesting about this is that due to orthographic omission this phoneme
> > is
> > in the process of fading away, which illustrates the power of
orthography
> > on
> > the development of a language in a highly literate society.  This can
also
> > be said about Lowlands Saxon "superlength"/"dragging tone," which is
> > ignored
> > in most orthographies and is consequently moribund.
>
> Very interesting, all Your discussions.
>
> But- regarding Your last (concerning "superlength"/"dragging tone")
> statement: could You perhaps be so kind and try to give some examples,
> please? To make it visible even for laymen like me?
>
> Thanks, and best Regards
>
> Fiete.
> (Friedrich W. Neumann)

Hello Fiete, hello Ron and hello to all the others, too !
About this "superlength" we already had a discussion recently.
It is a very striking feature in Eastern Friesland Low Saxon where it has
several functions for the grammatical structure.
For this reason I gave it a symbol of it's own in the alternative
orthography I proposed for EFLS.
If the letter has no other diacritic normal length is marked by a macron
(stroke above the vowel-letter) and the extra-length is marked by an accent
circonflexe.
Examples:  kât = cat, lāgen = laugh; hūs = house, mūs = mouse, kûl = hole,
tûn = garden; rīk = rich, tîk = beetle etc.
If the letter already carries a diacritic normal length is marked by
doubling and extra-length by adding an -e.
Examples: löögen = a lie, lööew = lion; lüü = people, süüekd = illness etc.
Besides these there are sound-pairs like e/äe; i/ie; o/oe; u/ue; ö/öe; ü/üe
With these the first is a short vowel, the second a long in the function of
an overlengthened one (these sounds have no German equivalent).
[E / E:@; I / I:@; O / O:@; U / U:@; œ / œ:@; Y / Y:@]
Due to position and grammatical function the writing of a word can change in
the way as I show it in the following example:
dat hūs is rōd = the house is red
dat rôd hūs = the red house
As I told You this is very characteristic for EFLS but nevertheless in
recent times speakers more and more tend to forget to distinguish between
these differing sounds according to what Ron said. On the other hand they
recover it when reading if it is represented in the orthography.
>
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Orthography
.....
> Fiete (above):
>
> > But- regarding Your last (concerning "superlength"/"dragging tone")
> statement: could
> > You perhaps be so kind and try to give some examples, please? To make it
> visible
> > even for laymen like me?
>
> I didn't include a description because I have given one many times on this
> list, at least three times during your tenure, and the last one just a few
> weeks ago.  I didn't want to bore people with yet another description.
> However, since you specifically requested it, let me quote myself:
>
> > L O W L A N D S - L * 23.NOV.1999 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
> > (4) Many, mostly North Saxon, dialects have dropped (or are still
actively
> > dropping) final, unstressed _-e_ ([e] ~ [@]).  In such cases, an
> underlyingly
> > voiced consonant does not undergo the usual final devoicing, i.e.,
remains
> > voiced, and the preceding vowel is lengthened. (in other words, the
final
> > devoicing rule applies before the -e deletion rule.)  This results in a
> long
> > monophthong becoming extra long (e.g., _Huus_ [hu:s] 'house' > umlauted
> _Hüse_ >
> > _Hüüs'_ [hy:.z] 'houses') and the first segment of a diphthong becoming
> somewhat
> > lengthened (e.g., _Keese_ > _Kees'_ [khE.Iz] 'cheese') , all resulting
in
> 2.5
> > length.  This feature is known as _Schleifton_ ('drawl tone') or
> _Überlänge_
> > ('superlength') among German linguists.
>
> > L O W L A N D S - L * 19.NOV.2000 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
> > And the next step seems to be deletion.  Evidence of this is found in
both
> > Low Saxon/Low German and Dutch.  In the former it happens in certain
> > dialects intervocalically or where there is superlength before /d/;
e.g.,
> > 'poeple', 'folks': Old Saxon _liudi_ > Modern Low Saxon _Lüde_ ['ly:de]
~
> > _Lüe_ ['ly:(j)e]  ~ _löe_ [l{oe}(j)@] ~ _Lüüd'_ [ly:.d] ~ _Lü_ [ly:.];
cf.
> > Standard Dutch _lui_.
>
> > L O W L A N D S - L * 07.AUG.2003 (06) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
> > Now, 'row' (_rîğ_ = _reyg'_) ought to be seen as lengthened by the
> deletion
> > of /-e/.  By itself, the word (_reyge_ >) _reyg'_ is pronounced with a
> long
> > diphthong (3 beats, _reyge_ /reige/ > _reyg'_ /reeig/), because the
> deleted
> > short /-e/ left behind one beat, and this beat goes to the remaining
> vowel,
> > in this case to the main vowel of the diphthong.  If there were a
> > monophthong long vowel (which comes with 2 beats), then this vowel would
> > also get an extra beat, e.g., _brüyde_ /brüüde/ > _brüyd'_ /brüüüd/
> > [bry:.(d)] 'brides' (singular _bruud_ [bru:t]).  If you spell the latter
> > <Brüüd> instead of <Brüüd'> -- which unfortunately now happens more
often
> > than not -- then the learner would logically but wrongly pronounce it
> > [bry:t], thus with a long vowel and with final devoicing, as though it
> were
> > phonemically */brüüd/.
> >
> > This extra-length in vowels and diphthongs is referred to as
_Schleifton_
> in
> > German terminology, thus cognate of Dutch _sleeptoon_, "dragging tone."
> Why
> > "tone" in Northern Saxon?  I'm not sure.  But clearly there appears to
be
> a
> > connection between it and tonality in Limburgish.
> >
I don't know why it is called "tone" in literature but I watched this in
EFLS:
the extra-long vowels are spoken either like a rising long vowel followed by
a short falling vowel (sometimes weakened to Schwa) or like a long vowel on
a higher pitch and a following short one on lower pitch what really can be
regarded as "tone".
In stressed position or emphasized speach both components are divided by a
short suspending intermission.

> > While it is clear the extra-length is the output of a phonological rule,
I
> > am not sure if one ought to see it as a still productive rule or as a
> > historical rule.  I tend to lean toward the former.
> >
> > However, it is very important to distinguish phonemic length from
> > phonological lengthening.  In LS, pretty much in all dialects, vowels
are
> > lengthened before liquids (/r/, /l/, /n/, /m/, /N/).  English has this
> too,
> > before /l/, as in "ball" and "cold".)  This is a case of secondary
length,
> > of lengthing, not phonemic length; e.g., /bal/ _bal_ [ba.l] 'ball',
/hart/
> > _hart_ [ha:t] (= [ha..t]) 'heart', /arm/ [?a:m] (= [?a..m]) 'arm',
/man/
> > _man_ [ma.n] 'man', /dam/ _kam_ [k_ha.m] 'comb', /draN/ _drang_ [dra.N]
> > 'tight', /kold/ _kold_ [k_ho.lt] 'cold'.  Compare this with
non-lengthened
> > short vowels; e.g., /blad/ _blad_ [blat] 'blade', 'leaf', /kat/ _kat_
> > [k_hat] 'cat', /gras/ _gras_ [gras] 'grass'.  Also, compare it with
> > phonemically long vowels; e.g., /aal/ _aal_ [?Q:l] 'eel', /baart/
_baart/
> > [bQ:3`t] 'beard', /maand/ _maand_ [mQ:nt] (~ [mQ:.nt]) 'moon', 'month',
> and
> > with extra-length (/daame/ >) /daaam/ [dQ:.m] 'lady', (/neeze/ >)
/neeez/
> > _nees'_ [ne:.z] (not *[ne:s]) 'nose'.
>
> Another commonly occurring Lowlands Saxon orthographic flaw (in ordinary,
> non-scientific orthography) is non-distinction of long monophthongs (/ee/,
> /öö/, /oo/) from diphthongs (/ei/, /öü/, /ou/ respectively), all written
as
> <ee>, <öö> and <oo> (or, even worse, with German _Dehnungs-H_: <eh>, <öh>,
> <oh>).  This happens because most German-based orthographies for this
> language ignore diphthongs that are unknown to Standard German and write
> them as though they were monophthongs, hence for example <beden> ['be:d=n]
> 'to request', 'to pray' vs <beden> ['beId=n] (with an English <ay> sound
in
> most dialects) 'to offer', <drö(h)nen> [drø:n:] 'to roar' vs <drömen>
> [drø.Im:] 'to dream', and <Doom> [do:m] 'cathedral', 'market' vs <Doon>
> [do.Un] 'doing', 'deed'.   The distinctions are made only in dialects in
> which /ei/ is pronounced [aI] (i.e., <beden> vs <beiden>), /öü/ is
> pronounced [OI] (i.e., <drö(h)nen> vs <dreumen> ~ <dräumen>), and /ou/ is
> pronounced [aU] (i.e., <Doom> [do:m] vs <Daun> [da.Un]).  In the
> "scientific" version of the Fehrs/Sass system people add an _okonek_ (a
> Polish-style small hook) underneath the monophthongs, but this is
> typographically inconvenient and is ignored by most due to it looking too
> "exotic" ("un-German").  Others (like myself when forced to use one of
those
> wretched German-based systems) use <ä(ä)> for /ee/ and <œ> for /öö/, but
> still ignore the distinction /oo/ vs /ou/.
In EFLS we have bēden = to beg; to pray vs. bäiden = to bid. But there are
individual and local differences in pronounciation which in some cases may
lead to a sound like [be:Idn] for bēden but this I don't understand as a
real diphthong that has to be represented in orthography. It is (in EFLS)
just a special colour of the long -e- (also: o: / o.U etc.). The standard
is -ē- . Real diphthongs are for example: ei [EI], äj [E:I], äi [æI], äie
[´æ.I.`@], au [aU], ai [aI], āi [a:I], âi [´a:`aI], öy [œy], öye [´œ.y.`@].
These cannot be replaced by a monophthong.
>
> As a result of orthographic non-distinction, the phonemic distinctions
> mentioned here are under threat of extinction.  Orthography does influence
> pronunciation, certainly among non-native speakers.  Besides, orthographic
> non-distinction is highly inconvenient when it comes to teaching the
> language, and there is now more demand than ever for instructional
material.
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron

Kind regards
Holger

----------

From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> John (above):
>
> > The letter <y> can also represent two sounds, ...
>
> Thanks for "reading my mind," John.  After I sent off the
> previous question
> I kicked myself for not having asked about the two phonemes represented by
> <y> in ordinary Welsh orthography (as opposed to <y> vs <ŷ> in some
> textbooks).

I think John was talking about a slightly different thing - in the Teach
Yourself book a different character is used for one kind of "y" as a
learning aid, and then after a few chapters it reverts to the standard
spelling.

To fully understand the use of <y> and <ŷ> in modern Welsh, you first need
to know that in Welsh the stress is nearly always on the penultimate
syllable of a word. The "hat" (as the Welsh always seem to call the
circumflex) is used to indicate a stressed vowel when the stress is on some
other syllable. However, the y-hat (pronounced /i/), is simply an indication
of a phonetic process that has affected a few of the most common words in
the language.

The <y> without the hat indicates a vowel that is pronounced /I/ when
unstressed /V/ when stressed. Thus "mynydd" /'mVnID/, but "mynyddion"
/mI'nVDjOn/.

(Pronounciations are with respect to the dialects I'm familiar with, ie
south Wales.)

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> Sandy said:
>
> "As for "atrocious", which is a prude's approved adjective for English
> text with spelling errors, I think that this is nothing but snobbery."
>
> I must apologize if my comments came across as snobbish, but would you not

I never thought of it that way because you were quoting someone else when
you used the adjective!

> agree that bad spelling, and I do refer to consistent bad spelling and not
> just to an occasional lapse, is a reflection on the dire state of English
> language teaching in our schools? And  I really would not

While I agree that spelling could be taught better - if it's even really
taught at all. It goes back to what I was saying, that teachers often never
really think to teach spelling properly because they're so familiar with the
language they don't see many of the problems. Whether this is the real root
of the problem with The Times or the Grauniad I'm not so sure (more about
this below).

> consider my claims
> for the prevalence of such spellings to be exaggerated - I seem
> to encounter
> them wherever I look. The Times newspaper is replete with them (and so are
> broadsheets of other political leanings), official letters are
> full of them,
> brochures from holiday firms and government departments are too. In actual
> fact the IT revolution has perhaps exacerbated the situation
> because people
> write text and then run the spell-checker which often leaves glaring
> mistakes.

Yes, but I think it's too simplistic to blame it all on the educational
system. For example, as you point out, the availability of spellcheckers may
be part of the problem. And as I pointed out, the sheer cost of perfection
may be part of the problem. Lots of people point out spelling mistakes, but
who would even mention it if there were none? Is it really worth going over
the nightly press run yet again by eye when there really aren't any
consequences other than complaints from idealists?

An example of this in my own experience is when I proof texts for Scotstext,
or in my own writing. It's easy enough to get a small piece letter-perfect,
but for larger amounts of text, it's much more time consuming. You just
don't know where the spelling mistakes are, so you have to read it _all_,
which for a book-lenght text can take days. Then you can't be sure you've
spotted everything, but if you care that much you have to read it all again!

I think a few observations on larger publications can be enlightening. I
would say:

   o   books have fewer spelling mistakes than weekly magazines, which have
fewer than dailies;

   o   older books have fewer spelling mistakes than modern books.

The first observation suggests to me that the problem is the timescale for
completion.

The second could be put down to modern education being poor (though the real
evidence suggests to me that it's much better than in the "good old days"),
but I think it makes more sense to put it down to the fact that older books
were typeset lovingly by hand and typesetters were highly motivated to get
it right first time because it would take so much extra work to correct a
mistake. But nowadays it's much more cost-effective to chuck them together
on an automatic typesetting system. I think, though, that the fact that
older westerns, private dicks and penny dreadfuls have more spelling
mistakes than older hardbacks, and that modern expensive hardbacks have
fewer mistakes than modern cheap paperbacks with low shelf-life shows that
the problem isn't in the educational system but in whether the publisher has
time, money and motivation to read the whole thing through several times.

> I honestly think that our schools need to go back to more prescriptive
> methods of teaching the language. I am sure that you, Sandy, must
> have been
> taught in that way if your French instruction was as meticulous as you
> describe. We need to establish and maintain some standards after all.

But I think the cost was much too high in human terms. When I was at school,
people who couldn't spell were "thick" and less was expected of them except
possibly in sport and woodwork. Nowadays we know about dyslexia and don't
write people off so easily.

Maintain standards, yes. But think of it this way. By the time I've finished
typing this email it'll have many spelling mistakes. By the time you receive
it it will have only a few. If I'm not sure of a spelling I probably just
won't worry but if it were for paper publication I'd probably look it up in
a dictionary, and read the whole thing over more times, too. I don't think I
could get the whole email spelled right first time nomatter what sort of
education I have. As for people who went through the same sort of education
system as me and still can't seem to spell, I think that's down to, on the
one hand, how heavily dyslexia is expressed in them, and on the other,
whether they care enough to put as much extra checking into it as I do. So
the teaching of spelling might not be the real problem, the real educational
challenge may lie in, on the one hand, giving proper attention to children
with real, built-in spelling problems, and on the other hand, teaching
children to care about their results.

> I have also seen an occasional mistake in handwritten French signs, and in
> personal letters written by Frenchmen (especially with regard to the
> agreement of Past Participles), and I have seen minor mistakes on signs
> written by Italians, but I have never seen spelling mistakes in French or
> Italian newspapers or official letters.

How do you feel about this in the context of what I said before? Is your
French and Italian equivalent to your English in terms of reading
experience?

> It is difficult to comment too much on Finnish, not having mastered the
> language or knowing too much about its dialects, but I believe I
> have heard
> that Finnish dialects are relatively homogenous, and are becoming
> increasingly more so.If this is the case, then I would suggest
> that Finnish
> beats Welsh, its orthography is, after all, described as being 99.9%
> phonemic.

I don't really know much of Finnish either, but it seemed necessary to bring
it up in the discussion. I'm sure we can't apply the relative homogeniety
criterion to English!

Surely 99.9% phonemic could mean anything? Is it really 99.9% phonemic with
respect to all dialects or is it just 99.9% internally consistent? I doubt
it - there would have to be 1,000 letters in the alphabet for a single
inconsistency to show so small an error as 0.1%  :)

> Sandy states:
>
> "In discussing English spelling in education, I think an important point
> is often missed: that although English has two overlapping orthographies
> (one for perceived Anglo-Saxon and one for perceived Romance), they only
  [...]
>
> The existence of two overlapping orthographies would perhaps not
> be too much
> to deal with if we were talking of two regular ones, and then we also have
> to take into mind Latin and Greek spellings, which have quite often been
> adopted by English directly rather than arriving via the vehicle of Norman
> French (or Anglo-Saxon for that matter).

You'll notice that I don't say "Romance" or "Anglo-Saxon", rather I say
"perceived Romance" &c. By which I mean words that _look_ like they're in
one category or other rather than etymologically belonging to one or the
other. Mainly this means that a word with Latin prefixes and/or suffixes
will be perceived Romance and spelled accordingly. I think that this is a
much more appropriate usage than usual etymological definitions when it
comes to discussing orthography, but it does tend to separate my form of
argument from the more usual ones.

> The point of my going through all this is to show that there will
> be a large
> proportion of Romance and non-Anglo-Saxon words in even the most
> rudimentary
> English texts that are taught to Children.

But not necessarily a large amount of perceived Romance.

> Even if we confine ourselves to an examination of words derived from
> Anglo-Saxon we find spelling inconsistencies. We have the words 'four',
> 'for' and 'fore', all homonyms but written differently; then
> their is 'fowl'
> and 'foul', homonyms in Standard English, but written differently; 'mule'
> and 'cool', both from Anglo-Saxon, rhyme, and yet they end differently in
> their spelling; 'read' (past participle of 'read', another anomaly) rhymes
> with 'red', while the infinitive 'to read' rhymes with 'mead' and
> (the verb)
> 'lead', the past participle of which, 'led' rhymes with 'dead'.'School'
> might be from Greek via Latin, but English has received it from its
> Anglo-Saxon ancestor, and it starts with the curious combination sch-
> (virtually limited to Latin loanwords) and rhymes with (Romance) 'rule'
> orthographies it might be considered to consist of, and I am sure that
> children learning it often have to resort to associating the
> visual form of
> words with the sounds of those words. Getting back to the
> original argument
> about Chinese, this is tantamount to us learning the equivalent of so many
> characters.

True! I can't remember any of this being a problem at school though!

> I suppose one fairly gentle step we could take in the UK (and in Australia
> and New Zealand where spelling is almost identical to ours) would be to
> follow the lead of the Americans and adopt their simplified spellings:
> aging, ardor, harbor, armor, behavior, defense, fiber, maneuver, meter,
> pediatric and so on. There might be a few instances where they could adopt

But not all "American" spellings are used consistently across the USA. These
have become popular because some large publishers like the Chicago Tribune
have experimented with them, with some successes and some failures. It's an
ongoing process that the people in the USA are more exposed to and more
receptive to than others. This receptiveness originates from actually
striving to be different from the British. But as I said, it's an ongoing
process, and, being incomplete and pretty well insignificant, perhaps
attempts at official standardisation would be premature.

> Another innovation that would be easily introduced would be to avoid the
> apostrophe in contractions such as 'can't', 'won't', 'I'm', and so forth,
> which was already regularly practiced by George Bernard Shaw, and appears
> thus in his printed works.

That makes a great deal of sense. I see no reason why we shouldn't abolish
apostrophes altogether, even in the "Saxon genitive".

I also think it would be helpful to abolish capital letters. Opinions on
Georgian orthography, anyone?

> The apostrophe 's' can also be a bit of a problem, something needs to be
> done about it soon. A lot of people either don't know how to use it, or
> aren't bothered about using it correctly.Usage of the apostrophe

I'd say people do know how to use it but the whole issue has been clouded by
people like Strunk and White trying to make rules for things that are
intuitively easy enough. I see no reason why anyone shouldn't just write
"Jesus's" with the extra "s", if they pronounce it that way. I know I do!

> Lang may yer lum reek,

Don't get me started on global warming...!

Ron wrote about Welsh:

> What about <u> -- based on older southern (extinct?) dialects -- now being
> pronounced [i]?  Does it not overlap with <i>, just as Czech <y>
> and <ý> now
> overlap with <i> and <í> respectively, as do <ú> and <ů> already mentioned
> by Sandy?

I think <u> is still pronounced differently in the north, but I'm not
familiar with northern dialects of Welsh.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

> From: James Fortune <jamesrfortune at hotmail.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2003.09.19 (19) [E]
>
> Well, there are 'fecht', 'ficht', and 'feicht' for 'fight'. Past tense is
> usually 'focht', and 'faucht'. Within the SE corner of Scotland, we'd tend
> to use 'fowt' instead of 'focht' or 'faucht', but that's a
> Borderer for you!
> I guess it's a bit closer to a Northumberland accent than a
> Central Scottish
> one.

James,

Ye micht want tae hae a scanse o the wark o the Berwickshire poet W L
Ferguson on my Scotstext site:

http://scotstext.org/makars/w_l_ferguson/

He's gey guid - ane o thae poets ye can read ower an ower an never weary o!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

================================END===================================
* Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
* Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.
* Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
* Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l") are
  to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at
  http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================