LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (03) [E]

Sun Jun 6 16:50:20 UTC 2004

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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)
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From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (05) [E]

It would really be nice to see us mark stress in a new spelling system. I
want to learn the Slavic languages, but they're bears as to how to pronounce
things if you don't have pronunciation to back you up. Who would refuse
refuse?

---------

From: Henry Pijffers <henry.pijffers at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (10) [E]

Tom Maguire wrote:
>
> My experience is with English as a second language learners. They mostly
> pick up the language by exposure to reading texts and spelling is not a
> big problem for them. In fact they spell English better than their
> native Spanish or Catalan which have a much more sound based
> orthography.
 >
That's what I've always said too. I'm a native Dutch speaker, yet I
spell English better than Dutch. I don't know why, all I know is I just
do. Same goes for a number of other Dutch people.

Henry Pijffers

PS: For those of you who don't know me; I've been subscribed to this
list before, but decided to leave due to circumstances. However, things
have changed now, and I decided to return. I'm a native Saxon and Dutch
speaker, and a strong supporter of a common Saxon spelling system.

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From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Orthography

Welcome back, Henry!  Great to have you back.  You are one among several
that have rejoined us during the past week or so.  Apparently, hardcore
Lowlanders cannot stay away forever.

Also nice to have some orthographic support for a change.  Just watch them
lashing out at poor little me, just for playing the devil's advocate and
challenging them to make them think ...  ;-)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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

> From: Tom Maguire <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (02) [E]
>
> My experience is with English as a second language learners. They mostly
> pick up the language by exposure to reading texts and spelling is not a
> big problem for them. In fact they spell English better than their
> native Spanish or Catalan which have a much more sound based
> orthography. This is probably true because they read very little in
> their native languages and trust their ear when spelling.

I think this accords with my experience of communicating with Welsh
speakers. Being deaf, I often (many times a day) have to ask someone to
write down what they're saying for me. In spite of the fact that Welsh
orthography is almost as phonemic as the structure of the language will
allow, and in spite of the fact that many of the younger people boasted of
having been educated in Welsh as much as in English, their level of
illiteracy was clearly much higher in Welsh than in English. Typists in
English and people who wrote technical documents in English as part of their
everyday work spelled Welsh words wrongly as a rule and were sometimes
completely stuck for how to write a word.

A few years ago I wrote a short poem in Welsh and asked a new graduate from
Aberystwyth university to help me to make the Welsh good. This involved him
editing it to correct grammar and locate the mots justes, after which I had
to edit it again to correct his numerous misspellings. He has no such
problems with English!

I think it's as Tom says - these people are educated in Welsh but they don't
read much in Welsh. Most of what they needed for their studies is in English
(in spite of some lectures Welsh and exams optionally Welsh or English if
the tutor can read Welsh), all the best novels are in English, and they'd
rather read The Mirror than Y Cymro!

But it does give the lie to Ron's idea that, "In an ideal case (namely where
a system is truly phonemic) all you have to do is learn the *system* (once,
perhaps even in just a few hours, reinforced by reading and writing
practice) rather than the spelling of individual words (which goes on for
the rest of your life)." I think what we have here is a professional
linguist speaking. Ron may be able to learn a writing system in a few hours,
but most people can't!

I also question the value of being able to learn a system in a few hours. As
Tom's and my own experience seems to show, there's not much point in
learning a writing system unless you're going to do plenty reading in it. So
a gradually absorbed system isn't necessarily worse than a logically compact
system, especially when many people aren't trained to think logically or
mathematically in the first place. I think the idea of a pure phonemic
system is a fantasy that's only occasionally played out (with some
approximations) when a language happens to have a sufficiently logical
phonemic structure, and is either restricted to a unified (probably also
small) area so that dialectical differences are restricted, or (as in the
case of Italian) an official form of the language is created and minority
dialects are just trampled over.

Ron also wrote:

"Furthermore, this type of system is by its very nature interdialectal,
because phonological differences (in the phonetic output) between dialects
do not even enter the equasion in reading and writing."

This statement puzzles me - surely dialects are the bane of a phonemic
system? I don't think it can be done without diaphonemics, and even that's
just a compromise.

Tom again:

> This is fine when talking of consonants but surely vowel sounds are
> extraordinarily different. In a western culture I doubt that you could
> rely on the consonants for spelling and leave vowels to the speaker to
> fill in at will. Who would finally choose the written form of the
> vowels? The economically powerful?

This is particularly true of English and Scots, where most unstressed vowels
are simply a schwa. I've tried devising (dia)phonemic systems for both
languages but it tends to fill up with the letter "i". When I first joined
Lowlands-L one of the Lowlanders here directed me to his web pages for a
reformed English spelling system but, apart from the fact that I could see
it was American pronunciation (he had thought it was universal), it suffered
from what I call "The Solicitor Effect" in English, ie, that different
people have different ideas about the vowels in words like "solicitor".
Where I would write "solisitir" or possibly "solisiter", others would write
"slistr" or "slicty" (where I've used "y" at random to represent the vowel
the English use for "-er" endings - I, of course, pronounce the "r"). IN
other words, he often dropped vowels were I felt they were necessary.

I've also tried to learn the prize-winning "Shavian" script for English, and
failed. My conclusion is that you simply can't write Scottish English in
Shavian script. Even ignoring the difference between "w" and "wh", there's
no letter for "r" and the whole vowel system simply doesn't map - even if
people could determine which vowel is appropriate. Yet Shavian script
(perhaps sensibly re-mapped back onto the Roman alphabet rather than written
in its current "symmetrical" form) is more or less exactly what's required
for a phonemic representation of certain kinds of English.

Shavian has also been designed to be particularly easy to learn - in its
symmetric form it actually reflects some phonemes at the feature level
(voicings), so theoretically helps the learner to remember the shape of "b"
from the shape of related sounds like "p". But my dialect of English
prevented me from learning it - I would have actually have to have learned a
whole new way of pronouncing English (say, BBC English) to be able to write.

So much for Ron's assertion that a phonemic script can be learned in a few
hours, or that it solves interdialectical problems.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Tom Maguire <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (05) [E]

> From: jkrause <jkrause at old-sod-shanty.com>

> Regarding Englisch othografie, Ai think wie ott tuh yuhs sum sort ov Low
> Sachsen  beyst spelling sistem.  After all, Englisch is a Loh German
> dereiv'd languidge, not?  Abolisch the X, Q, and in mohst keyses, the C,
> eksept for the ck kombineyschon, and Ai think wie wudd hav a verie gudd
> orthografick sistem.
>
> Yers with mei tung firmlie in mei tschieck,
> Jim Krause

Flolgwoni Jim I wuold jsut say taht slpelnig ralely in'ts an isuse
bceasue, as eyervnoe kwnos, ayonen can raed waht you witre if you are
caerluf to srart and end wrdos wtih the crorect lterter.

Regards,

Tom

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (10) [E]

Mark wrote:

> Would you say, with Mae West (was it Mae West) "A hard Language is good
> to find?"

Hey, finally someone who takes me seriously! :-))

I knew that Troy could and would state the same much more scientifically, so
I decided to go for the surreal approach, just for the heck of it...

Is that a diphthong you're carrying, or are you just happy to see me?
Gabriele Kahn

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