# Why some languages are phonetic, and other is not?



## AverageFool

Phonetic language is a language that have a symbol for every spoken sound.

Serbian is almost perfectly phonetic. Written = Spoken.
Polish and Czech is pretty much phonetic as well. Not at same level as Serbian, but pretty much phonetic.
Russian is also very phonetic, it have some double-sound letters (ex. ya), but other than that its pretty phonetic.
Than Spanish, Turkish and Korean are highly phonetic.

And than we have Languages like English(the king, almost no phonetic worlds), French, Danish, Swedish, Chinese, etc.

Why not all languages developed in such a way, so you can write as you talk.
For example English, it's hell to spell, so much damn rules,


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## Dymn

Maybe somebody has a better explanation, but the main reason is that some orthographic traditions have been more conservative than others. Why? That's the key and sincerely, I don't know. Perhaps those languages have evolved phonetically too quickly for their spellings to be renewed too often.

As for English, the mix of Latinate and Germanic words (and therefore the mix of both spelling traditions) could be the cause for not adopting a more or less phonetic system. If some of these groups were by far predominant, the smaller set of words would have adopted the other spelling, just as Germanic words were adapted in Romance languages. But that's not the case for English.

From the languages you mentioned I speak French, and I guess it's basically a huge phonetical evolution. In fact, if you know how to read French you won't have many problems. With a word like _oiseau_, you can deduce how to pronounce it easily (_oi _= /wa/, intervocalic _s_ = /z/, _eau _= /o/). A different thing is that the pronounciation and the spelling are very different from what an outsider would expect.

Obviously, the newer an alphabet is the more phonetic it may be. The Latin alphabet was introduced to Turkish in 1928 by Atatürk, so it's highly phonetic.


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## Stoggler

I certainly wouldn't put Swedish in the same bracket as English, French and Danish: it's generally easy to know how a word is pronounced from the spelling. There are exceptions, but I never had any real problems when I was learning the language.

To me, Swedish is closer to German than languages like French and English


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## Penyafort

All languages are 'phonetic'. It is the spelling that can be more phonetic -or, more properly, phonemic- depending on how accurately it represents the standard variety of the language. And I'd say that, Esperanto aside, no language is 100% phonemic.

The key points here, in my opinion, are two: how accurate/flexible the original spelling was (so that later reforms were easily accepted, if necessary) and, specially, how far the language has evolved from the very moment when the spelling was set. English and French are clear examples of languages which had early spelling conventions but have undergone many changes since those times, so their spellings are not as phonemic any more as they used to be. If we write 'night' instead of 'nayt' is simply because English speakers 500 years ago wrote it the way they would say it 500 years ago, that is, /niçt/.

I don't think spellings should be constantly reformed, though, as long as the change isn't dramatic and patterns can be easily inferred. Usually 'flexible' spellings allow all speakers of a language to feel more represented by the etymological solution, instead of a spelling too close to one particular variety. Which is usually the problem with minor languages today trying to adopt a valid supradialectal spelling.


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## Testing1234567

English was also "phonetic". Its spelling reflected its pronunciation. It's just that its pronunciation changed so much that it became ridiculous. Also, one factor is "re-Latinization", which is inserting silent letters just to make it look like a Latin word, particularly the Latin word that derived it. For example, DEBITAM > debt with the "b" silent. The "b" is never pronounced. I still hold that "night" was pronounced /niɣt/ (although nobody would agree with me), because "gh" means "g" (voiced velar) + "h" (fricative). It's just that /niɣt/ > /niːt/ > /nait/.

"meat" and "meet" were certainly pronounced differently. "ea" represented the /ɛː/ sound while "ee" represented the /eː/ sound. They both became /iː/.

French also. "Oiseau" was once pronounced /oizɛau/. It's just the pronunciation changed so much and the people keep using the old spelling. /oizɛau/ > /wɛzɛo/ > /wɛzo/ > /wazo/.

French "joie" /ʒwa/ was pronounced /d͡ʒɔiə/, which is partly preserved in the English pronunciation of "joy".

Also see http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/phonographic-english-real-or-dream.822291 .

"E próblum wé fne'c speln öz thi' ma fne'c prönoonsyéshn özné 'sém'z er fók's. ('is öz mentó, liks lik sum kna Turkösh/Höngeryön fiúzhn). The problem, for those of you who are not Scottish, is that phonetic pronounciation can vary wildly. At least with the current version, no one dialect has priority over another. In fact English is the worst possible language to have a phoneticised spelling for, because it is the most widely spoken native language in the world: unlike Chinese and Spanish is is not concentrated in one area, but has fully naturalised native speakers everywhere: Jamaica, Canada, India, South Africa, Singapore, Nigeria, Ireland... how could we possibly decide on a 'standard' pronounciation for a phonetic alphabet, when in 30 years time there will be more English speakers in China than in the USA."


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## Nino83

English orthography was phonemic until 1500 (like testing said), before the Great Vowel Shift.
I summarized English pronunciation rules and exceptions into 5 pages, more or less, so it is not impossible to know how to pronounce a written word, while it is a different matter to know how to spell a word by hearing it. It is the same in French, with fewer exceptions than English, it is not so complicated to pronounce a written word but it is a bit more difficult to write a word by hearing it, in French there are a lot of homophones, due to the loss of final consonants and the merger of some nasal vowels and of some consonants (like /ce, ci, se, si/), for example _cent, sans, s'en, c'en, sent, sang, sens_ are all pronounced [sɒ̃] (compare the Italian [ˈʧɛnto, ˈsɛnʦa, se ne, ˈʧjɔ ne, ˈsɛnte, ˈsangwe, ˈsɛnso]). I summarized French pronunciaton rules, with liasons, _e muette/caduc_,in 2 pages, so it is less complicated than the English orthography (from the writing to the pronounciation).

So, it is true that you can write Spanish or Italian rules in 5 lines (not pages), but this is why these language are phonetically more conservatives, so you can write phonemically having respect, at the same time, for etymology.
In other words, in English there were some vocalic merger and some loss of consonants (hw, kn, ld, gh, for example) while in French there were a lot of mergers regarding vowels and consonants, loss of final vowels and consonants, and some changes (diphthongs) in some vowels.

Some example of English homophones: _hi, high higher, hire_, this is why it is important to spell the former [x] in _eight_, different from _ate_, or /kn/ in _knight_ to differenciate it from _night_ (once [kniːxtʰ] [niːxtʰ]), or _meat, meet_ (once [mɛːtʰ] [meːtʰ]).

English spelling reflects the pronunciation of 1500 and French spelling that of 1300.


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## franknagy

The level how phonetics are some languages and how [students say "hierogliphic" / teacher say "tradionally spelled"]
the other depends on

- age of written language,
- continuity of culture,
- strength of aristocratic conservatism,

- number of important jumps of the spoken during the history of the written language,
- survival of glyphs for disappeared sounds *in order to retain the distinction at least in the written form*,

- frequency of systematical changes of words during conjugation and declination.

Let me enlist examples:
1+2: Greek, 
3: Russian,
3+4: English,
5. Russian, Polish, Hungarian,
6. Irish, Hungarian.

5. The -ly- is pronounced just like as the -j- except on the Slovakian border.
6. For Hungarian: The disappearing and transforming j *й* voices mean the main problem of the Hungarian spelling.
This sound appears as mark of subjunctive and imperative mood of verbs, and in the ending of possessed things and persons. The winner solution: analyzing spelling retaining the original root and the theoretical mark.


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## Testing1234567

For the case of Chinese:

Chinese is equal with the (very) earlier stages of evolution of the Latin alphabet.

Latin alphabet ultimately is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphic, which is a partly-logographic (a picture for a meaning) and rebus system with phonetic transcription on the left of it (it is too hard to categorize it). That means, they would write (p-t-h-god) for the god Ptah. Also, "pr" can mean a house, or can spell the pronunciation "pr" in other words.

The same happens in Chinese. "青" can mean green, or can represent the pronunciation "qing" in Mandarin, "tsing" in Cantonese. "晴" meaning shunny is "日" + "青", the "日" representing sun, "青" representing the pronunciation. Legend is that originally, the "日" representing sun is absent, and it is written only "青", so the same word can mean green or sunny. Later, we needed to distinguish the meanings, so the "日" meaning sun is added, because it is related to "sun".

Of course, this way is only 1 of 6 ways to create a symbol in Chinese. But this is the major way. 90% of the characters use this way.

Therefore, I argue that 90% of Chinese is phonetic as well.


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## yezik

@@@@Of course, this way is only 1 of 6 ways to create a symbol in Chinese. But this is the major way. 90% of the characters use this way@@@
___________
Not  agree.
Look: I cross  the line in Beijin airport and I tell you my strange name that *you've never herd*.
How can you write my name with ierogliphs (characters) The next day I cross the line again to go home and other man is gonna ask my name. (*No passport*) 
How can he be sure I' am the same person   with the same name??? He too, he's never herd this name!?
If you have a sign for every sound I spell, so it' not picture, it is phonetic alphabet!?
Or you have the "picture" for every sound? Where is reality?


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## Testing1234567

yezik said:


> If you have a sign for every sound I spell, so it' not picture, it is phonetic alphabet!?


Of course we don't have a sign for every sound you spell, which is why we transliterated (*not translated*) "Russia" to something like "ə-luo-si", because we don't have a syllable for "lo". And that is why different people may have different transliterations for the same term, because rather than being an alphabet *in terms of transliteration*, Chinese acts as a syllabary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabary

All of these characters are derived from a determiner+sound form, which makes them all have similar pronunciation to 青:
晴 睛 情 倩 蜻 精 ...


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## wtrmute

The problem with that, Testing, is that eventually the sounds drift, and then the spelling is not quite that phonemic.  For example, 青 is pronounced (in Standard Mandarin) _qīng_. And, in fact, most other hanzi with a 青 phonetic complement are pronounced _qīng_, _qíng _or _jíng_, which are still fairly close (though not the same).  But 倩 reads _qiàn _and 猜 reads _cāi_ (!), so the phonetic complement cannot really be trusted to predict pronunciation.


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## Hulalessar

Testing1234567 said:


> I argue that 90% of Chinese is phonetic as well.



I think we have a problem with the word "phonetic" here. What is meant by a phonetic (or more correctly phonemic) script is one where the symbols represent the phonemes of a language, ideally on a one to one basis. Chinese writing is basically logographic with signs representing words even if phonetic elements are present.


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## Ben Jamin

No language can be written exactly as it is spoken because of the following:
1. The pronunciation changes, but the old spelling is retained in order to preserve the cultural continuity.
2. The etymological spelling helps to understand better relations between words , especially when forming new words and in inflected langauges.
3. Not all speakers of a language pronounce the words in the same way. It would be a mess if everybody used individual spelling.


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## Hulalessar

Ben Jamin said:


> No language can be written exactly as it is spoken because of the following:
> 1. The pronunciation changes, but the old spelling is retained in order to preserve the cultural continuity.
> 2. The etymological spelling helps to understand better relations between words , especially when forming new words and in inflected langauges.
> 3. Not all speakers of a language pronounce the words in the same way. It would be a mess if everybody used individual spelling.



I think that all the above are reasons which can be put forward for why an established orthography should not be changed or why there are good reasons for it to be morphophonemic.

It is though only true to say that no language can be written exactly as it is spoken (by which I assume you mean given an orthography where there is a one to one correspondence between sound and symbol) if you insist that all varieties must be represented by the same symbols. Whilst it is not exactly always the case it is generally the case that an established orthography developed to represent one variety. This is the assumption that is still made even if people from different regions articulate the same text differently. If, for example, you ask whether the orthography of Spanish is phonemic you can really only answer with reference to one of the standard spoken varieties even if such a variety is in practice an ideal followed by few. To put it another way, the underlying assumption of all alphabetical systems is that they are based on a phonemic analysis.

A bit of a problem is that there is an assumption that an ideal system will be completely phonemic. For some languages it may not be ideal because morphemes may change their pronunciation from word to word. It is then a question of whether you consider morpheme identification more important than consistent spelling. For the native speaker inconsistency is not usually a problem because he knows how words are pronounced, as in for example _drama_, _dramatic_ and _dramatist._


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## Ben Jamin

Hulalessar said:


> I think that all the above are reasons which can be put forward for why an established orthography should not be changed or why there are good reasons for it to be morphophonemic.
> 
> It is though only true to say that no language can be written exactly as it is spoken (by which I assume you mean given an orthography where there is a one to one correspondence between sound and symbol) if you insist that all varieties must be represented by the same symbols. Whilst it is not exactly always the case it is generally the case that an established orthography developed to represent one variety. This is the assumption that is still made even if people from different regions articulate the same text differently. If, for example, you ask whether the orthography of Spanish is phonemic you can really only answer with reference to one of the standard spoken varieties even if such a variety is in practice an ideal followed by few. To put it another way, the underlying assumption of all alphabetical systems is that they are based on a phonemic analysis.
> 
> A bit of a problem is that there is an assumption that an ideal system will be completely phonemic. For some languages it may not be ideal because morphemes may change their pronunciation from word to word. It is then a question of whether you consider morpheme identification more important than consistent spelling. For the native speaker inconsistency is not usually a problem because he knows how words are pronounced, as in for example _drama_, _dramatic_ and _dramatist._


Could you explain the word "morphophonemic"? I am nor sure that I understand it correctly. Does it mean spelling that follows the etymologic rules rather than the actual pronunciation?


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## M Mira

Ben Jamin said:


> Could you explain the word "morphophonemic"? I am nor sure that I understand it correctly. Does it mean spelling that follows the etymologic rules rather than the actual pronunciation?


From the samples given, it seems to be about preserving underlying stems that are pronounced differently in different words, but known to natives as the same thing, like "drama-" in the example (vowel differences between the forms), or "relat-" in _relate_ and _relation_ (consonant differences), but nevertheless considered one and the same by native speakers and orthography.


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## Hulalessar

Ben Jamin said:


> Could you explain the word "morphophonemic"? I am nor sure that I understand it correctly. Does it mean spelling that follows the etymologic rules rather than the actual pronunciation?



Morphemes (that is the smallest units of meaning) may change their pronunciation according to where they occur. If the spelling of the morpheme is kept the same however it is pronounced the spelling of the word is morphophonemic. It is not the same thing as an etymological spelling which is a spelling which reflects how a word used to be pronounced or in some cases is or used to be pronounced in another language. The two can go together as in _nation_ and _national. _


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## tonyspeed

It has been suggested to reform the spelling. But such a change would take drastic measures and reduce most people to semi-illiteracy. Part of the problem is the culture of retaining borrowed word spellings.


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## danielstan

When a language starts to be written in a certain alphabet normally the scholars of that language invent an orthography which could be considered "phonetic".
One good example is the Turkish which has been written in Latin alphabet since 1828.

One big problem is that the Latin alphabet was invented to represent the sounds of Latin in some century of its evolution, 
while other languages written in Latin alphabet may have sounds that Latin did not have at that time (and Latin itself acquired new sounds during its evolution until it was transformed in many Romance languages).
So, from the start a language written in Latin alphabet has a big chance to not be perfectly matched by its spelling.

For example the Slavic languages written in Cyrilic alphabet are "more phonetical" than the same languages transliterated in Latin alphabet.

There is a continuous evolution of every language and every language has dialectal differences between its speakers.

When the evolution of a language makes some sound shifts the spelling is preserved due to tradition and we have a gap between spelling and pronounciation. Sometimes orthographic reforms try to match the spelling on a new stage of the language, but the tradition is strong and the language becomes more distant from its orthography.

Conclusions:
- for a given language to be "phonetic" one need an alphabet targeting that language (e.g. Cyrilic alphabet targeted the Old Bulgarian = OCS)
- the given language become more distant from its orthography as the years pass from the moment of its first codification in the given alphabet


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## Nino83

danielstan said:


> When a language starts to be written in a certain alphabet normally the scholars of that language invent an orthography which could be considered "phonetic".
> One good example is the Turkish which has been written in Latin alphabet since 1828.



An other example is Finnish, whose orthography was setted during the XVI century.
If the language doesn't have a greater number of consonant, Latin alphabet works well, like, for example, for Japanese.



danielstan said:


> So, from the start a language written in Latin alphabet has a big chance to not be perfectly matched by its spelling.



Yes, but for this there are diagraphs. If a diagraph has always the same sound, orthography is still phonemic.
For example, the English _sh_ has always the same sound, i.e /ʃ/. The problem arises when you use the same diagraph for different pourposes, for example the diagraph _ch_ is used for both /ʧ/ and Ancient Greek /kʰ/, and also for some words of Scottish origin, for the sound /x/.



Hulalessar said:


> Morphemes (that is the smallest units of meaning) may change their pronunciation according to where they occur. If the spelling of the morpheme is kept the same however it is pronounced the spelling of the word is morphophonemic. It is not the same thing as an etymological spelling which is a spelling which reflects how a word used to be pronounced or in some cases is or used to be pronounced in another language. The two can go together as in _nation_ and _national. _



I think English could introduce some letter and accent which are present, for example, in Icelandic.
For the sounds /θ/ and /ð/ you could reintroduce _þ_ and _ð_ (which are just present in the ascii table, alt + 0254 and alt + 0240) or differentiate between _th_ and _dh_.
Icelandic uses sometimes accents for long vowels, for example _á_ [aʊ̯], _é_ [jɛ], ó [oʊ̯].
For example, in English you could write _nátion_ and _national_, _táble_ and _palace_, _détail_ and _epic_, _títle_ and _finish_, but it could be too much, because the rules work quite well, long vowels in open syllables, syllable closed by consonant + liquid and before two consecutive vowels in disyllabic words and short vowels in closed syllables and before unstressed /ɪ/ of disyllabic words and in trisyllabic words.
One could use accents in those words that don't follow these rules.

But the real "problem" of English, as tonyspeed said, is that the spelling of borrowed words is often retained, for example _character, gender_ which could be written _caracter_ and _jender_, for example, so that they have a different spelling from _change_ and _get_.

This is not a big problem for Romance native speakers because we recognize those words which derive from French, Latin and Greek, but for other foreign learners this can be a little more difficult.

The other "problem" of English orthography are exceptions, i.e the different evolution of the same vowel, for example _flood, book, choose_ or _head, break, meat_, for example, before I studied these exceptions, I pronounced _pleasure_ and _measure_ with an /i:/.
But in these cases you have to choose between etymology and pronunciation.


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## Hulalessar

tonyspeed said:


> It has been suggested to reform the spelling. But such a change would take drastic measures and reduce most people to semi-illiteracy. Part of the problem is the culture of retaining borrowed word spellings.



In the case of English it would certainly take drastic measures. As things stand a complete overhaul would cut those who only learned the new system off from a huge amount of texts  However, with technological advances it is not inconceivable that computer programmes downloadable onto mobile phones could become widely available to convert the old system to the new.

If we we were starting from scratch we would not come with the English orthography we have. Whether a perfect phonemic system is best is open to question. Up to a point it depends on whether the system is designed for native speakers or second language learners. If an aim is to keep the number of symbols to a minimum native speakers would not, for example, need different symbols for /θ/ and /ð/ as they know which one to supply. As discussed above, morphophonemic elements aid morpheme recognition. There are different considerations for French which has the phenomenon of liaison. A phonemic system would require a huge number of words to have two spellings. In German final voiced consonants are devoiced, but the voicing is restored when inflections are added.


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## Ben Jamin

danielstan said:


> For example the Slavic languages written in Cyrilic alphabet are "more phonetical" than the same languages transliterated in Latin alphabet.


Slavic spelling i generally pretty well "phonetical", either written in Latin or Cyrillic alphabet. The sound written "cz" in Polish, "č" in Czech, or "ч" in Cyrillic is perfectly unambiguous and easily read and spelled in any setting.
It has no importance if you spell a phoneme using one Cyrillic letter or a Latin digraph, or a Latin sign with a diacritic.
Problems and inconsequences with spelling palatal consonants exist both in Polish and Russian.
So, the alleged advantage of Cyrillic over Latin is a myth.


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## Nino83

Ben Jamin said:


> So, the alleged advantage of Cyrillic over Latin is a myth.



True.
For the soft counterpart of /m, n, p, b, t, d, f, v, s, z, l, r/ it would be sufficient an accent, for example /ň/, the /ts/ sound can be written as it is pronounced and the /ʧ/ sound /tś/. Maybe there could be some problem between /ʂ/ and /ɕː/ but due to the fact that the second is a double consonant, they could be written /ś/ and /śś/.
The vowels would be /a, e, i, ï, o u/, but the letter /ï/ probably is not necessary because /i/ is present only after soft consonants and /ɨ/ after hard consonants.

If Russian can be written in IPA there is no reason why it couldn't be written in Latin scripts.


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## Hulalessar

It is perfectly true that Russian can be written with the roman script, but given the number of consonants it has the Cyrillic script does have the advantage that no digraphs or diacritics are required.


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## Nino83

The Russian alphabet doesn't have more consonants. They use a special letter, /ь/ and two sets of vowels to indicate palaralization of the preceeding consonant.
There is no difference between /ь/ and an accent like in /ň/. On the contrary, if the accent is used, the second set of vowels is not necessary.


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## Delvo

English has a handful of unrelated issues that could be solved one at a time, with no need for a sudden overhaul all at once. For example, we could get rid of the inconsistencies of words with "ea" with a single rule to drop all instances of "ea" and spell them whichever other way gets to the same sound. Similarly, another change, perhaps years later, could do away with "ie" and "ei". In a way, this is already happening. We already often see replacement spellings for words with "gh" on signs and product labels: rite, lite, nite, thru. Completing the transition would just be a matter of accepting them in formal settings. Similarly, German has converted the old "th" with its already-silent "h" to just "t" in words like "Tal" for "valley", with the old form oddly preserved in English "Neanderthal", and the use of "ß" (redundant to "ss") is declining in some German-speaking countries and already over in others. The main challenge in getting such changes officially excepted in English would be the fact that there are multiple times as many English-speaking countries to need to agree on them.


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## danielstan

Russian alphabet has:
ы for [ɨ]  (usually transliterated as y in Latin script, e.g. Andrei Grom*y*ko (Russian: Андре́й Гром*ы́*ко))
ю for [ju] =_ i + u _in diphthong; but also н + у =_ i + u_ in hiatus
ё for [jo] = i + o in diphthong; but also н + o =_ i + o_ in hiatus
я for [ja] = i + a in diphthong; but also н + a =_ i + a_ in hiatus

--------
For English orthographical reform:
- suppose, for the sake of discussion, that a new orthography will be agreed between all countries using English as official language, despite the differences in pronounciation and spelling that exists today (e.g. British _behaviour_ vs. American _behavior_)

After few generations it is very probable some words will be pronounced slightly different than today.
After few centuries linguists will discover phonetic rules which govern the almost uniform transformation of groups of sounds.
English will be again in the position of today where spelling does not match the speaking.
Some linguists will require a new orthographic reform, some others will say it is too soon, because that particular sound transformation is more intensively applied in some region or country and not applied at all in other regions or countries.

In fact the scenario above has been traversed by French, English and other European languages that have a tradition in writing with Latin alphabet since Middle Ages.


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## Nino83

Delvo said:


> For example, we could get rid of the inconsistencies of words with "ea" with a single rule to drop all instances of "ea" and spell them whichever other way gets to the same sound.



There are a lot of homophones between _ea_ and _ee_, so I'd retain this difference.
On the other hand there are no homophones between _ea_ and _e_, so one could write _head_ and _pleasure_ with an _e_, _hed_ and _plesure_, while _break, great_ and _steak_ with _ei_, _breik, greit, steik_.
With these changes _ea_ would be pronounced always /i:/.
Yes, the words containing _ough_ could be spelled as pronounced, like _tuf, enuf, thru, cof, thou_.
I'd change also the _ove, ome, one, oth_ words like _love, glove, above, come, done, another_ writing them _luv, gluv, abuv, cum, dun, anuther_, or _moove, proove_ when the sound is /u:/.

It's clear that with these changes etymology is no longer respected.



Delvo said:


> The main challenge in getting such changes officially excepted in English would be the fact that there are multiple times as many English-speaking countries to need to agree on them.



There are no differences in the way these words are pronounced in different English speaking countries. An agreement should be easy.



danielstan said:


> Russian alphabet has:
> ы for [ɨ], ю for [ju] =_ i + u _in diphthong; but also н + у =_ i + u_ in hiatus, ё for [jo] = i + o in diphthong; but also н + o =_ i + o_ in hiatus, я for [ja] = i + a in diphthong; but also н + a =_ i + a_ in hiatus



[ɨ] is present only after hard consonants, so if you have an accent mark for palatalization, automatically you know where there is an /i/ and where there is the allophone [ɨ]
For the other vowels, you can write _je_ when it is a diphthong and _ie_ when there is a hiatus, with more precision.



danielstan said:


> After few generations it is very probable some words will be pronounced slightly different than today.
> After few centuries linguists will discover phonetic rules which govern the almost uniform transformation of groups of sounds.
> English will be again in the position of today where spelling does not match the speaking.



The differences between the various accents of English are not _phonemic_.
If /ei/ and /ai/ are pronounced [ei] and [ai] in the US and in the UK and [æi] and [ɒi] in Australia, this differences are only phonetic, but they can be written in the same manner, i.e _ay, a_ for /ei/ and _i_ for /ai/.


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## Hulalessar

danielstan said:


> After few generations it is very probable some words will be pronounced slightly different than today.
> After few centuries linguists will discover phonetic rules which govern the almost uniform transformation of groups of sounds.
> English will be again in the position of today where spelling does not match the speaking.
> Some linguists will require a new orthographic reform, some others will say it is too soon, because that particular sound transformation is more intensively applied in some region or country and not applied at all in other regions or countries.
> 
> In fact the scenario above has been traversed by French, English and other European languages that have a tradition in writing with Latin alphabet since Middle Ages.



Change does of course affect all languages. Spanish has done quite a good job keeping up, but has been helped by having a simple phonology compared to French and English. Other languages are currently not far off the ideal of one to one correspondence between sounds and symbols because they were only written down for the first time comparatively recently.


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## Nino83

Hulalessar said:


> Spanish has done quite a good job keeping up, but has been helped by having a simple phonology compared to French and English.



Do you think there are far more phonetic differences between British and Australian English than between Castillan and Riverplatense Spanish?


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## Hulalessar

Nino83 said:


> Do you think there are far more phonetic differences between British and Australian English than between Castillan and Riverplatense Spanish?



Not sure if I can answer that question, but even if I could I am not sure it helps with this thread. If we ask a question such as how many out of ten we are to give the orthography of a language for being phonemic we can really only answer it by referring to the variety which it purports or is considered to represent and that will be the standard. As I said in another thread:

We can get into a bit of difficulty when talking about standards, especially when a pluricentric language like Spanish is involved. In the case of Spanish all varieties have the same orthography, but different phonologies. Where there has been a merger of phonemes in a variety we can, if so minded, say that the orthography is less phonemic with respect to that variety. The point is though that if an orthography sets out to be phomemic it can only be useful if based on one variety. These considerations do though only apply to languages with a shallow orthography. With a language like English the polyvalence is so complex (over 1000 ways of writing 40 phonemes) that any question of what sounds a grapheme or combination of graphemes represents rather pales into insignificance. It can be noted in passing that the minor differences between American and British spelling do not in fact represent differences in pronunciation.

We can take another angle by remembering that whilst speech and writing are connected, they are two distinct things. We have the thing, say "cup". This is represented in speech by /kʌp/. We take it that when we write <cup> we are representing /kʌp/, that it that /kʌp/ is a representation of a representation. And of course it is because every alphabetic writing system has as its basic premise that its graphemes represent phonemes. However, we can also say that /kʌp/ directly represents "cup" in the same way that a picture of a cup represents "cup" even if no picture can ever represent speech. So, whilst writing can be articulated the articulation of writing is not the same thing as speech. It is perfectly possible to learn a (written) language without knowing how it is articulated and if you do any question of whether the orthography is deep or shallow is irrelevant. Every orthography can be regarded as a sort of platonic realm which includes all possible pronunciations of every word.


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## Nino83

Hulalessar said:


> Not sure if I can answer that question, but even if I could I am not sure it helps with this thread. If we ask a question such as how many out of ten we are to give the orthography of a language for being phonemic we can really only answer it by referring to the variety which it purports or is considered to represent and that will be the standard. As I said in another thread:
> 
> We can get into a bit of difficulty when talking about standards, especially when a pluricentric language like Spanish is involved. In the case of Spanish all varieties have the same orthography, but different phonologies.



Yes, but if the orthography is based on the language that has more phonemes, in the case British English, and if the different phones that merged in other varieties are easily distinguished in writing, any reform will be good for all those countries.  A little example. The main differences between AmE and BE are the father-bother merger and the lot-cloth split. Anyway, an American speaker doesn't have any problem in writing.
He knows that when he says [ɑ] before an /r/ (non intervocalic), he'll write /a/ (like in _car, cart_) while in the other cases he'll write /o/ (like in _lot_). When he says [ɔ] he'll write /o/.

Seeing that these reforms don't make any change about /a/ and /o/, these can be applied to both AmE and BE (and AusE). The changes about _ea_, _ough_ and _ove, ome, one, oth_ can be applied to these varieties.

The situation is different for River Platense Spanish. Also if _s_ before consonant and _j_ are pronounced, respectively,  and [ʒ] ([ʃ] in Buenos Aires), there is no merger (except _yeismo_), but the merger between /θ/ and /s/ is important because an Argentinian speaker can't know when he has to write /ce, ci, za, zo, zu/ and when he has to write /s/.
In this case you're right and there is no possible compromise between these two varieties if one wants to make orthography _phonemic_ (French and Portuguese speakers have the same problem about /c/ and /s/).

But, in the case of the English varieties, there is no problem and one can regularize some exception in spelling without creating new differences between AmE, BE and AusE.

I'm not proposing a complete _phonemic_ orthography, because most of the time etymology is necessary to distinguish homophones.

For example, for me it is important to retain the difference between _cinta/sinta_ (Portuguese), _ciento/siento_ (American Spanish) and _ce/se_ (French), because there are a lot of minimal pairs, the same thing in words like _meat/meet, knight/night_.
But it is possible to regularize some English spelling, if one wants.


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## Pedro y La Torre

Nino83 said:


> For example, for me it is important to retain the difference between _cinta/sinta_ (Portuguese), _ciento/siento_ (American Spanish) and _cent/sens_ (French), because there are a lot of minimal pairs, the same thing in words like _meat/meet, knight/night_.



Not sure I follow you with regard to French, ''cent'' and ''sens'' are not pronounced in the same way.


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## Nino83

Pedro y La Torre said:


> Not sure I follow you with regard to French, ''cent'' and ''sens'' are not pronounced in the same way.



My mistake, I intended _sans_. I've corrected it.


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## jmx

Nino83 said:


> Do you think there are far more phonetic differences between British and Australian English than between Castillan and Riverplatense Spanish?


I find that question strange, because Australian English resembles a lot London English. Also, I wonder what you mean by "Castilian Spanish".


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## Nino83

jmx said:


> Also, I wonder what you mean by "Castilian Spanish".



Peninsular Spanish.


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## friasc

I know this thread is quite old, but I just wanted to chime on something Hulalessar pointed out: the thread topic as posed by OP seems predicated on the assumption that, in an ideal language, written signs would maintain a one-to-one correspondence to the spoken phonemes. Since it is a topic I've heard in conversation several times in the past, I felt it worthwhile to contribute a brief comment.

I can't help being reminded of the classical theory of universal grammar, as found in the Port-Royal grammarians onwards, which supposed a discrete separation between analytic and artificial word order and thus between the expressive and purely communicative functions of language. Following this theory, it was widely claimed that French as an analytic language was naturally better suited to expressing pure thought than the more musical and poetic 'transpositive' languages such as Spanish or German. In today's world, by shifting the criteria a bit, we come to consider Spanish as a straightforward language and French as needlessly complicated. For the classical grammarians, Spanish or Latin was simply French transposed into a troublesome syntax; today, Spanish is considered a model of simplicity and efficiency while many wish to simplify French.

What I'm driving at is the desire for 'phonetic' language, of which Esperanto would be the utopia, sounds to me like the latest instance of a long-held dream: a universal medium of communication immune to the noise of time, space and particular usage. Were not for those pesky inconveniences, learning a language would be as straightforward as a kind of algebraic exercise. But then, of course, what good would a site like this one be?


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## Zec

Languages with a 1:1 correspondence between letters and phonemes, that is, those whose orthography is "phonetic", are objectively easier to learn to read and write than the others. This is probably why such orthographies were successfully implemented in languages where written culture in the vernacular was underdeveloped and majority of the populace illiterate, and also why there's no incentive to implement it nowadays when literacy of majority has been achieved even in languages with the most baroque orthographies imaginable.

And once a learner, who is intuitively aware of the distinctions between phonemes and syllables in his native language, learns how to spell each of these, a morphonemic principle makes things more difficult, not easier: from my own experience, and I'm sure the OP would agree, it takes some time to learn to spell "hrvatski" instead of "hrvacki" and "predsjednik" instead of "precednik".

The biggest downside of this is that such an orthography, to be usable, needs a standard language to be enforced in speech as well as writing, which isn't good for the viability of dialects. The second biggest downside of this is that it needs to be updated constantly, and from all that has been said this is contrary to usual human behavior - link with tradition being considered more important than simpleness of orthography.

The last point will be a bit controversial, but I have the impression that mastering a difficult orthography gives it's master a feeling of elitism I'd liken to that of ancient scribes, which then incites them to generate false etymological spellings such as "ptarmigan", "island", which the French have thankfully abandoned (so long, "sçavoir" !), and to hold contests such as spelling bees. Also, I have the impression that there's a fair bit of inertia hiding behind otherwise reasonable arguments against spelling reforms.


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## Red Arrow

friasc said:


> What I'm driving at is the desire for 'phonetic' language, of which Esperanto would be the utopia, sounds to me like the latest instance of a long-held dream: a universal medium of communication immune to the noise of time, space and particular usage. Were not for those pesky inconveniences, learning a language would be as straightforward as a kind of algebraic exercise. But then, of course, what good would a site like this one be?


Finnish is spelled 100% phonetic yet it has got its own forum on Wordreference. The same is true for many other languages.


Zec said:


> The last point will be a bit controversial, but I have the impression that mastering a difficult orthography gives it's master a feeling of elitism I'd liken to that of ancient scribes, which then incites them to generate false etymological spellings such as "ptarmigan", "island", which the French have thankfully abandoned (so long, "sçavoir" !), and to hold contests such as spelling bees. Also, I have the impression that there's a fair bit of inertia hiding behind otherwise reasonable arguments against spelling reforms.


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## merquiades

I love etymologically spelt languages.  In English we usually can clearly see the origin of every word and it really poses no problem for children in school  Having lists of words to memorize every week doesn't impede learning and also opens them up to noticing cognates in other languages and a variety of different spelling traditions.  French tradition is also exemplary.   If finger were doi instead of doigt, there would be no link with its adjective form digital.  Same if foot were pié rather than pied which could not be associated with pédale.
I would be in favor of reintroducing etymology into languages like Italian which have lost it.  Taking away mute h, for example, seems like maiming the language.  Heroe looks much better than Eroe.  I'd also add back historical consonants and drop the double consonants. Some people here dream of a phonetic English, I dream of seeing acto, actore, lacte, and doctore in Italian rather than atto, attore, latte and dottore.


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## Zec

Somehow I get the impression that speakers of languages with phonemic orthographies will always defend phonemic orthographies, and speakers of languages with etymological orthographies will always defend etymological orthographies. 

To return to seriousness, considering the principle that established orthographies resist change, the main factor determining what language will have what kind of orthography is how much sound changes it's passed through since the orthography was first established.

In the case of Slavic, sound changes have simply been too few in number to make the orthography principally etymological - even if we all started to use the Old Church Slavonic orthography again we'd still have vanishingly few silent letters and maybe two or three ways to spell the same vowel.

A more interesting thought experiment would be to respell Slavic with an orthography based on the proposed Proto-Balto-Slavic phonology.


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## Red Arrow

merquiades said:


> I love etymologically spelt languages.  In English we usually can clearly see the origin of every word and it really poses no problem for children in school  Having lists of words to memorize every week doesn't impede learning and also opens them up to noticing cognates in other languages and a variety of different spelling traditions.  French tradition is also exemplary.   If finger were doi instead of doigt, there would be no link with its adjective form digital.  Same if foot were pié rather than pied which could not be associated with pédale.
> I would be in favor of reintroducing etymology into languages like Italian which have lost it.  Taking away mute h, for example, seems like maiming the language.  Heroe looks much better than Eroe.  I'd also add back historical consonants and drop the double consonants. Some people here dream of a phonetic English, I dream of seeing acto, actore, lacte, and doctore in Italian rather than atto, attore, latte and dottore.


Why stop there? Why don't you just write English like Old English and Italian like Latin? Why would you not write the grammar cases? Without the grammar cases, the relationship with German / Luxembourgish and Icelandic / Faroese is lost! 

Why do you want to keep certain etymologies clear while other etymologies should be "broken"?

In my opinion, French orthography is one of the ugliest in Europe. If not the ugliest. And this comes from someone who didn't have that much issues with writing / reading French in school... It just looks like Wannabe Latin. Why write "temps" when you can also write "tempus" (Latin) or "tamp" (real spoken French, including liaison)? Why have millions of verb forms in written French when most of them are pronounced the same? Why all these unnecessary double consonants when you only need rr, ss and the double consonants after /ɛ/?

French spelling looks artificial and fake. If you love etymology, then learn Icelandic or Greek. Those are (mostly) etymological spellings. French orthography doesn't look like Vulgar Latin, nor like Modern (spoken) French.

I feel like Frenchmen just don't want to realize how un-Latin their spoken language has become. However, this monstrous orthography only makes it worse. Spoken French is changing so fast because Frenchmen can't "speak as written". The difference between "un" and "in" is rapidly fading away. People assume there was never any difference in the first place, they think there is no difference just like there is no difference between "an" and "en". The verb forms are also merging. Spoken French will keep looking less and less like Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.

EDIT: I don't think English's cot-caught merger would spread so quickly in a language with phonetic orthography. Same for other mergers in English.

(EDIT2: I have made another thread about that)


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## Pedro y La Torre

There's a very definite differing between "un" and "en" (I presume you mean "en" as "in" doesn't exist in French). I don't know where you get the idea that they're merging.


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## berndf

Hi doesn't mean the word _en_ but the _in_ nasal as in _vin_.


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## Red Arrow

Yes, I mean people who say /ɛ̃ vɛ̃/ instead of /œ̃ vɛ̃/ (un vin).


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## berndf

I would say they meet in the middle.


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## Olaszinhok

Red Arrow :D said:


> Yes, I mean people who say /ɛ̃ vɛ̃/ instead of /œ̃ vɛ̃/ (un vin).



You're right, those nasal vowel sounds tend to merge in French, particularly in France. Personally, I find French orthography beautiful.


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## Red Arrow

berndf said:


> I would say they meet in the middle.


So you mean the vowel is partially rounded, then?


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## berndf

Red Arrow :D said:


> So you mean the vowel is partially rounded, then?


Yes.


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## Pedro y La Torre

berndf said:


> I would say they meet in the middle.



Yes, agreed.


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## iezik

merquiades said:


> I love etymologically spelt languages.  ... I would be in favor of reintroducing etymology into languages like Italian which have lost it.  ... I dream of seeing acto, actore, lacte, and doctore in Italian rather than atto, attore, latte and dottore.



I don't see that Italian lost from Latin much more than English, they both made about the same number of changes from Latin, depending on the methodology. Let me count in one possible way.

Latin: actus, 5 letters two syllables
Italian: atto: two letter changes (ct .. tt, us .. o), no change in syllable count, a total of 2+0=2 changes
English: act: one letter change (us .. removed), one syllable less, a total of 1+1=2 changes

So, it would be also possible to dream about changing English _*act*_ into _*actus *_or perhaps into one of even older forms as known in proto into european language.

Or, as Red Arrow hinted, why not increase the English etymological level and write:
*I dreame
*You dreamst
*She dreamð

Such differently spelt forms that are all pronounced the same way could possibly make English as etymological as French that also often uses several written forms of verbs for the same pronunciation.


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## Dymn

iezik said:


> So, it would be also possible to dream about changing English _*act*_ into _*actus *_or perhaps into one of even older forms as known in proto into european language.


The thing is _-us _already exists in English and is consistently pronounced (e.g. _syllabus, hiatus_), so you'd have to remember when to pronounce it and when not.

Current Italian doesn't have any _ct _word that I know of, so you could indeed render _tt_'s as _ct_ or _pt _depending on the etymology and pronounce them all as /tt/.


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## Pedro y La Torre

People generally prefer routine and dislike change. This largely explains why languages like English are as they are.

By all rights, spelling colour as color or centre as center makes far more sense but dialects outside AmE are resistant because it would involve change.


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## friasc

Zec said:


> The last point will be a bit controversial, but I have the impression that mastering a difficult orthography gives it's master a feeling of elitism I'd liken to that of ancient scribes



I think this remark by Zec gets at the heart of what several other posts are expressing. In a sense, it's the old Western philosophical distinction between dialectic (concerned with meaning and truth) and rhetoric (use of language that draws attention to language itself rather than bypassing it in the name of what it records). Ideally, a universal, self-evident system of writing would minimize 'rhetorical' abuse of language and the distinctions between language users which it generates: purified of its morphological residues, language would approach a transparent means of communication. 

As noble as such a project may be, in practice, don't such 'useless' aspects of language--non-phonetic orthography, for instance--always end up containing a great deal of meaning? I'm no polyglot so I won't be surprised to be contradicted here, but to give an example in Spanish (usually ranked high in the hit parade of phonetic languages), there are discrepancies between orthography and phonology, and a lot is conveyed by the degree to which a person pronounces 'naturally' or 'ultracorrectly', that is, in the manner of the written language. My point is, that linguage-related distinctions between scribes and commoners would persist regardless of the efficiency of the writing sytem. If you chase rhetoric out the door, it comes back through the window.


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## Zec

You're completely right - in that post I was being polemic on purpose. What defenders of etymological orthographies list are exactly those additional layers of meaning provided by such an orthography - it's almost like an art form. If one thinks of writing itself as an art form, then phonetic and etymological orthographies would be similar to, let's say, modern and baroque architecture respectively - and what ancient scribes did wouldn't be "elitism", but true artistic ingenuity.

In the end, I think, it all comes to one's values - What should a writing system represent? What advantages and disadvantages it presents compared to speech? What should the relationship between speech and writing be?

I used to firmly prefer phonetic orthographies, seeing etymological orthographies as defective, but now I see that the question is much more complex than it seems on the first glance.

That won't stop me from imagining the day when the French officially adopt the Haitian Creole orthography.


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## iezik

Dymn said:


> The thing is _-us _already exists in English and is consistently pronounced (e.g. _syllabus, hiatus_), so you'd have to remember when to pronounce it and when not.
> 
> Current Italian doesn't have any _ct _word that I know of, so you could indeed render _tt_'s as _ct_ or _pt _depending on the etymology and pronounce them all as /tt/.



I was kidding with that proposal about changing English. But, regarding -us, isn't English already full of letter sequences that can be pronounced in two different ways? Having one more wouldn't change much. And, if we wan't to emphasize the etymology, this means deemphasizing link between written and spoken form.

For the Italian -ct-, there are thousands of words used in Italian texts using -ct-, in vast majority Latin or English words. So, autoctono, ununoctio, cactus, de facto, octopus, nocturno, plancton ... Italians could use more etymological spelling and have worse letter-sound correspondence.

If you want the wikipedia text in .txt form to play with, ask.


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## Dymn

iezik said:


> I was kidding with that proposal about changing English. But, regarding -us, isn't English already full of letter sequences that can be pronounced in two different ways? Having one more wouldn't change much. And, if we wan't to emphasize the etymology, this means deemphasizing link between written and spoken form.


Yes, I know you were kidding but I don't find it comparable with Merq's proposal to write Italian with Latin consonant clusters. At the end of the day, _actus_ doesn't give any etymological information at all, because it's not part of the root. It's not like the connection with, say, _actual,_ is reinforced.


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## Lorenc

Zec said:


> The last point will be a bit controversial, but I have the impression that mastering a difficult orthography gives it's master a feeling of elitism I'd liken to that of ancient scribes, which then incites them to generate false etymological spellings such as "ptarmigan", "island", which the French have thankfully abandoned (so long, "sçavoir" !), and to hold contests such as spelling bees. Also, I have the impression that there's a fair bit of inertia hiding behind otherwise reasonable arguments against spelling reforms.



I agree completely with you on this last point. Furthermore, IMO: 1) People who have gone to the trouble of learning `proper' spelling don't see why others (i.e., the following generation of school children) should be spared that soul-building exercise. 2) People who have learned proper spelling feel good about themselves for having achieved 'something'; also, they may feel superior when the hoi polloi get spellings wrong. I put 'something' in inverted commas because to me memorising spellings is no real achievement, it's something like learning by heart the telephone directory 3) People, especially adults, are naturally resistant to any change which doesn't bring any immediate benefit to them; learning a new orthography, however regular and rational it may be, is more effort than sticking to the old one.




merquiades said:


> I would be in favor of reintroducing etymology into languages like Italian which have lost it.  Taking away mute h, for example, seems like maiming the language.  Heroe looks much better than Eroe.  I'd also add back historical consonants and drop the double consonants. Some people here dream of a phonetic English, I dream of seeing acto, actore, lacte, and doctore in Italian rather than atto, attore, latte and dottore.



I'm afraid that's not going to happen, mate  Also, we cannot just 'drop the double consonants' or change attore to actore unless we also change the corresponding pronunciation of those words.


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## Lorenc

As a general comment in my opinion the need for a regular orthography has somewhat diminished thanks to the possibility of instantaneously checking spelling or pronunciation with electronic devices (spellcheckers, electronic dictionaries etc.). When I have an IPA transcription for any English word only a few clicks away it's easier to put up with its horrendous spelling.


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## Lorenc

AverageFool said:


> Polish and Czech is pretty much phonetic as well. Not at same level as Serbian, but pretty much phonetic.
> Russian is also very phonetic, it have some double-sound letters (ex. ya), but other than that its pretty phonetic.



it doesn't really matter for this discussion, but having studied Russian for a few years I can't really agree with the statement above. From the point of view of a foreign learner mostly using the written language for study, Russian orthography is much, much worse (=more ambiguous) than Polish or Czech and also worse than French. There is no comparison with Polish or Czech, really. Russian in actual practice it is almost as bad as English: unless you know the pronunciation of a word beforehand, you can't tell for sure how it should be read just on the basis of spelling and of text-to-speech spelling rules (which, BTW, in Russian become very complicated when one needs to account for the ~ 15 vowel allophones of the language). The main reason is that one can never know where to put the word-stress; secondly, there is the е/ё ambiguity (how do you read жены ?), and also the e/э one (eg секс/сэкс etc). A Russian text supplemented with stress marks, properly indicating ё and somehow indicating when е should be pronounced э would be almost "phonetic" (but still with rather complicated rules governing vowel reduction).


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## Red Arrow

Lorenc said:


> immediate benefit


I think that's why the Dutch changed the spelling of the interfix -e(n)-.

The 1954 rule was: spell an N if the word is associated with plural. (or something like that?)
In reality, people (especially those who studied linguistics) had to learn endless lists of compound words. Some get -e-, others -en-.

It was bess*e*sap (berry juice) because you only needed ONE berry for berry juice.
It was bess*en*pulp (berry pulp) because you somehow need more than one berry for berry pulp!

The new rule literally takes 5 minutes to teach a child. It is so much easier now for teachers as well as university students. The Flemish population doesn't care anyway. Only Dutchmen do. The Dutch press even wanted to boycot the new spelling in 2005, not realizing that they were 10 years too late. Dutch children started learning the easier rules in 1995. They were pretty much boycotting their own children, and stopped when they finally realized that.

We haven't had any spelling reforms after 2005, probably because of that.
Also, I think the biggest purpose of the reforms were to bring Dutch and Flemish spelling together. The Flemish like their Ks, the Dutch their Cs. In 2005, all children in both countries were spelling the same.


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## merquiades

Lorenc said:


> I'm afraid that's not going to happen, mate  Also, we cannot just 'drop the double consonants' or change attore to actore unless we also change the corresponding pronunciation of those words.


You're coming from the point of view that spelling must match pronunciation, and that spelling can only be changed if the pronunciation changes as well.  For scripts based on etymology pronunciation is not so important.  We could write "actore" or "septanta" to show etymology and continue to pronounce "attore" and "settanta".  It wouldn't matter much at all to write "habitare" and "harmonia" and then not pronounce the h.  This difference between what is seen and what is hear is pretty much taken for granted in languages with etymological based spelling systems.
Other than that I know it isn't going to happen, buddy.  Would that telifoan, telivizhin and kumpewtar never happen in English either.


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## Dymn

Sometimes the phonemicity of a language goes in different directions:

If you can spell a Spanish word, you can always pronounce it, but not the other way round.
If you can pronounce an Italian word, you can always spell it, but not the other way round.*

The first system may be good for people who learn the written language first (non-natives mostly), whereas the second is best for those who start with the spoken language (natives mostly).

* Actually there may be some exceptions, /ʧɛlo/ can be rendered as both _cielo _and _celo_.


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## Lorenc

merquiades said:


> You're coming from the point of view that spelling must match pronunciation [...] For scripts based on etymology pronunciation is not so important. We could write "actore" or "septanta" to show etymology



Yes, I see. Well, forgive me for being blunt but it seems a rather silly idea to me, and the very same kind of silliness is in part responsible for the inconsistencies of English spelling. Fortunately such an idea would never, ever fly for Italian. 



merquiades said:


> Would that telifoan, telivizhin and kumpewtar never happen in English either.



Not all spelling reforms have to be as obtuse as your examples seem to indicate  telefone, televizion and computer would be good enough for me. Or you could leave those words alone: the great offenders are words such as bury, women, pretty, sieve, gone and many many others. I'm rooting for berry, wimmen, pritty, siv, gon


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## Olaszinhok

Dymn said:


> The first system may be good for people who learn the written language first (non-natives mostly), whereas the second is best for those who start with the spoken language (natives mostly).
> 
> * Actually there may be some exceptions, /ʧɛlo/ can be rendered as both _cielo _and _celo_.



In my opinion, you are simplying too much, Italian has scores of geminate consonants and not all foreign people (very few to be honest) are able to distinguish between simple and geminate consonants easily, unless you have them in your own native language. Not all people are trained linguists or language lovers, after all. 
I do know people who have been living in Italy for ages and they still can't write double consonants properly. I have to admit that some of them are not that educated.
Could most people write: _ammetteremmo; cappa, ridda, accetterò, etc?_


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## Lorenc

Olaszinhok said:


> Personally, I think you are simplying too much, Italian has scores of geminate consonants and not all foreign people (very few to be honest) are able to distinguish



I think you're missing the point of Dymn's (correct) comment; if you don't pronounce a word correctly, for example because you're a foreigner, and/or you don't know what that word should sound like when pronounced by a native, then there is no saving, no matter how regular the orthography is...


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## Olaszinhok

Lorenc said:


> I think you're missing the point of Dymn's (correct) comment



Thank you! Now I understand Dymn's comment better. 
.


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## iezik

I thought it would be fine to look into few past reforms to see why the orthographies change at all. Red arrow already described the simplification as the main reason for Dutch reform of 2005.



Red Arrow :D said:


> The new rule literally takes 5 minutes to teach a child. It is so much easier



The other languages go in similar way. I list here few larger reforms in Europe in the last century or so

German 1996: to simplify the spelling (Vereinfachung der Rechtschreibung)
French 1990: to make spelling simpler by removing irregularities (fin de la rendre plus simple ou d'en supprimer certaines incohérences)
Russian 1918: to remove some spelling rules without relevance to pronunciation (Реформа сократила количество орфографических правил, не имевших опоры в произношении)
Portuguese 1911: to normalize and simplify the spelling (normalização e simplificação)

Well, the people don't agree on what is simple. But the general direction is to make spelling simpler for those that already know the pronunciation. So, phonetic simplicity seems to be preferred over the etymological simplicity.

The amount of changes in recent reforms is rather low, about 2-4%, what seems to be measured by counting changed words in a dictionary of about 100 000 entries. So, about 3000 words are slightly changed in a typical reform.



Lorenc said:


> the great offenders are words such as bury, women, pretty, sieve, gone and many many others.



So for English a suitable list of thousand (or two) words can be found.


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## Red Arrow

iezik said:


> So, phonetic simplicity seems to be preferred over the etymological simplicity.


The spelling reform of interfix -e(n)- has got nothing to do with pronunciation. Until the 50s, the rule was: spell whatever you hear. But people heard different things. (there were 3 groups: most Dutchmen say -e-, West-Flemish people say -en-, and Brabantians and Limburgers only say -en- before vowels and B/D/T/H, otherwise -e-)

*Just like in Norway,* the main goal of the Dutch spelling reforms was to make a *unified* spelling.

The Norwegians abolished the letter C in Bokmål to make it closer to Nynorsk. It was ridiculous to spell "central station" in Bokmål and "sentral stasjon" in Nynorsk.


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## merquiades

@Red Arrow :D So what is the rule now?  The Dutch way, the Flemish way or the Brabantian way??


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## Red Arrow

merquiades said:


> @Red Arrow :D So what is the rule now?  The Dutch way, the Flemish way or the Brabantian way??


More or less the Flemish way. The rule is: add an N when plural -s doesn't exist. That's pretty much what my West-Flemish friends seem to say. (zonne-, mane- and koningine- are spelling exceptions, those three words need to be leanred by heart)

The thing is: people influenced their pronunciation by the 1955 spelling. It should be "kippenhok" in Flanders, but you will hear people say "kippehok" instead. Even I say it that way, despite being born in 1997.

The BHDT-rule is still very clear in male names, though. We add articles before male names just like in Greek.
Koen => de Koen
Dieter => den Dieter
Bert => den Bert
Tom => den Tom


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## Dymn

Dymn said:


> * Actually there may be some exceptions, /ʧɛlo/ can be rendered as both _cielo _and _celo_.


Oh I also found another caveat: you can't decide whether /kwo/ should be written as _cuo_ (as in _cuore_) or _quo _(as in_ quota_) without etymological training.


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## Olaszinhok

Dymn said:


> Oh I also found another caveat: you can't decide whether /kwo/ should be written as _cuo_ (as in _cuore_) or _quo _(as in_ quota_) without etymological training


Same for *cua - qua/ que - cue/qui -cui*
proficua
innocua
evacua, etc.
What about* acqua* and *soqquadro*?
*cq vs cc*
a*cq*uaio - sink
na*cq*ue - He/she was born
ta*cq*ue - he was silent/he kept quiet, etc.
Irregular plurals:
cilie*gia* - cilie*gie* - cherry
fog*gia* - fog*ge* - shape
cami*cia* - cami*cie *- shirt/blouse
ric*cia *- ric*ce* -  curly hair
provin*cia* - provin*ce*- province and so  forth.
The* z* is always pronounced geminated (tts or dd*z)* between two vowels but sometimes is written with just one *z 
z vs zz
ozio (òttsjo)
Muzi (muttsi)
Lazio (lattsjo)
azione (attsjone)*
Other exceptions:
 the verb to have: *ho, hai, ha*, abbiamo, avete, *hanno*.
*ne* (French en) *né *(neither, nor)
*da* preposition from/of/by and *dà* (third-person singular of the verb to give)
etc.
Another very common mistake made by some Italians:
*c'è* and *ce, *although the first* è *is open and the latter is closed, but not all Italians manage to distinguish these vowels properly.


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## dojibear

It's possible to have a phonetic spelling for "one standard version of English". It has been proposed. Systems like that have been invented. You just represent the phonemes, and ignore the regional variations in how each one is spoken. The big problem is convincing millions of people to change over to it. That has not happened in the U.S. Heck, we don't even use the metric system yet. And everybody uses that!

In the 1950s a phonetic version of Mandarin Chinese ("official Chinese", Hanyu) was created. It is used today for children, and it is used by adults for typing words into computers, and smartphones. It is called "pinyin". But it is only phonetic for Hanyu. It only writes the sounds in Hanyu. Every language has a different set of sounds. 



yezik said:


> Look: I cross the line in Beijin airport and I tell you my strange name that you've never heard. How can you write my name with Chinese characters?



If a name uses sounds that aren't in a language, it can't be written in that language. That's just as true for "phonetic" languages. Serbian, Polish and Czech may be "phonetic" for their sounds, but they can't write down Bantu names that include clicks.


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## iezik

Red Arrow :D said:


> The Norwegians abolished the letter C in Bokmål to make it closer to Nynorsk. It was ridiculous to spell "central station" in Bokmål and "sentral stasjon" in Nynorsk.



The age of a spelling standard of course affects the relation between letters and sounds. The older standards are generally less phonetic, but on the other hand they have more resources. An example is the description of a railway station in Wikipedia. Bokmål's Jernbanestasjon is about three pages long and still using one "c" (encyklopedi) whereas in Nynorsk the page Jarnbanestasjon offers only one sentence. Any new standard needs to compete against the old standard. Depending on support, either new or old standard wins.


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## iezik

AverageFool said:


> Serbian is almost perfectly phonetic. Written = Spoken.





dojibear said:


> Serbian, Polish and Czech may be "phonetic" for their sounds ...



While it's true that Serbian is among the more phonetic languages, nobody mentioned thus far that written Serbian words lack plenty of information in order to be correctly read.

1) Serbian doesn't mark stress position. The stressed and unstressed vowels are not usually counted as two different phonemes, but incorrect stressing of words is rather noticeable. The stress in Serbian is - my estimate - roughly as predictable as in Italian, so not as predictable as in Polish or Hungarian. I counted the stress positions of names of European states. If I counted correctly, the first 4 positions can be stressed, with 33, 13, 3, and 1 words stressed at each position.

2) The stressed vowels can still be different, short or long, and with two possible intonations.

3) There are two standard dialects of Serbian language, ekavian (e.g. in Belgrade) and ijekavian (e.g. in Banja Luka). The word for "milk" is pronounced as either "mleko" or "mlijeko". I imagine (let me somebody local correct if I'm wrong) that a milk with label "mleko" is in Banja Luka pronounced as "mlijeko".

So the principle "piši kao što govoriš" (Karađić) or "assi tenemos de escrivir como pronunciamos i pronunciar como escrivimos" (Nebrija), (write as you speak and speak as it's written) has limitations. To write all the details of pronunciation requires much work and there are several dialects to be represented by the same writing.


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## Red Arrow

iezik said:


> The age of a spelling standard of course affects the relation between letters and sounds. The older standards are generally less phonetic, but on the other hand they have more resources. An example is the description of a railway station in Wikipedia. Bokmål's Jernbanestasjon is about three pages long and still using one "c" (encyklopedi) whereas in Nynorsk the page Jarnbanestasjon offers only one sentence. Any new standard needs to compete against the old standard. Depending on support, either new or old standard wins.


Bokmål and Nynorsk are both equally old.


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## iezik

Red Arrow :D said:


> Bokmål and Nynorsk are both equally old.



Oh, it seems to me that it's possible to measure spelling age in different ways. What do you take as age? How old are Bokmål, Nynorsk, Danish, Dutch, Serbian, Montenegrin, French, English, Chinese according to your measuring?

My preferred measuring method is the average age of the spelling (conventions) that are used for a particular text. For example, if I take English text of a single word "Dutch", there are three items, "D", "u", and "tch". I estimate that the conventions are 1500, 1500 and 600 years old (I might be wrong by many centuries, it would take me more time to get better estimates), so the average is (1500+1500+600) / 3 = 1200 years old.

It also means that we can on average read (but not always understand) English texts that are about 1200 years old. When measuring the average text age of spelling, I don't measure the age of English script, inflection, syntax and vocabulary. These changed, too. 

So the method depends also on the texts (corpus). My first estimates for the *average text age of spelling *are then Bokmål 400, Nynorsk 120, Danish 400, Dutch 400, Serbian 150, Montenegrin 150, French 1000, English 1000, Chinese 1000.


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## berndf

Red Arrow :D said:


> Bokmål and Nynorsk are both equally old.


The _terms_ Bokmål and Nynorsk are maybe of same age. Before the introduction of Nynorsk there was no need for a special word for Bokmål, which is essentially the traditional Danish-based spelling of Norwegian.


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## iezik

An example from Italy shows what is important when changing language, taken from Treccani article on Graziadio Isaia Ascoli. In 1870, a _*Novo *_ _*vocabolario* _(New dictionary) was published. The word "novo" corresponds to a contemporary pronunciation in the Tuscan dialect. However, Italians were used the written form "nuovo" corresponding to an earlier pronunciation. Ascoli objected to the change as the contemporary Tuscan dialect cannot be taken as a base for linguistic unity as it's not prominent enough. Instead, a form that keeps the Italians together is to be promoted. Italians knew the written form "nuovo" regardless of their own pronunciation. And standard Italian language still uses "nuovo".

So, this was not a question of phonetic or etymological preference. The language should be unifying.


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