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>Calling the pronunciation irregular is putting the cart before the horse. Spelling sometimes precedes the pronunciation. That's why Detroit is not pronounced

by jasode 9y ago

>Calling the pronunciation irregular is putting the cart before the horse. Spelling sometimes precedes the pronunciation. That's why Detroit is not pronounced "day-twah" like the French would say it. Because English borrows so much from German, French, Latin, Greek, with some Scandinavian and native Indian thrown in, Americans often look at the spelling and derive an Americanized English pronunciation. Put another way, a lot of English sounds the way it does because of the way it is written. The spellings originated from different parent languages but the pronunciation did not tag along with it. This adds to the inconsistency. As far which causal direction (pronunciation->spelling vs spelling->pronunciation) has the higher quantity in English, I don't know. I agree that in the large scheme of evolution from apes to humans, spoken language is more fundamental and will come before writing.

umanwizard 9y ago
It's true that writing can influence language (as can lots of other things). I wasn't claiming otherwise. The magnitude of each direction does not matter and is not related to the point I was trying to make. The point I was trying to make is: an inconsistency between writing and language, which are two different things, is not evidence of an internal inconsistency in the language. It is like saying the Linux syscall API is "irregular", because it is incompatible with the Windows one. The fact that "bough" and "trough" are spelled the same is not a fact about the English language so it doesn't prove anything about whether English is irregular or not. It is a fact about the writing system commonly used to represent English. Edit: with your comment about apes to humans, you make it sound as if writing was invented in some earlier stage of evolution (but after language). Actually this is not true. Writing was invented by biologically and behaviorally modern humans indistinguishable from you and me. It is still an optional part of the human experience and not used by all cultures. The complete opposite is true of [spoken] language.
- jasode 9y ago
  >The fact that "bough" and "trough" are spelled the same is not a fact about the English language so it doesn't prove anything about whether English is irregular or not. It is a fact about the writing system commonly used to represent English. I understand your separation of concepts here. Let me try to go meta and explain what many people are talking about: umanwizard : English _aural_ is totally separate from English _visual_ ; in this division, "inconsistency" makes no sense; (English aural would be like Linux and English visual is like Windows) others: "English language" is _both_ the aural+visual together. The aural & visual evolved together and influenced each other. Therefore, inconsistencies _can_ be identified. It doesn't matter if there was an "English spoken" before "English writing". The context for many people saying "English is inconsistent/irregular" is to say that "English aural+visual is inconsistent". I'm not saying you must agree that "English language=aural+visual". I'm informing you that the combined unit is what they're talking about. The combined concept enables those meta poems to exist. It also means that when you tell a linguist that "English is inconsistent", the linguist knows what you're talking about. Likewise, when a linguist mentions that "English is inconsistent", _we_ know what he's talking about. >, you make it sound as if writing was invented in some earlier stage of evolution No, that wasn't my intention. Just repeating the commonly held assumption that vocal grunts and pointing fingers at objects to communicate happens before systematic writing.

by jasode 9y ago

umanwizard 9y ago

It's true that writing can influence language (as can lots of other things). I wasn't claiming otherwise. The magnitude of each direction does not matter and is not related to the point I was trying to make. The point I was trying to make is: an inconsistency between writing and language, which are two different things, is not evidence of an internal inconsistency in the language. It is like saying the Linux syscall API is "irregular", because it is incompatible with the Windows one. The fact that "bough" and "trough" are spelled the same is not a fact about the English language so it doesn't prove anything about whether English is irregular or not. It is a fact about the writing system commonly used to represent English. Edit: with your comment about apes to humans, you make it sound as if writing was invented in some earlier stage of evolution (but after language). Actually this is not true. Writing was invented by biologically and behaviorally modern humans indistinguishable from you and me. It is still an optional part of the human experience and not used by all cultures. The complete opposite is true of [spoken] language.

jasode 9y ago
>The fact that "bough" and "trough" are spelled the same is not a fact about the English language so it doesn't prove anything about whether English is irregular or not. It is a fact about the writing system commonly used to represent English. I understand your separation of concepts here. Let me try to go meta and explain what many people are talking about: umanwizard : English _aural_ is totally separate from English _visual_ ; in this division, "inconsistency" makes no sense; (English aural would be like Linux and English visual is like Windows) others: "English language" is _both_ the aural+visual together. The aural & visual evolved together and influenced each other. Therefore, inconsistencies _can_ be identified. It doesn't matter if there was an "English spoken" before "English writing". The context for many people saying "English is inconsistent/irregular" is to say that "English aural+visual is inconsistent". I'm not saying you must agree that "English language=aural+visual". I'm informing you that the combined unit is what they're talking about. The combined concept enables those meta poems to exist. It also means that when you tell a linguist that "English is inconsistent", the linguist knows what you're talking about. Likewise, when a linguist mentions that "English is inconsistent", _we_ know what he's talking about. >, you make it sound as if writing was invented in some earlier stage of evolution No, that wasn't my intention. Just repeating the commonly held assumption that vocal grunts and pointing fingers at objects to communicate happens before systematic writing.