42 ms·

Part of a series: http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/ http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/ Interesting stuff -- I wish each one were treated in more detail!

• yorwba 9y ago
  Interestingly, the divergence between spelling and pronunciation of English words is frequently mentioned as a special difficulty for speakers of languages that are written phonetically, but it seems like this would be a problem for everyone. Probably, those who are already used to non-phonetic scripts don't expect English to be any easier and therefore that particular point isn't as salient. It would also be interesting to have a comparison in the opposite direction: things that English speakers frequently struggle with when learning the respective language.
  • gumby 9y ago
    Interestingly, the divergence between spelling and pronunciation of English words if frequently mentioned as a special difficulty for speakers of languages that are written phonetically, but it seems like this would be a problem for everyone. I am glad that English doesn't try to accomplish this (French is even more extreme in this regard). In English words are roughly spelled in terms of their root meaning, which makes it easier for a native speaker to figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word. In fact the fashion for "phonics" (trying to learn English starting with phonetic structures) has screwed up reading and spelling for two generations of American kids. A phonetic approach has a couple of problems. The first is the choice of whose phonemes to use. Any language with many speakers will have several dialects, so one single dialect must be chosen as authoritative. The second is that pronunciation inherently shifts over time so you must continually tinker with spelling or end up with a written language full of head-scratchers (it's no surprise that spelling bees have been prime time TV fodder in France). German is a good example: offical spelling and grammar corresponds with Hochdeutch (which is not used at home by a majority of people, though perhaps recently a plurality?) and which was offically adjusted twice in the 20th century alone to account for pronunciation shifts. I don't know Korean but with 80 million speakers I'd think that it suffers from the same issues, although perhaps hangul's structure manages to exert a conservative force on pronunciation.
    • yorwba 9y ago
      > In English words are roughly spelled in terms of their root meaning, which makes it easier for a native speaker to figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word. I was under the impression that words are spelled according to their etymology, which only rarely helps with the meaning of unfamiliar words. > German is a good example: offical spelling and grammar corresponds with Hochdeutch (which is not used at home by a majority of people, though perhaps recently a plurality?) and which was offically adjusted twice in the 20th century alone to account for pronunciation shifts. I learned Hochdeutsch at home and can't even do a credible impression of the local dialect, but I admit that the experience of others may differ. However, I'm quite sure that the German spelling reforms are not related to shifts in pronunciation, rather they were attempts to simplify the rule system.
      • eesmith 9y ago
        And fake etymology. "Island" is spelled with an 's' because people in the 1400s thought it was a cognate with 'isle' so changed the spelling from 'iland'. More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform#16th_and_17th_centuries_AD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo... : > From the 16th century AD onward, English writers who were scholars of Greek and Latin literature tried to link English words to their Graeco-Latin counterparts. They did this by adding silent letters to make the real or imagined links more obvious. Thus det became debt (to link it to Latin debitum), dout became doubt (to link it to Latin dubitare), sissors became scissors and sithe became scythe (as they were wrongly thought to come from Latin scindere), iland became island (as it was wrongly thought to come from Latin insula), ake became ache (as it was wrongly thought to come from Greek akhos), and so forth.[
    • wahern 9y ago
      > I am glad that English doesn't try to accomplish this AFAIU, English was phonetic, more or less. When English spelling was first formalized it closely reflected the pronunciation of Middle English. Events like the Great Vowel Shift systematically divorced the pronunciation of many syllables from their original spelling. British and American attempts to reform the spelling in response complicated things further. The spelling of diphthongs in English make much more sense after reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift The process continues. See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift
  • ajuc 9y ago
    It is very difficult, especially if you first learn from reading/writing. 25 years later and I still unconsciously pronounce some words like they would be pronounced in my language :(