6 ms·

English is pretty bad unless you are a total orthography history nerd. For example, people routinely mispronounce the name of the President of China. (It’s clo

English is pretty bad unless you are a total orthography history nerd. For example, people routinely mispronounce the name of the President of China. (It’s closer to Shi than Zi.) Why? Because English has a strong preference for retaining native spellings even when the other language has a completely incompatible set of pronunciation rules. With Chinese this is extra silly because pinyin is only one of a million ways of romanizing Chinese and basically the least English compatible method. English spelling is like a Hofstader puzzle: to be able to master it, you must master the spellings of all languages plus English itself recursively going back to the Great Vowel Shift. It’s not a good system.

bsder 7y ago
> For example, people routinely mispronounce the name of the President of China. (It’s closer to Shi than Zi.) Why? Because English has a strong preference for retaining native spellings even when the other language has a completely incompatible set of pronunciation rules. This is objecting to the .01%--I find it hard to take seriously. English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. It's not always one-to-one, and it's sometimes really weird, but it's generally there. So, if someone sees Xi Jinping in writing, the utterance out of their mouth will be close enough for me to know what they are talking about. However, even when someone completely botches the spelling of a word, there is almost always enough logic behind the error for the person looking at it figure out the actual word meant. That's a really nice feature in a language. (For example--I have seen phlegm or subtle spelled in all manner of ways, but I generally could tell what was meant.). By contrast, lots of the articles talking about Chinese highlight all the really common words that native speakers can't even cough up the kanji for because there is so little phonic correspondence.
- littlestymaar 7y ago
  > English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between spelling and pronunciation It's absolutely not the case and it's actually one of the most mocked feature of English on the internet. The pronunciation of the name of “Sean Bean” is a good example. As a non native speaker, I have had a lot of pain learning the pronunciation of words I've only seen written. In American English, you have at least one direction easy (from pronunciation to spelling) but not in British English. And going from spelling to pronunciation is really hard in both dialects.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    It's actually Sean. Pronounced shawn. Be thankful we didn't get more from Gaelic, where "Laoghaire" is pronounced leery. :) Don't agree US English makes it easier, it's just differently idiosyncratic. Extreme example - ghoti: Pronounced fish. The gh from tough, the o from women, the ti from nation. Works in American English. :p If I hear in the US "cull err" and go to spell, I don't end up at color, hearing "sell fone" doesn't lead me to cell phone, etc. Half the problems of English spelling are the three (four in US English, with Webster) significant attempts to simplify spelling over the centuries, and outsourcing some temporarily illegal printing to the Dutch.
    - littlestymaar 7y ago
      > It's actually Sean. Indeed. Fixed, thanks > Don't agree US English makes it easier, it's just differently idiosyncratic. I found it easier when learning, but YMMV.
      - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        I'll defer then, as you're the non-native speaker who learnt the hard way. :) Just a lot I might have thought American English would take the opportunity to clean up, remain. Like all those silent h's from having printed the first English bibles in Holland. Ghost, aghast etc. There used to be a lot more - ghospel for one!
        littlestymaar 7y ago
        > you're the non-native speaker who learnt the hard way Well, even native speakers need to learn it the hard way as a child! As far as I'm concerned, I really struggled with French spelling when I was younger ;). > Like all those silent h's from having printed the first English bibles in Holland. Ghost, aghast etc. That's a really cool story. Thanks!
    - 80386 7y ago
      > Extreme example - ghoti: Pronounced fish. The gh from tough, the o from women, the ti from nation. Works in American English. :p http://zompist.com/spell.html http://zompist.com/spell.html Initial 'gh' can never be pronounced 'f', final 'ti' can never be pronounced 'sh', and 'o' is only pronounced 'i' in one word.
gumby 7y ago
Pinyin is requested by the Chinese government. They used to use Wade-Giles but changed iirc in the 70s and requested that others do so too. It can’t really be called part of English in any meaningful way anyway.
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  We don't call the country "Zhongguo" in English, we call it "China". So why do we let them tell us to call it "Beijing" instead of "Peking"? It's craziness. We gave up a perfectly good name for "Canton" and replaced it with an unreadable mess that isn't even in Cantonese ("Guangzhou"). If people who speak Chinese want to use pinyin, more power to them. But English speakers need to stop just copying other people's romanizations even when the romanizations do not connect to our spelling system at all.

bsder 7y ago

> For example, people routinely mispronounce the name of the President of China. (It’s closer to Shi than Zi.) Why? Because English has a strong preference for retaining native spellings even when the other language has a completely incompatible set of pronunciation rules. This is objecting to the .01%--I find it hard to take seriously. English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. It's not always one-to-one, and it's sometimes really weird, but it's generally there. So, if someone sees Xi Jinping in writing, the utterance out of their mouth will be close enough for me to know what they are talking about. However, even when someone completely botches the spelling of a word, there is almost always enough logic behind the error for the person looking at it figure out the actual word meant. That's a really nice feature in a language. (For example--I have seen phlegm or subtle spelled in all manner of ways, but I generally could tell what was meant.). By contrast, lots of the articles talking about Chinese highlight all the really common words that native speakers can't even cough up the kanji for because there is so little phonic correspondence.

littlestymaar 7y ago
> English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between spelling and pronunciation It's absolutely not the case and it's actually one of the most mocked feature of English on the internet. The pronunciation of the name of “Sean Bean” is a good example. As a non native speaker, I have had a lot of pain learning the pronunciation of words I've only seen written. In American English, you have at least one direction easy (from pronunciation to spelling) but not in British English. And going from spelling to pronunciation is really hard in both dialects.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  It's actually Sean. Pronounced shawn. Be thankful we didn't get more from Gaelic, where "Laoghaire" is pronounced leery. :) Don't agree US English makes it easier, it's just differently idiosyncratic. Extreme example - ghoti: Pronounced fish. The gh from tough, the o from women, the ti from nation. Works in American English. :p If I hear in the US "cull err" and go to spell, I don't end up at color, hearing "sell fone" doesn't lead me to cell phone, etc. Half the problems of English spelling are the three (four in US English, with Webster) significant attempts to simplify spelling over the centuries, and outsourcing some temporarily illegal printing to the Dutch.
  - littlestymaar 7y ago
    > It's actually Sean. Indeed. Fixed, thanks > Don't agree US English makes it easier, it's just differently idiosyncratic. I found it easier when learning, but YMMV.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      I'll defer then, as you're the non-native speaker who learnt the hard way. :) Just a lot I might have thought American English would take the opportunity to clean up, remain. Like all those silent h's from having printed the first English bibles in Holland. Ghost, aghast etc. There used to be a lot more - ghospel for one!
      - littlestymaar 7y ago
        > you're the non-native speaker who learnt the hard way Well, even native speakers need to learn it the hard way as a child! As far as I'm concerned, I really struggled with French spelling when I was younger ;). > Like all those silent h's from having printed the first English bibles in Holland. Ghost, aghast etc. That's a really cool story. Thanks!
  - 80386 7y ago
    > Extreme example - ghoti: Pronounced fish. The gh from tough, the o from women, the ti from nation. Works in American English. :p http://zompist.com/spell.html http://zompist.com/spell.html Initial 'gh' can never be pronounced 'f', final 'ti' can never be pronounced 'sh', and 'o' is only pronounced 'i' in one word.

gumby 7y ago

Pinyin is requested by the Chinese government. They used to use Wade-Giles but changed iirc in the 70s and requested that others do so too. It can’t really be called part of English in any meaningful way anyway.

earthboundkid 7y ago
We don't call the country "Zhongguo" in English, we call it "China". So why do we let them tell us to call it "Beijing" instead of "Peking"? It's craziness. We gave up a perfectly good name for "Canton" and replaced it with an unreadable mess that isn't even in Cantonese ("Guangzhou"). If people who speak Chinese want to use pinyin, more power to them. But English speakers need to stop just copying other people's romanizations even when the romanizations do not connect to our spelling system at all.