4 ms·

... and all Latin/Romance languages, English is the exception, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian are all pronounced as they are written (or at

by jaclaz 6y ago

... and all Latin/Romance languages, English is the exception, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian are all pronounced as they are written (or at the most with some always-the-same reading conventions).

jobigoud 6y ago
French and Catalan aren't pronounced as they are written at all. Both languages have spelling competitions/TV shows. There is an excellent TEDx video where two linguists that are advocating for a reform of the French orthography invent a word and then write a script to list all the ways it can be spelled, following the existing rules of French spelling. The result is 240 ways to spell it. https://youtu.be/5YO7Vg1ByA8?t=266 https://youtu.be/5YO7Vg1ByA8?t=266
1-more 6y ago
All of those languages went through a deliberate reform where the language academy said "this is how we spell things from now on." English didn't really have that, but a bunch of dictionary writers did make changes that have stuck. In the US we can credit Noah Webster for having us drop the unpronounced "u" in "colour" or write "centre" with the kind-of-metathesis spelled out.
toolslive 6y ago
> Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian are all pronounced as they are written. ?? I dont' quite follow what you're saying. The sound 'o' can be written in French in a lot of different ways, some of them even don't even have an 'o' in them ("au", "eau", "aux" "aux" and I probably forgot some). It's notoriously difficult to write things in French just because of the discrepancy between what you hear and what you should write.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  Yes, but even considering this particular case, it is consistent Au in French is never pronounced as it is written (like augen in German or aulico in Italian), but always as a O Once you know the rules it's pretty easy Also French (like Italian, Spanish and others) have accents to help you decide how to pronounce a word Now consider these popular examples of English inconsistencies The bandage was wound around his leg to cover his wound. The insurance on the invalid was invalid I did not object to the object.
  - Someone 6y ago
    A poem driving this home: https://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/pronunciationpoem.html https://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/pronunciationpoem.... (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos)
  - thisiszilff 6y ago
    That is more like "speak as it is written" -- ie, the pronunciation derives consistently from the orthography. That is slightly different from "write as you speak" where the spelling of a word is literally speaking it slow enough so the individual sounds can be distinguished. Not disagreeing with your overall point, most romance language have a much easier mapping from speaking -> writing than does english, but the principle of "write as you speak" is probably the simplest you can get. (ie, the letter 'c' is used to represent different sounds in the word 'calambre', 'chorrizo', 'proyeccion'. It's not complicated to learn at all, but you still have a one -> many mapping on the letter -> sound. For languages like Serbian, it is straight up one to one.
    - romanoderoma 6y ago
      Not disagreeing with you either, but as an Italian it's not the C, it's the combination of C and other letters after it. Cane (dog) and cena (dinner) in Italian are two examples of soft and hard C that depend on which vowel follows the letter C. It wasn't like that originally, Roman C sounded always like K, Caesar was pronounced Kaesar (German's Kaiser comes from it). Than middle age came and things changed, but the pronunciation stayed consistent after that C+a, C+o, C+u = hard C C+e, C+i = soft C So it's not simply about "what you write is what you get" but it's the rule that is consistently the same Phonetically the examples above are unambiguous though Soft c = voiceless postalover affricate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_postalveolar_affricate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_postalveolar_affri... hard c = Voiceless velar plosive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_plosive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_plosive They are not exactly what you write, but they have precise phonetic symbols expressing how they sound (which is not always how they look on paper)
- jaclaz 6y ago
  It is not about transcribing, it is about reading/pronounciation. By convention, in French every time you find written: "au", "eau", "aux" "aux" you pronounce it "o". If you hear "o", it may be "o" or any of the above. There may be small "nuances" like with Z in some languages that can be hard or soft (there are anyway "coded" rules - not necessarily "simple" - but only a handful of exceptions), Italian: http://www.attori.com/dizione/Diz11.htm http://www.attori.com/dizione/Diz11.htm Now go to English and read aloud (say): flier plier pier tier tire
  - toolslive 6y ago
    not even that is really true: the "s" at the end of a French word, do you pronounce it or not ? depends, and there's no real consistency. (Sorry to be picking on French, but I don't know Spanish, nor Italian)
  - zaat 6y ago
    Parent was actually referring to write as you speak, not reading. It is true that if you happened to know French well, and you are familiar with the language writing conventions you can read the language just fine, but that's tautology. Roughly half of the letters written in French are not pronounced, either because they come too soon in the word, or because they are followed by another letter or because they are too late in the word. Unless the next word starts with specific letter, in that case you do pronounce the ending of the previous word. Sure, for a native speaker it could be very easy to read and write, and it might be determined by very consistent set of few dozen rules, but I would say that reading or writing French is anything but straightforward.
colechristensen 6y ago
English is a mis-mash of languages which reflects the various conquering and assimilation actions between the Roman empire and 1066 in the british isles, on top of an active loaning of words. When you have a language that's half nordic, half french, half german, with tons of words from elsewhere, the rules aren't really going to be rules. (there is of course a much more linguistically accurate way to say this)
- type0 6y ago
  Part germanic, part normandic, part latin and frankish is what has contributed it to be evolved into lingua franca of today. At one point in history of US formation they probably considered to have german and french to be official languages as well.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ivanche 6y ago
I'm sorry but this is simply false. Example in German, "die Hose", "der Sport" - s is spoken completely differently. Also, "die Schule" - sch is spoken (almost) the same as s in Sport. In Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian if you write "s" you say "s", no matter if it's first or second or third letter or if it's surrounded by "c" or "t" or "a" or whatever. Especially it's false in French with 17 different ways to write "e" or "o" even though it's spoken the same...

by jaclaz 6y ago

jobigoud 6y ago

French and Catalan aren't pronounced as they are written at all. Both languages have spelling competitions/TV shows. There is an excellent TEDx video where two linguists that are advocating for a reform of the French orthography invent a word and then write a script to list all the ways it can be spelled, following the existing rules of French spelling. The result is 240 ways to spell it. https://youtu.be/5YO7Vg1ByA8?t=266 https://youtu.be/5YO7Vg1ByA8?t=266

1-more 6y ago

All of those languages went through a deliberate reform where the language academy said "this is how we spell things from now on." English didn't really have that, but a bunch of dictionary writers did make changes that have stuck. In the US we can credit Noah Webster for having us drop the unpronounced "u" in "colour" or write "centre" with the kind-of-metathesis spelled out.

toolslive 6y ago

> Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian are all pronounced as they are written. ?? I dont' quite follow what you're saying. The sound 'o' can be written in French in a lot of different ways, some of them even don't even have an 'o' in them ("au", "eau", "aux" "aux" and I probably forgot some). It's notoriously difficult to write things in French just because of the discrepancy between what you hear and what you should write.

romanoderoma 6y ago
Yes, but even considering this particular case, it is consistent Au in French is never pronounced as it is written (like augen in German or aulico in Italian), but always as a O Once you know the rules it's pretty easy Also French (like Italian, Spanish and others) have accents to help you decide how to pronounce a word Now consider these popular examples of English inconsistencies The bandage was wound around his leg to cover his wound. The insurance on the invalid was invalid I did not object to the object.
- Someone 6y ago
  A poem driving this home: https://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/pronunciationpoem.html https://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/pronunciationpoem.... (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos)
- thisiszilff 6y ago
  That is more like "speak as it is written" -- ie, the pronunciation derives consistently from the orthography. That is slightly different from "write as you speak" where the spelling of a word is literally speaking it slow enough so the individual sounds can be distinguished. Not disagreeing with your overall point, most romance language have a much easier mapping from speaking -> writing than does english, but the principle of "write as you speak" is probably the simplest you can get. (ie, the letter 'c' is used to represent different sounds in the word 'calambre', 'chorrizo', 'proyeccion'. It's not complicated to learn at all, but you still have a one -> many mapping on the letter -> sound. For languages like Serbian, it is straight up one to one.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    Not disagreeing with you either, but as an Italian it's not the C, it's the combination of C and other letters after it. Cane (dog) and cena (dinner) in Italian are two examples of soft and hard C that depend on which vowel follows the letter C. It wasn't like that originally, Roman C sounded always like K, Caesar was pronounced Kaesar (German's Kaiser comes from it). Than middle age came and things changed, but the pronunciation stayed consistent after that C+a, C+o, C+u = hard C C+e, C+i = soft C So it's not simply about "what you write is what you get" but it's the rule that is consistently the same Phonetically the examples above are unambiguous though Soft c = voiceless postalover affricate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_postalveolar_affricate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_postalveolar_affri... hard c = Voiceless velar plosive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_plosive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_plosive They are not exactly what you write, but they have precise phonetic symbols expressing how they sound (which is not always how they look on paper)
jaclaz 6y ago
It is not about transcribing, it is about reading/pronounciation. By convention, in French every time you find written: "au", "eau", "aux" "aux" you pronounce it "o". If you hear "o", it may be "o" or any of the above. There may be small "nuances" like with Z in some languages that can be hard or soft (there are anyway "coded" rules - not necessarily "simple" - but only a handful of exceptions), Italian: http://www.attori.com/dizione/Diz11.htm http://www.attori.com/dizione/Diz11.htm Now go to English and read aloud (say): flier plier pier tier tire
- toolslive 6y ago
  not even that is really true: the "s" at the end of a French word, do you pronounce it or not ? depends, and there's no real consistency. (Sorry to be picking on French, but I don't know Spanish, nor Italian)
- zaat 6y ago
  Parent was actually referring to write as you speak, not reading. It is true that if you happened to know French well, and you are familiar with the language writing conventions you can read the language just fine, but that's tautology. Roughly half of the letters written in French are not pronounced, either because they come too soon in the word, or because they are followed by another letter or because they are too late in the word. Unless the next word starts with specific letter, in that case you do pronounce the ending of the previous word. Sure, for a native speaker it could be very easy to read and write, and it might be determined by very consistent set of few dozen rules, but I would say that reading or writing French is anything but straightforward.

colechristensen 6y ago

English is a mis-mash of languages which reflects the various conquering and assimilation actions between the Roman empire and 1066 in the british isles, on top of an active loaning of words. When you have a language that's half nordic, half french, half german, with tons of words from elsewhere, the rules aren't really going to be rules. (there is of course a much more linguistically accurate way to say this)

type0 6y ago
Part germanic, part normandic, part latin and frankish is what has contributed it to be evolved into lingua franca of today. At one point in history of US formation they probably considered to have german and french to be official languages as well.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ivanche 6y ago

I'm sorry but this is simply false. Example in German, "die Hose", "der Sport" - s is spoken completely differently. Also, "die Schule" - sch is spoken (almost) the same as s in Sport. In Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian if you write "s" you say "s", no matter if it's first or second or third letter or if it's surrounded by "c" or "t" or "a" or whatever. Especially it's false in French with 17 different ways to write "e" or "o" even though it's spoken the same...