4 ms·

Many of the Asian languages do not have the concepts of upper or lower case. They contain vowels that go beyond the basic 5 "aeiou" of the English language (eg

Many of the Asian languages do not have the concepts of upper or lower case. They contain vowels that go beyond the basic 5 "aeiou" of the English language (eg. see [0]). These suffice to let the speaker know how exactly to say the word unlike in English where it has to be learned case by case based on whatever is popular or acceptable pronunciation. A subset of of these languages are tonal languages which also have special characters to additionally allow the speaker to set the pitch of the word correctly which then changes the meaning of the words [1]. [0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/hindi/guide/alphabet.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/hindi/guide/alphabet.sh... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics)

mekkkkkk 6y ago
I love how explicit some written languages seem to be. It sounds great to be able to reliably pronounce any word perfectly. I suppose it's a trade off of complexity though. Learning these more explicit languages seems really daunting. Maybe it's just bias?
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  English and French are the oddballs here. In virtually all other European languages you can reliably pronounce any written word of the language. You don't have to go to Asia for this.
  - mekkkkkk 6y ago
    I don't know about that. I'm Swedish and there are a lot of words in our language that is impossible to deduce the pronunciation of. I'd assume the same is true for the other scandinavian languages as well since they are very similar. Perhaps we are oddballs as well, but it seems unlikely.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  You might find the IPA interesting. With maybe an hour of studying to learn the letters/symbols and mouth movements you can reliably pronounce any word in any language so long as you’ve got the IPA spelling.
  - mekkkkkk 6y ago
    I've actually looked in to IPA at one point. It is extremely useful when learning the basics of a new language. It would be very tedious to try to look up every new word you come across though. Alas, the worst part is that you don't know which words are pronounced differently than you assumed until you hear it or someone raises their eyebrows.
orthoxerox 6y ago
> They contain vowels that go beyond the basic 5 "aeiou" of the English language Even English itself has vowels that go beyond the basic "aeiou" of "the English language".
- louthy 6y ago
  I’m guessing what you mean, but maybe... * the letter Y * vowel pairs, like ‘ou’ * accents, like in ‘précis’ Is that what you mean?
  - lmohseni 6y ago
    Phonetically, English has about 9 or 10 vowels, depending on accent. Consider bill vs bike, or goose vs look.
  - kragen 6y ago
    Probably they mean spoken English, rather than written English. Written languages are traditionally considered secondary to spoken ones in linguistics, perhaps because they tend to be acquired several years later in childhood and several millennia† later in history. English is normally considered to have about 13–15 vowels, if we exclude the rhotics, depending on dialect: TRAP BATH PALM LOT CLOTH THOUGHT KIT DRESS STRUT FOOT FACE GOAT FLEECE GOOSE PRICE CHOICE MOUTH COMMA LETTER HAPPY, in Wells's standard lexical sets. But, you say, that's 20 lexical sets, not 13–15? Well, no dialect distinguishes all 20. My idiolect (a slight variant of General American) realizes TRAP and BATH as [æ], PALM and LOT as [a], CLOTH and THOUGHT as [ɔ], KIT as [ɪ], DRESS as [ɛ], STRUT as [ʌ], FOOT as [ʊ], FACE as [ei], GOAT as [ʌu], FLEECE and HAPPY as [i], GOOSE as [u], PRICE as [ai], CHOICE as [ɔi], MOUTH as [æu], and COMMA as [ə]. That's 15, or 12 if you leave out PRICE, CHOICE, and MOUTH, which are diphthongs made of vowels that also occur isolated. (GOAT is debatable, usually analyzed as [oʊ] or [ou].) Different dialects draw the boundaries in different places; for example, dialects with the "trap–bath split", such as RP, famously realize TRAP and BATH differently ([æ] and [a] in RP). Some dialects have fewer vowels; if we consider Indian English to be a single dialect, it may have more speakers than even GA, and most varieties of Indian English have fewer vowels than 12. I haven't found a good phonological analysis, but if you know any Indian English speakers and also know phonology, you know what I mean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_differences_and_dialects_in_Indian_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_differences_and_diale... goes into some detail. ______ † The historical gap might be much larger than this. Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs date back about 5300 years, and they provide evidence that spoken language was considered to be universal among humans at the time—there is no suggestion of tribes that lacked language anywhere in the written record. Today there are still peoples without written language, and a few who only acquired written language within the last generation. So we have good evidence that it has taken at least 5300 years. But Homo sapiens has been around for sixty times that long, over 300 millennia, and stone tools date back 2 million years. It strains credibility to imagine that the authors of the Lascaux cave paintings or the Denisovans who invented sewing were so unlike us as to lack speech; the origin of spoken language is usually dated to before 40kya. Unfortunately, no tape recorders have yet been found from that epoch, so the uncertainty of the antiquity of spoken language ranges over nearly a factor of 100. Maybe spoken language is a million years older than written language, or five million. Probably not ten million, though, or we'd be studying chimpanzee folklore.
andrewzah 6y ago
"These suffice to let the speaker know how exactly to say the word unlike in English where it has to be learned case by case based on whatever is popular or acceptable pronunciation." This is more due to how widespread English is, and how vowels/pronunciation have shifted over time. For example, The Great Vowel Shift. [0] Korean has exactly the same issues, albeit to a smaller degree. There are plenty of words that aren't pronounced like how they're spelled, due to grammatical rules. 종로 as an example. Or cases where words sound exactly the same and you just need to know the context/spelling- 쫗다, 쫒다, 쫃다, 쫏다, 쫓다. Then there's regional slang/pronunciation/dialect. Busan dialect is fairly different from 표준어, or the "official" standard language. This phenomenon is not unique to English in any way. Any language scaled up will develop these issues over time. At least you can try to pronounce "cough" or "종로", instead of not being able to pronounce "願" at all because you don't already know the pronunciation. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > This is more due to how widespread English is, and how vowels/pronunciation have shifted over time. I'd go so far as to say that english is now spoken by so many people in so many different regions, all of whom can now be heard by each other on a reasonably frequent basis, that it has forced english speakers to become so adept at vowel-reconstruction that one could pronounce words with completely arbitrary vowels and still be understood.
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    "it has forced english speakers to become so adept at vowel-reconstruction that one could pronounce words with completely arbitrary vowels and still be understood." This was still occurring before people were able to widely hear other regions' speakers, though. However things like cough, plough, although, thorough, etc having different, -correct- pronunciations are due to English taking in words from other languages.
munificent 6y ago
> These suffice to let the speaker know how exactly to say the word unlike in English where it has to be learned case by case based on whatever is popular or acceptable pronunciation. You can have three things: 1. A spoken language that evolves over time. 2. A writing system that accurately describes pronunciation. 3. A writing system that indicates history and etymology. But you only get to pick two. English went with 1 and 3, which is arguably the optimal choice.
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  Why do you think #3 is more important than #2? Why is preserving history and etymology more important than ease of learning for new writers? Put another way, why should kids have to struggle with spelling so we can have a writing system that preserves linguistic history?
  - munificent 6y ago
    Three reasons: 1. Because it's more important to know what words mean than it is to know how they sound. My daughter reads a ton and learns a lot of words from reading. Fairly often, she mispronounces them, and that's OK. What's more valuable is that she can often infer the correct meaning of the word both from the surrounding context and from the parts that the word is made of. If we normalize spelling to match pronunciation, much of the latter gets lost. It's easier to see that "mean" and "meant" are related than "meen" and "ment". "History" and "story" versus "histery" and "story". 2. Because pronunciation changes over time. If we continuously change spelling to match, it means older printed works get harder to read. In the worst case, they can appear to be saying different words than they intended. 3. Because pronunciation isn't uniform across regions. Should "lawyer" be spelled "loyer" or "lawyer"? Is "crayon" spelled "crayon", "crayawn", "cran", or "crown"? Is it "caramel" or "carmel"?
- mekkkkkk 6y ago
  That's a fascinating idea. Where would you place Japanese and Chinese?
  - 6y ago

mekkkkkk 6y ago

I love how explicit some written languages seem to be. It sounds great to be able to reliably pronounce any word perfectly. I suppose it's a trade off of complexity though. Learning these more explicit languages seems really daunting. Maybe it's just bias?

bonoboTP 6y ago
English and French are the oddballs here. In virtually all other European languages you can reliably pronounce any written word of the language. You don't have to go to Asia for this.
- mekkkkkk 6y ago
  I don't know about that. I'm Swedish and there are a lot of words in our language that is impossible to deduce the pronunciation of. I'd assume the same is true for the other scandinavian languages as well since they are very similar. Perhaps we are oddballs as well, but it seems unlikely.
elliekelly 6y ago
You might find the IPA interesting. With maybe an hour of studying to learn the letters/symbols and mouth movements you can reliably pronounce any word in any language so long as you’ve got the IPA spelling.
- mekkkkkk 6y ago
  I've actually looked in to IPA at one point. It is extremely useful when learning the basics of a new language. It would be very tedious to try to look up every new word you come across though. Alas, the worst part is that you don't know which words are pronounced differently than you assumed until you hear it or someone raises their eyebrows.

orthoxerox 6y ago

> They contain vowels that go beyond the basic 5 "aeiou" of the English language Even English itself has vowels that go beyond the basic "aeiou" of "the English language".

louthy 6y ago
I’m guessing what you mean, but maybe... * the letter Y * vowel pairs, like ‘ou’ * accents, like in ‘précis’ Is that what you mean?
- lmohseni 6y ago
  Phonetically, English has about 9 or 10 vowels, depending on accent. Consider bill vs bike, or goose vs look.
- kragen 6y ago
  Probably they mean spoken English, rather than written English. Written languages are traditionally considered secondary to spoken ones in linguistics, perhaps because they tend to be acquired several years later in childhood and several millennia† later in history. English is normally considered to have about 13–15 vowels, if we exclude the rhotics, depending on dialect: TRAP BATH PALM LOT CLOTH THOUGHT KIT DRESS STRUT FOOT FACE GOAT FLEECE GOOSE PRICE CHOICE MOUTH COMMA LETTER HAPPY, in Wells's standard lexical sets. But, you say, that's 20 lexical sets, not 13–15? Well, no dialect distinguishes all 20. My idiolect (a slight variant of General American) realizes TRAP and BATH as [æ], PALM and LOT as [a], CLOTH and THOUGHT as [ɔ], KIT as [ɪ], DRESS as [ɛ], STRUT as [ʌ], FOOT as [ʊ], FACE as [ei], GOAT as [ʌu], FLEECE and HAPPY as [i], GOOSE as [u], PRICE as [ai], CHOICE as [ɔi], MOUTH as [æu], and COMMA as [ə]. That's 15, or 12 if you leave out PRICE, CHOICE, and MOUTH, which are diphthongs made of vowels that also occur isolated. (GOAT is debatable, usually analyzed as [oʊ] or [ou].) Different dialects draw the boundaries in different places; for example, dialects with the "trap–bath split", such as RP, famously realize TRAP and BATH differently ([æ] and [a] in RP). Some dialects have fewer vowels; if we consider Indian English to be a single dialect, it may have more speakers than even GA, and most varieties of Indian English have fewer vowels than 12. I haven't found a good phonological analysis, but if you know any Indian English speakers and also know phonology, you know what I mean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_differences_and_dialects_in_Indian_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_differences_and_diale... goes into some detail. ______ † The historical gap might be much larger than this. Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs date back about 5300 years, and they provide evidence that spoken language was considered to be universal among humans at the time—there is no suggestion of tribes that lacked language anywhere in the written record. Today there are still peoples without written language, and a few who only acquired written language within the last generation. So we have good evidence that it has taken at least 5300 years. But Homo sapiens has been around for sixty times that long, over 300 millennia, and stone tools date back 2 million years. It strains credibility to imagine that the authors of the Lascaux cave paintings or the Denisovans who invented sewing were so unlike us as to lack speech; the origin of spoken language is usually dated to before 40kya. Unfortunately, no tape recorders have yet been found from that epoch, so the uncertainty of the antiquity of spoken language ranges over nearly a factor of 100. Maybe spoken language is a million years older than written language, or five million. Probably not ten million, though, or we'd be studying chimpanzee folklore.

andrewzah 6y ago

"These suffice to let the speaker know how exactly to say the word unlike in English where it has to be learned case by case based on whatever is popular or acceptable pronunciation." This is more due to how widespread English is, and how vowels/pronunciation have shifted over time. For example, The Great Vowel Shift. [0] Korean has exactly the same issues, albeit to a smaller degree. There are plenty of words that aren't pronounced like how they're spelled, due to grammatical rules. 종로 as an example. Or cases where words sound exactly the same and you just need to know the context/spelling- 쫗다, 쫒다, 쫃다, 쫏다, 쫓다. Then there's regional slang/pronunciation/dialect. Busan dialect is fairly different from 표준어, or the "official" standard language. This phenomenon is not unique to English in any way. Any language scaled up will develop these issues over time. At least you can try to pronounce "cough" or "종로", instead of not being able to pronounce "願" at all because you don't already know the pronunciation. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> This is more due to how widespread English is, and how vowels/pronunciation have shifted over time. I'd go so far as to say that english is now spoken by so many people in so many different regions, all of whom can now be heard by each other on a reasonably frequent basis, that it has forced english speakers to become so adept at vowel-reconstruction that one could pronounce words with completely arbitrary vowels and still be understood.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  "it has forced english speakers to become so adept at vowel-reconstruction that one could pronounce words with completely arbitrary vowels and still be understood." This was still occurring before people were able to widely hear other regions' speakers, though. However things like cough, plough, although, thorough, etc having different, -correct- pronunciations are due to English taking in words from other languages.

munificent 6y ago

> These suffice to let the speaker know how exactly to say the word unlike in English where it has to be learned case by case based on whatever is popular or acceptable pronunciation. You can have three things: 1. A spoken language that evolves over time. 2. A writing system that accurately describes pronunciation. 3. A writing system that indicates history and etymology. But you only get to pick two. English went with 1 and 3, which is arguably the optimal choice.

mwcampbell 6y ago
Why do you think #3 is more important than #2? Why is preserving history and etymology more important than ease of learning for new writers? Put another way, why should kids have to struggle with spelling so we can have a writing system that preserves linguistic history?
- munificent 6y ago
  Three reasons: 1. Because it's more important to know what words mean than it is to know how they sound. My daughter reads a ton and learns a lot of words from reading. Fairly often, she mispronounces them, and that's OK. What's more valuable is that she can often infer the correct meaning of the word both from the surrounding context and from the parts that the word is made of. If we normalize spelling to match pronunciation, much of the latter gets lost. It's easier to see that "mean" and "meant" are related than "meen" and "ment". "History" and "story" versus "histery" and "story". 2. Because pronunciation changes over time. If we continuously change spelling to match, it means older printed works get harder to read. In the worst case, they can appear to be saying different words than they intended. 3. Because pronunciation isn't uniform across regions. Should "lawyer" be spelled "loyer" or "lawyer"? Is "crayon" spelled "crayon", "crayawn", "cran", or "crown"? Is it "caramel" or "carmel"?
mekkkkkk 6y ago
That's a fascinating idea. Where would you place Japanese and Chinese?
- 6y ago