4 ms·

But 'j' in Spanish sounds completely different from 'j' in English. Which of these languages should give up their j and add a new letter to their alphabet? At

by Thiez 5y ago

But 'j' in Spanish sounds completely different from 'j' in English. Which of these languages should give up their j and add a new letter to their alphabet? At least in Spanish letters are usually pronounced the same, so presumably Spanish is closer to your ideal. Contrary to English, which seems to be designed specifically to torment its speakers. Here's a famous poem: https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html Perhaps you could give an indication how this poem would be written in English in a hypothetical phonetic spelling? Or would all the languages just convert to the International Phonetic Alphabet, and we'd forbid all the existing alphabets? :)

WalterBright 5y ago
> Which of these languages should give up their j and add a new letter to their alphabet? Neither. They both use 'j'. Problem solved. No, I'm not being facetious. Spanish books are written in Spanish, and English books are written in English. Both use 'j'. Somehow, it works. No need to invent problems.
- Thiez 5y ago
  No response to the poem, then?
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I thought my response was obvious. Should I cut&paste it from the article and post it here?
    - Thiez 5y ago
      It's not obvious at all. But let's cut&paste some of your stuff: > `a` is for the sound `aaaahhhh`. That's great for words like 'father', 'fall', and 'dark'. But not for words like 'dad' and 'fat' and 'frank'. Or 'same' and 'lame'. So no, in English, 'a' is not the sound for 'aaaahhhh'. 'aaaahhhh' is just one of the various sounds for 'a'. In a lot of ways English is like those hieroglyphics you seem to hate so much, because you have to know the mapping between the words and how they are written. It probably doesn't feel like that to you, because you're used to it by now. If you really want phonetic spelling, you'll have to change the spelling of most English words. That is fine, but I think most people would find that much less appealing than using unicode. Your suggestion would then basically boil down to: "Hey, let's change the spelling of most English words you know, and also ban emojis!" I would prepare for lots of little upside-down hands with the thumb pointing down.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        So you want to turn Unicode into a semantic language, too?
BjoernKW 5y ago
Thanks, you beat me to it with that poem :-) There have been attempts for a phonemic "respelling" of English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_E... However, apart from edge cases such as a writer wanting to convey the pronunciation of a word the audience might not be familiar with (e.g., ar-kuhn-saw for Arkansas or rice-lip for Ruislip ;-) ), other than for dictionaries, they are of little practical relevance. Personally, I sincerely dislike the predominant use of these phonemic spelling variants in lieu of the IPA in many dictionaries these days. In an understandable - and laudable - attempt to make their content more accessible to users who are not familiar with the IPA they, however, often got rid of the corresponding IPA representations entirely, which in turn makes the content far less accessible to users who are familiar with such representations. That's a classic example of "knowledge encoded in the world" (phonemic representations) vs "knowledge encoded in the head" (IPA) (from the "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman).

by Thiez 5y ago

WalterBright 5y ago

> Which of these languages should give up their j and add a new letter to their alphabet? Neither. They both use 'j'. Problem solved. No, I'm not being facetious. Spanish books are written in Spanish, and English books are written in English. Both use 'j'. Somehow, it works. No need to invent problems.

Thiez 5y ago
No response to the poem, then?
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I thought my response was obvious. Should I cut&paste it from the article and post it here?
  - Thiez 5y ago
    It's not obvious at all. But let's cut&paste some of your stuff: > `a` is for the sound `aaaahhhh`. That's great for words like 'father', 'fall', and 'dark'. But not for words like 'dad' and 'fat' and 'frank'. Or 'same' and 'lame'. So no, in English, 'a' is not the sound for 'aaaahhhh'. 'aaaahhhh' is just one of the various sounds for 'a'. In a lot of ways English is like those hieroglyphics you seem to hate so much, because you have to know the mapping between the words and how they are written. It probably doesn't feel like that to you, because you're used to it by now. If you really want phonetic spelling, you'll have to change the spelling of most English words. That is fine, but I think most people would find that much less appealing than using unicode. Your suggestion would then basically boil down to: "Hey, let's change the spelling of most English words you know, and also ban emojis!" I would prepare for lots of little upside-down hands with the thumb pointing down.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      So you want to turn Unicode into a semantic language, too?

BjoernKW 5y ago

Thanks, you beat me to it with that poem :-) There have been attempts for a phonemic "respelling" of English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_E... However, apart from edge cases such as a writer wanting to convey the pronunciation of a word the audience might not be familiar with (e.g., ar-kuhn-saw for Arkansas or rice-lip for Ruislip ;-) ), other than for dictionaries, they are of little practical relevance. Personally, I sincerely dislike the predominant use of these phonemic spelling variants in lieu of the IPA in many dictionaries these days. In an understandable - and laudable - attempt to make their content more accessible to users who are not familiar with the IPA they, however, often got rid of the corresponding IPA representations entirely, which in turn makes the content far less accessible to users who are familiar with such representations. That's a classic example of "knowledge encoded in the world" (phonemic representations) vs "knowledge encoded in the head" (IPA) (from the "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman).