5 ms·

To the contrary of most people, I think that English spelling is actually excellent because the spelling tells you less about actual phonology than etymology, a

To the contrary of most people, I think that English spelling is actually excellent because the spelling tells you less about actual phonology than etymology, and from there you can derive the pronunciation, thus the script is able to accomodate the accurate representations (phonologically) of every word from every language. There is no other language where people care about the correct pronunciation of words, because in most other languages the realm of possibility for the representation of sounds is extremely limited (take, for example, Hindi, with its supposedly phonetic script). Whereas Roman script can represent the accurate pronunciation of every word in Hindi, the Devanagari cannot even come close to representing all English words, not even all words written in Roman--which is probably why Roman script is becoming a dominant writing system in South Asia.

croes 4y ago
How would you pronounce "read"? As read or read?
- GoatOfAplomb 4y ago
  Read, obviously.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    I always read `ea` in `read` as in `lead`, it's easy to memorise :-)
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - anonymousiam 4y ago
      How do you pronounce the name of the town Reading, PA? https://www.howtopronounce.com/reading-pennsylvania-2 https://www.howtopronounce.com/reading-pennsylvania-2
      - NeoTar 4y ago
        In the town of Reading in the UK there was at least one ‘Reading Book Shop’ to ensure it made sense in either of the possible common pronunciations
      - Symbiote 4y ago
        Now the common American mis-pronunciation of Reading in England makes no sense. It's the same!
        blep_ 4y ago
        Most Americans have never heard of Reading, PA.
        anonymousiam 4y ago
        Ever play Monopoly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Company
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Similarly: the tear through my a Achilles tendon brought a tear to my eyes.
- euroderf 4y ago
  Is wound the past tense of wind, or did you get a wound from the wind ?
  - euroderf 4y ago
    If the pronunciations came easily and automatically, you might already be a native speaker !
tines 4y ago
> Whereas Roman script can represent the accurate pronunciation of every word in Hindi Isn't this only true if you already know how Hindi specifically is supposed to be pronounced? I don't think you could show someone a romanized Hindi text and expect them to even come close to an accurate pronunciation. For example, doesn't Hindi have like six ways of making the English "D" sound? Same thing for e.g. Chinese, you can't represent tones with unaugmented Roman characters.
- karashi 4y ago
  > Same thing for e.g. Chinese, you can't represent tones with unaugmented Roman characters. Interestingly this hasn’t stopped people from trying. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwoyeu_Romatzyh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwoyeu_Romatzyh
- DiscourseFan 4y ago
  I was going to add a section about how the Hanzi script is the only other script which is actually able to carry information that Roman can't, which is why Roman script dominates everywhere but China and will probably become the default system of writing everywhere in the world aside from China. You can disagree w/ me, but if it was so awkward to use then you couldn't force people to adopt it on mass, the fact is that its so versatile that it really can be adapted to nearly any language.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
aidenn0 4y ago
This isn't always true; see e.g. rain versus reign.
illiarian 4y ago
> because in most other languages the realm of possibility for the representation of sounds is extremely limited What. Most other languages do not shy away from having more ways of presenting sounds native to that language than English. There are 24 consonant and 25 vowel phonemes in Received Pronunciation alone. All inadequately represented by just 22 letters.
- DiscourseFan 4y ago
  No, as the "Ghoti" examples shows, contextual rules actually create infinite possibilities of phonological representations in the English script which is only exceeded by the IPA itself, since there are some edge cases, like "read" and "tear", where there is some confusion that wouldn't be clarified otherwise.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    The Ghoti example shows just how poor English is at presenting sounds, relying on bizarre letter combinations and context. And it still cannot properly represent the large variety of sounds that exist in it, even if it reuses the same combination of letters for completely different sounds.
    - DiscourseFan 4y ago
      I don't know why being able to represent a great number of sounds with a relatively small set of characters is a bad thing, if English had to have separate signs for every single sound in the language, even if we didn't count loanwords, that would still be about 50 or 60 characters. And with it, well, why don't we just adopt the syllabary of the Japanese, which can almost never accurately represent loan-words phonetically. To my point, there is not a single script, aside from the IPA, that can represent more sounds than Roman script in English, because there is no direct correspondence between spelling and sound value.
      - illiarian 4y ago
        > I don't know why being able to represent a great number of sounds with a relatively small set of characters is a bad thing 1. I didn't say it was a bad thing 2. English actually can't represent a grwat number of sounds using a small set: there are many, many sounds in English that are not actually represented by its set of letters. The most common of them, shwa, isn't in any shape, way or form represented by English language. It's a mess of different letter combinations in different contexts, none of which adequately express the sound. To quote Wikipedia: "In English, schwa is the most common vowel sound". And yet, there's literally no way to represent the most common vowel sound in English. Instead, it's 6 different ways that heavily depend on context, using letters that have no relation to the sound to begin with. 3. You claimed that "in other languages the realm of possibility for the representation of sounds is extremely limited" which is, of course, untrue.
cycomanic 4y ago
So you can tell me the etymology of tear (liquid from your eyes) and tear (like a ripped paper) from the spelling?
jamincan 4y ago
English is way too irregular for this to work. Good examples are reign vs. sovereign and isle vs. island. The etymologies aren't linked and the modern spellings are basically due to scholars presuming the etymologies are linked and adjusting their spelling to reflect that.
- DiscourseFan 4y ago
  >reign vs. sovereign this is actually explained by something called the Indo-European ablaut, or as the Indians who original came up with this call it, Guna and Vrddhi. Basically, there is a set of vowel grades in the IE languages: a -> (long) a -> (long) a; i -> e -> ai; u -> o -> au; (vowel) r -> ar -> (long) ar. The reason for the ablaut changes are fairly complex, but notice how in your example reign has the "e" as in pain, whereas "sovreign" has the "i" as in "bit", reign is actually the "guna" or first grade of the ablaut. English spelling doesn't generally represent these changes, nor does it have to, because people are aware of the sequence without knowing it, and those sound changes do not sound strange or out of place for them. >scholars presuming the etymologies are linked and adjusting their spelling to reflect that English actually has no official spelling for any words, its just that the King James bible was the first widely distributed printed book that people were able to read in the English speaking world, so people adopted the spellings for words in that book. Its quite arbitrary, which makes the elegance of the spelling system even better--the fact that no one got involved meant that we were able to create this beautifully complex system that could represent nearly an infinite number of sounds, because nobody tried to "standardize" and phoneticize English spelling.
  - tragomaskhalos 4y ago
    This brings us to Sanskrit, which holds as its highest virtue the strict correspondence of spelling to sound, much to the dismay of learners who must at an early stage tackle the complex sandhi rules that enforce this.
    - DiscourseFan 4y ago
      The irony there is that Sandhi seemingly developed later, early Vedic Hymns, like Ancient Greek texts, have very relatively few external sandhi operations.

croes 4y ago

How would you pronounce "read"? As read or read?

GoatOfAplomb 4y ago
Read, obviously.
- illiarian 4y ago
  I always read `ea` in `read` as in `lead`, it's easy to memorise :-)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - anonymousiam 4y ago
    How do you pronounce the name of the town Reading, PA? https://www.howtopronounce.com/reading-pennsylvania-2 https://www.howtopronounce.com/reading-pennsylvania-2
    - NeoTar 4y ago
      In the town of Reading in the UK there was at least one ‘Reading Book Shop’ to ensure it made sense in either of the possible common pronunciations
    - Symbiote 4y ago
      Now the common American mis-pronunciation of Reading in England makes no sense. It's the same!
      - blep_ 4y ago
        Most Americans have never heard of Reading, PA.
        anonymousiam 4y ago
        Ever play Monopoly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Company
cycomanic 4y ago
Similarly: the tear through my a Achilles tendon brought a tear to my eyes.
euroderf 4y ago
Is wound the past tense of wind, or did you get a wound from the wind ?
- euroderf 4y ago
  If the pronunciations came easily and automatically, you might already be a native speaker !

tines 4y ago

> Whereas Roman script can represent the accurate pronunciation of every word in Hindi Isn't this only true if you already know how Hindi specifically is supposed to be pronounced? I don't think you could show someone a romanized Hindi text and expect them to even come close to an accurate pronunciation. For example, doesn't Hindi have like six ways of making the English "D" sound? Same thing for e.g. Chinese, you can't represent tones with unaugmented Roman characters.

karashi 4y ago
> Same thing for e.g. Chinese, you can't represent tones with unaugmented Roman characters. Interestingly this hasn’t stopped people from trying. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwoyeu_Romatzyh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwoyeu_Romatzyh
DiscourseFan 4y ago
I was going to add a section about how the Hanzi script is the only other script which is actually able to carry information that Roman can't, which is why Roman script dominates everywhere but China and will probably become the default system of writing everywhere in the world aside from China. You can disagree w/ me, but if it was so awkward to use then you couldn't force people to adopt it on mass, the fact is that its so versatile that it really can be adapted to nearly any language.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

aidenn0 4y ago

This isn't always true; see e.g. rain versus reign.

illiarian 4y ago

> because in most other languages the realm of possibility for the representation of sounds is extremely limited What. Most other languages do not shy away from having more ways of presenting sounds native to that language than English. There are 24 consonant and 25 vowel phonemes in Received Pronunciation alone. All inadequately represented by just 22 letters.

DiscourseFan 4y ago
No, as the "Ghoti" examples shows, contextual rules actually create infinite possibilities of phonological representations in the English script which is only exceeded by the IPA itself, since there are some edge cases, like "read" and "tear", where there is some confusion that wouldn't be clarified otherwise.
- illiarian 4y ago
  The Ghoti example shows just how poor English is at presenting sounds, relying on bizarre letter combinations and context. And it still cannot properly represent the large variety of sounds that exist in it, even if it reuses the same combination of letters for completely different sounds.
  - DiscourseFan 4y ago
    I don't know why being able to represent a great number of sounds with a relatively small set of characters is a bad thing, if English had to have separate signs for every single sound in the language, even if we didn't count loanwords, that would still be about 50 or 60 characters. And with it, well, why don't we just adopt the syllabary of the Japanese, which can almost never accurately represent loan-words phonetically. To my point, there is not a single script, aside from the IPA, that can represent more sounds than Roman script in English, because there is no direct correspondence between spelling and sound value.
    - illiarian 4y ago
      > I don't know why being able to represent a great number of sounds with a relatively small set of characters is a bad thing 1. I didn't say it was a bad thing 2. English actually can't represent a grwat number of sounds using a small set: there are many, many sounds in English that are not actually represented by its set of letters. The most common of them, shwa, isn't in any shape, way or form represented by English language. It's a mess of different letter combinations in different contexts, none of which adequately express the sound. To quote Wikipedia: "In English, schwa is the most common vowel sound". And yet, there's literally no way to represent the most common vowel sound in English. Instead, it's 6 different ways that heavily depend on context, using letters that have no relation to the sound to begin with. 3. You claimed that "in other languages the realm of possibility for the representation of sounds is extremely limited" which is, of course, untrue.

cycomanic 4y ago

So you can tell me the etymology of tear (liquid from your eyes) and tear (like a ripped paper) from the spelling?

jamincan 4y ago

English is way too irregular for this to work. Good examples are reign vs. sovereign and isle vs. island. The etymologies aren't linked and the modern spellings are basically due to scholars presuming the etymologies are linked and adjusting their spelling to reflect that.

DiscourseFan 4y ago
>reign vs. sovereign this is actually explained by something called the Indo-European ablaut, or as the Indians who original came up with this call it, Guna and Vrddhi. Basically, there is a set of vowel grades in the IE languages: a -> (long) a -> (long) a; i -> e -> ai; u -> o -> au; (vowel) r -> ar -> (long) ar. The reason for the ablaut changes are fairly complex, but notice how in your example reign has the "e" as in pain, whereas "sovreign" has the "i" as in "bit", reign is actually the "guna" or first grade of the ablaut. English spelling doesn't generally represent these changes, nor does it have to, because people are aware of the sequence without knowing it, and those sound changes do not sound strange or out of place for them. >scholars presuming the etymologies are linked and adjusting their spelling to reflect that English actually has no official spelling for any words, its just that the King James bible was the first widely distributed printed book that people were able to read in the English speaking world, so people adopted the spellings for words in that book. Its quite arbitrary, which makes the elegance of the spelling system even better--the fact that no one got involved meant that we were able to create this beautifully complex system that could represent nearly an infinite number of sounds, because nobody tried to "standardize" and phoneticize English spelling.
- tragomaskhalos 4y ago
  This brings us to Sanskrit, which holds as its highest virtue the strict correspondence of spelling to sound, much to the dismay of learners who must at an early stage tackle the complex sandhi rules that enforce this.
  - DiscourseFan 4y ago
    The irony there is that Sandhi seemingly developed later, early Vedic Hymns, like Ancient Greek texts, have very relatively few external sandhi operations.