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"English, followed by Dutch, is the most opaque regarding reading." An observation very relevant to continuing discussions about the difficulties involved in te

"English, followed by Dutch, is the most opaque regarding reading." An observation very relevant to continuing discussions about the difficulties involved in teaching reading in American public schools, particularly among children for whom middle class English itself is tantamount to a foreign language. "Esperanto, Arabic, Finnish, Korean, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish are very shallow both to read and to write." Borne out in my anecdotal experience as a peace corps volunteer in very rural Korea, where universal literacy among very young children was taken for granted.

acadapter 3y ago
Serbo-Croatian goes too far with phonetics. For example, "free of charge" is "besplatno". However, the first syllable is actually "bez-", with /z/ devoiced to /s/ by the last consonant of the cluster. The prefix "bez-" will appear undisturbed in other words, where the root starts with a vowel or a voiced consonant. This is also done with loanwords, like "apsolutno" (absolute). However, it comes from a general pronunciation pattern for consonant clusters, something that could be defined outside of the actual spelling. Why obscure the internal structure of a word like that? It also exists in the opposite direction, by the way. Compare Serbo-Croatian "udžbenik" with the more elegant Slovenian "učbenik" (although Slovenian spelling has other, more serious problems than Serbo-Croatian, regarding some of the vowels).
- kldavis4 3y ago
  I think it has to do with being morphophonemic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography#Morphophonemic_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography#Morphopho... "This means that the spelling reflects to some extent the underlying morphological structure of the words, not only their pronunciation. Hence different forms of a morpheme (minimum meaningful unit of language) are often spelt identically or similarly in spite of differences in their pronunciation."
- schoen 3y ago
  This is very similar to how Latin spelling reflects consonant assimilation of prefixes (like in- and ad-). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/immanis#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/immanis#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alloquor#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alloquor#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/illumino#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/illumino#Latin Most modern English words starting with a- or i- and a double consonant are inheriting or borrowing a pronunciation spelling from Latin that showed the Latin pronunciation of the ad- or in- prefix in context. There's a challenge in transliterating Arabic because Arabic does what you suggest with the definite article al- <ال>. The /l/ assimilates in pronunciation to the following consonant if it is a so-called "sun letter". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_and_moon_letters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_and_moon_letters So you could transliterate either al-shams (morphological or etymological or letter-by-letter) or ash-shams (pronunciation).
- cyberax 3y ago
  > For example, "free of charge" is "besplatno". However, the first syllable is actually "bez-", with /z/ devoiced to /s/ by the last consonant of the cluster. Why is that bad? Other Slavic languages also use the same approach. Consonant clusters usually sound a bit indistinct, so you have to make a choice which pronunciation you want to standardize for writing. I'm a native Slavic speaker, and I know a bit of Serbian, and "besplatno" _does_ sound more closer to "s" to me. > However, it comes from a general pronunciation pattern for consonant clusters, something that could be defined outside of the actual spelling. Why obscure the internal structure of a word like that? To stay closer to phonetic accuracy. It's a trade-off. If you are a native speaker, you learn the spoken language first, so spelling being close to the actual phonetic pronunciation helps to learn writing.
  - acadapter 3y ago
    >I'm a native Slavic speaker, and I know a bit of Serbian, and "besplatno" _does_ sound more closer to "s" to me. Yes, it should be an /s/ for sure, but the spelling doesn't need to represent the /s/ sound in this case. The /s/ sound could be spelled "z" here, and be represented by a rule that says "the voicedness of a consonant cluster is determined by its last consonant". Serbo-Croatian phonetic spelling is like hardcoding stuff that shouldn't be hardcoded. And it focuses on the wrong stuff - why aren't there any accent markings in everyday writing?
    - cyberax 3y ago
      > Serbo-Croatian phonetic spelling is like hardcoding stuff that shouldn't be hardcoded. Why? I don't get it. It's a very nice feature of Slavic writing: it's phonetic (at least in one direction). And it makes it MUCH easier for native speakers to learn compared to more 'hieroglyphic' languages. > And it focuses on the wrong stuff - why aren't there any accent markings in everyday writing? Because the stress pattern can usually be deduced, if you are a native speaker. So accent markers are really needed for exceptions or for non-native speakers.
      - acadapter 3y ago

acadapter 3y ago

Serbo-Croatian goes too far with phonetics. For example, "free of charge" is "besplatno". However, the first syllable is actually "bez-", with /z/ devoiced to /s/ by the last consonant of the cluster. The prefix "bez-" will appear undisturbed in other words, where the root starts with a vowel or a voiced consonant. This is also done with loanwords, like "apsolutno" (absolute). However, it comes from a general pronunciation pattern for consonant clusters, something that could be defined outside of the actual spelling. Why obscure the internal structure of a word like that? It also exists in the opposite direction, by the way. Compare Serbo-Croatian "udžbenik" with the more elegant Slovenian "učbenik" (although Slovenian spelling has other, more serious problems than Serbo-Croatian, regarding some of the vowels).

kldavis4 3y ago
I think it has to do with being morphophonemic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography#Morphophonemic_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography#Morphopho... "This means that the spelling reflects to some extent the underlying morphological structure of the words, not only their pronunciation. Hence different forms of a morpheme (minimum meaningful unit of language) are often spelt identically or similarly in spite of differences in their pronunciation."
schoen 3y ago
This is very similar to how Latin spelling reflects consonant assimilation of prefixes (like in- and ad-). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/immanis#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/immanis#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alloquor#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alloquor#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/illumino#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/illumino#Latin Most modern English words starting with a- or i- and a double consonant are inheriting or borrowing a pronunciation spelling from Latin that showed the Latin pronunciation of the ad- or in- prefix in context. There's a challenge in transliterating Arabic because Arabic does what you suggest with the definite article al- <ال>. The /l/ assimilates in pronunciation to the following consonant if it is a so-called "sun letter". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_and_moon_letters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_and_moon_letters So you could transliterate either al-shams (morphological or etymological or letter-by-letter) or ash-shams (pronunciation).
cyberax 3y ago
> For example, "free of charge" is "besplatno". However, the first syllable is actually "bez-", with /z/ devoiced to /s/ by the last consonant of the cluster. Why is that bad? Other Slavic languages also use the same approach. Consonant clusters usually sound a bit indistinct, so you have to make a choice which pronunciation you want to standardize for writing. I'm a native Slavic speaker, and I know a bit of Serbian, and "besplatno" _does_ sound more closer to "s" to me. > However, it comes from a general pronunciation pattern for consonant clusters, something that could be defined outside of the actual spelling. Why obscure the internal structure of a word like that? To stay closer to phonetic accuracy. It's a trade-off. If you are a native speaker, you learn the spoken language first, so spelling being close to the actual phonetic pronunciation helps to learn writing.
- acadapter 3y ago
  >I'm a native Slavic speaker, and I know a bit of Serbian, and "besplatno" _does_ sound more closer to "s" to me. Yes, it should be an /s/ for sure, but the spelling doesn't need to represent the /s/ sound in this case. The /s/ sound could be spelled "z" here, and be represented by a rule that says "the voicedness of a consonant cluster is determined by its last consonant". Serbo-Croatian phonetic spelling is like hardcoding stuff that shouldn't be hardcoded. And it focuses on the wrong stuff - why aren't there any accent markings in everyday writing?
  - cyberax 3y ago
    > Serbo-Croatian phonetic spelling is like hardcoding stuff that shouldn't be hardcoded. Why? I don't get it. It's a very nice feature of Slavic writing: it's phonetic (at least in one direction). And it makes it MUCH easier for native speakers to learn compared to more 'hieroglyphic' languages. > And it focuses on the wrong stuff - why aren't there any accent markings in everyday writing? Because the stress pattern can usually be deduced, if you are a native speaker. So accent markers are really needed for exceptions or for non-native speakers.
    - acadapter 3y ago