4 ms·

It's not though. It's much more regular than english, but there are a lot of issues (which were addressed in the past). Take for example the sentence "Ea ia ia

It's not though. It's much more regular than english, but there are a lot of issues (which were addressed in the past). Take for example the sentence "Ea ia ia". It's pronounced /ja ja ia/. Some examples: * x exists and it's not clear if it's pronounced /ks/ or /gz/. * e is sometimes pronounced /je/ * h is pronounced as /x/ sometimes and Romanians don't realize this. E.g. hrană is [ˈxra.nə] even though people think they say [ˈhra.nə] * i is the worst letter in Romanian. It has three pronunciations: /i/, /j/ and /ʲ/. Take for example "copiii". Is it pronounced /kopiji/, /kopiii/, /kopʲji/? Nope, it's /koˈpi.iʲ/ . In the past /j/ and /ʲ/ were written with ĭ making things a bit easier. * Stress is not written which causes confusions between words like "muie" /mu'je/ (softened) and "muie" /'muje/ (blowjob) * /ɨ/is written as both î and â based on some stupid rule to preserve România being writen as România instead of Romînia. This is to remind foreigners that we were once Romans, but it's pointless because most foreigners think Romania means "land of Roma (gypsy) people". I've heard that Serbian in Cyrillic is very phonetic though.

int_19h 2y ago
> h is pronounced as /x/ sometimes and Romanians don't realize this. Does the language actually have any minimal pairs where [h] vs [x] makes a difference? Most languages that have a velar fricative have a single phoneme that is either /x/ with [h] as an allophone in some contexts, or /h/ with [x] as an allophone in some contexts. There's no reason to reflect this in spelling if the distinction doesn't actually matter. > I've heard that Serbian in Cyrillic is very phonetic though. Serbo-Croatian in all its varieties is almost perfectly phonemic aside from pitch accent. Cyrillic vs Latin doesn't actually matter because even though Latin has more digraphs (lj for љ and nj for њ), they are unambiguous - there's no contrast between "lj" and "l" followed by "j", unlike say Russian where you need to distinguish between "лёд" and "льёт" somehow. If you want no digraphs at all, Serbian and Montenegrin Cyrillic is still not ideal because "дз" is a digraph. Macedonian fixes it by using the historical Cyrillic "ѕ" [д]зело for /dz/ though, if you want a perfect 1:1 glyph to phoneme mapping. Cyrillic in general is surprisingly good as a "universal alphabet" if you also consider historical letters and not just the current ones. It has unambiguous glyphs for all labial, alveolar, retroflex, and velar plosives, affricates, and fricatives, a uniform way to represent plain/palatalized/velarized distinction for any consonant, and if you consistently use "ь" for palatalization of consonants you can also repurpose the "soft" vowels to indicate fronting of vowels specifically.
- konart 2y ago
  > unlike say Russian where you need to distinguish between "лёд" and "льёт" somehow. But they are very different, no?) I'd think mistaking "лёд" for "йод" is easier.
  - aguaviva 2y ago
    Not as much as you would think. Russian has terminal de-voicing; so /d/ softens to a /t/, hence сад = /sat/. (Sort of; actually it's something in between, but the shift is noticable). And /l/ palatizes (becomes /lj/) before both е and ё, as in самолёт. (Actually the /j/ is built into ё of course, but somehow it seems helpful to recognize the commonality of the sounds when realized after /l/ - basically е becomes more yoff-like). The vowel might differ (one may be more fronted or rounded than the other), but that tends to vary among speakers anyway. Russian has a whole suite of secondary rules like this. Ukrainian by contrast is much more phonetic. But unlike English, at least Russian has a system.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      The interesting part here is /lj/ vs /lʲj/.
      - aguaviva 2y ago
        Thanks for swooping down to correct. It's the small touches that matter.
    - konart 2y ago
      I mean I'm native, just expressing personal opinion.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - aguaviva 2y ago
        I'll have to slow down and listen more carefully, then.

int_19h 2y ago

> h is pronounced as /x/ sometimes and Romanians don't realize this. Does the language actually have any minimal pairs where [h] vs [x] makes a difference? Most languages that have a velar fricative have a single phoneme that is either /x/ with [h] as an allophone in some contexts, or /h/ with [x] as an allophone in some contexts. There's no reason to reflect this in spelling if the distinction doesn't actually matter. > I've heard that Serbian in Cyrillic is very phonetic though. Serbo-Croatian in all its varieties is almost perfectly phonemic aside from pitch accent. Cyrillic vs Latin doesn't actually matter because even though Latin has more digraphs (lj for љ and nj for њ), they are unambiguous - there's no contrast between "lj" and "l" followed by "j", unlike say Russian where you need to distinguish between "лёд" and "льёт" somehow. If you want no digraphs at all, Serbian and Montenegrin Cyrillic is still not ideal because "дз" is a digraph. Macedonian fixes it by using the historical Cyrillic "ѕ" [д]зело for /dz/ though, if you want a perfect 1:1 glyph to phoneme mapping. Cyrillic in general is surprisingly good as a "universal alphabet" if you also consider historical letters and not just the current ones. It has unambiguous glyphs for all labial, alveolar, retroflex, and velar plosives, affricates, and fricatives, a uniform way to represent plain/palatalized/velarized distinction for any consonant, and if you consistently use "ь" for palatalization of consonants you can also repurpose the "soft" vowels to indicate fronting of vowels specifically.

konart 2y ago
> unlike say Russian where you need to distinguish between "лёд" and "льёт" somehow. But they are very different, no?) I'd think mistaking "лёд" for "йод" is easier.
- aguaviva 2y ago
  Not as much as you would think. Russian has terminal de-voicing; so /d/ softens to a /t/, hence сад = /sat/. (Sort of; actually it's something in between, but the shift is noticable). And /l/ palatizes (becomes /lj/) before both е and ё, as in самолёт. (Actually the /j/ is built into ё of course, but somehow it seems helpful to recognize the commonality of the sounds when realized after /l/ - basically е becomes more yoff-like). The vowel might differ (one may be more fronted or rounded than the other), but that tends to vary among speakers anyway. Russian has a whole suite of secondary rules like this. Ukrainian by contrast is much more phonetic. But unlike English, at least Russian has a system.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    The interesting part here is /lj/ vs /lʲj/.
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      Thanks for swooping down to correct. It's the small touches that matter.
  - konart 2y ago
    I mean I'm native, just expressing personal opinion.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      I'll have to slow down and listen more carefully, then.