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Many Indian languages are written in scripts that mirror what is spoken. Silent letters don't exist and pronunciations that don't match the spelling are very ra

Many Indian languages are written in scripts that mirror what is spoken. Silent letters don't exist and pronunciations that don't match the spelling are very rare. This does npt preclude the existence of rich dialects and accents. This increases the complexity of learning to write the language -- 56 letters in alphabet and each combination of consonant+vowel and consonant+consonant takes on a different letter form instead of just being a string of independent letters like English. But reading / pronunciation is straightforward. (No we don't have spelling bees :) )

inkyoto 1y ago
Indian languages, yes, but the story is more complicated with languages that use Indic scripts. Tibetan, Mon-Burmese and Thai scripts, as an example, all derive from the Brahmi script (through a long and sometimes windy ancestry), but neither reflects the modern pronunciation, hence mind numbing transcription systems. Tibetan and Burmese languages are particularly notorious for codifying the archaic pronunciation of respective languages that has been frozen in time for centuries. It is a treasure trove for linguists that have got a time machine for free, but I don't think that the same can't be said modern speakers of both languages.
int_19h 1y ago
Phonemic spelling does not require a syllabary, though. Several European languages are also written "as spoken" using the Latin alphabet, usually with a few extra digraphs or letter variants. Or you can make the syllabary itself compose regularly, like in Hangul. Indian languages are generally rich in phonemes though. My mind boggles at the notion of [n] [ɳ] [ɲ] [ŋ] all being distinct. I mean, I can reproduce each one of them on its own, but doing that in rapid speech, and worse yet, recognizing the same in others' speech...
- danans 1y ago
  > My mind boggles at the notion of [n] [ɳ] [ɲ] [ŋ] all being distinct. They are phonetically distinct, but not phonemically distinct, which is to say that in most places they occur, they aren't used to distinguish words or meanings. In particular, the velar nasal "ङ" or "ng" always appears adjacent to a velar sounds (k/kh/g/gh) and similarly the palatal nasal "ञ" always appears adjacent to palatal sounds (c/ch/j/jh), both as allophones of the nasal phonemes "m" (bilabial) and "n" (alveo-dental), basically just like we speak in English under the exact same conditions (like the nasal in the word "English"!) You perceive a difference with Indic language and English because the Latin script doesn't distinguish nasals for velar and palatal points of articulation - it only distinguishes by bilabial (m) and alveolar (n), whereas Indic scripts do distinguish those, even though they offer no additional information. The unique nasal sound which is often contrastive in many Indian languages is the retroflex nasal "ण" (ṇ). That's the one that it's easy to confuse in speech if you are not a native speaker, so it's the only one you need to pay extra attention to when learning.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    I don't actually perceive a difference. For that matter, my native language doesn't have [ŋ] at all (not even before velars), so it's actually tricky for me to distinguish it in English as well. But, as far as I know, the different nasals are phonemic in some languages of India. Which ones depends on which languages, but I do remember seeing at least one in which all four of these were distinct.
    - danans 1y ago
      > but I do remember seeing at least one in which all four of these were distinct. None of the major Indian languages I'm familiar with have 4 nasal phones, from either the Indo-Aryan or Dravidian language families. In the Indo-Aryan languages, the convergence of the various nasals is so complete that they are all often represented with a single "dot" diacritic character when they occur at word junctions. I'd be open to hearing examples of Indian languages that have 4 nasal phonemes, though.
      - int_19h 1y ago
        It was Kannada, a coworker's language. Per Wikipedia it has five nasals, each with its own glyph: m (ಮ) n (ನ) ɳ (ಣ) ɲ (ಞ) ŋ (ಙ)
        danans 1y ago
        > Per Wikipedia it has five nasals, each with its own glyph: m (ಮ) n (ನ) ɳ (ಣ) ɲ (ಞ) ŋ (ಙ) There are 5 nasal glyphs, but like in other Indian languages, 2 (velar and palatal) are allophones of the others, leaving only 3 actual phonemes. Indian scripts are often overspecified, and not every glyph represents a phoneme.
danans 1y ago
> Many Indian languages are written in scripts that mirror what is spoken. Silent letters don't exist and pronunciations that don't match the spelling are very rare. I don't think that's true. From the northern Indian languages schwa deletion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa_deletion_in_Indo-Aryan_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa_deletion_in_Indo-Aryan_l...) to the extreme divergence between the standard formal and spoken forms of languages in Southern languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia), it's a stretch to say the scripts mirror what is spoken. It's just that if you are a native speaker/reader, you are so fluent that you unconsciously auto-correct those inconsistencies - just like in English. Even in the formal registers of each spoken Indian language, which should be in theory be more systematically consistent with their scripts, there are inconsistencies in spelling/pronunciation of loan-words from both foreign and other Indian languages (i.e. aspirates in South India and retroflex approximates in northern India, and any number of inconsistent renderings of English words in Indic script).
- albert_e 1y ago
  Very interesting and informative - thanks for sharing.

inkyoto 1y ago

Indian languages, yes, but the story is more complicated with languages that use Indic scripts. Tibetan, Mon-Burmese and Thai scripts, as an example, all derive from the Brahmi script (through a long and sometimes windy ancestry), but neither reflects the modern pronunciation, hence mind numbing transcription systems. Tibetan and Burmese languages are particularly notorious for codifying the archaic pronunciation of respective languages that has been frozen in time for centuries. It is a treasure trove for linguists that have got a time machine for free, but I don't think that the same can't be said modern speakers of both languages.

int_19h 1y ago

Phonemic spelling does not require a syllabary, though. Several European languages are also written "as spoken" using the Latin alphabet, usually with a few extra digraphs or letter variants. Or you can make the syllabary itself compose regularly, like in Hangul. Indian languages are generally rich in phonemes though. My mind boggles at the notion of [n] [ɳ] [ɲ] [ŋ] all being distinct. I mean, I can reproduce each one of them on its own, but doing that in rapid speech, and worse yet, recognizing the same in others' speech...

danans 1y ago
> My mind boggles at the notion of [n] [ɳ] [ɲ] [ŋ] all being distinct. They are phonetically distinct, but not phonemically distinct, which is to say that in most places they occur, they aren't used to distinguish words or meanings. In particular, the velar nasal "ङ" or "ng" always appears adjacent to a velar sounds (k/kh/g/gh) and similarly the palatal nasal "ञ" always appears adjacent to palatal sounds (c/ch/j/jh), both as allophones of the nasal phonemes "m" (bilabial) and "n" (alveo-dental), basically just like we speak in English under the exact same conditions (like the nasal in the word "English"!) You perceive a difference with Indic language and English because the Latin script doesn't distinguish nasals for velar and palatal points of articulation - it only distinguishes by bilabial (m) and alveolar (n), whereas Indic scripts do distinguish those, even though they offer no additional information. The unique nasal sound which is often contrastive in many Indian languages is the retroflex nasal "ण" (ṇ). That's the one that it's easy to confuse in speech if you are not a native speaker, so it's the only one you need to pay extra attention to when learning.
- int_19h 1y ago
  I don't actually perceive a difference. For that matter, my native language doesn't have [ŋ] at all (not even before velars), so it's actually tricky for me to distinguish it in English as well. But, as far as I know, the different nasals are phonemic in some languages of India. Which ones depends on which languages, but I do remember seeing at least one in which all four of these were distinct.
  - danans 1y ago
    > but I do remember seeing at least one in which all four of these were distinct. None of the major Indian languages I'm familiar with have 4 nasal phones, from either the Indo-Aryan or Dravidian language families. In the Indo-Aryan languages, the convergence of the various nasals is so complete that they are all often represented with a single "dot" diacritic character when they occur at word junctions. I'd be open to hearing examples of Indian languages that have 4 nasal phonemes, though.
    - int_19h 1y ago
      It was Kannada, a coworker's language. Per Wikipedia it has five nasals, each with its own glyph: m (ಮ) n (ನ) ɳ (ಣ) ɲ (ಞ) ŋ (ಙ)
      - danans 1y ago
        > Per Wikipedia it has five nasals, each with its own glyph: m (ಮ) n (ನ) ɳ (ಣ) ɲ (ಞ) ŋ (ಙ) There are 5 nasal glyphs, but like in other Indian languages, 2 (velar and palatal) are allophones of the others, leaving only 3 actual phonemes. Indian scripts are often overspecified, and not every glyph represents a phoneme.

danans 1y ago

> Many Indian languages are written in scripts that mirror what is spoken. Silent letters don't exist and pronunciations that don't match the spelling are very rare. I don't think that's true. From the northern Indian languages schwa deletion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa_deletion_in_Indo-Aryan_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa_deletion_in_Indo-Aryan_l...) to the extreme divergence between the standard formal and spoken forms of languages in Southern languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia), it's a stretch to say the scripts mirror what is spoken. It's just that if you are a native speaker/reader, you are so fluent that you unconsciously auto-correct those inconsistencies - just like in English. Even in the formal registers of each spoken Indian language, which should be in theory be more systematically consistent with their scripts, there are inconsistencies in spelling/pronunciation of loan-words from both foreign and other Indian languages (i.e. aspirates in South India and retroflex approximates in northern India, and any number of inconsistent renderings of English words in Indic script).

albert_e 1y ago
Very interesting and informative - thanks for sharing.