Assorted Language Questions

[Tee Kay]

Canadian English speaker here - Why did this thread start with a conversation about how to reform spelling in Spanish as opposed to English? How many years were we in elementary school learning how to spell? South of the border, spelling is a spectator sport.

There's been no universally accepted Academy of English to dictate spelling reform down from on high, which is the way spelling reforms usually work in other languages.

And it doesn't look like there will ever be. English is too big with too many varieties.

Added - I was just reading something about stress timing as opposed to syllable timing. English is stress timed. An analogy I can think of came from a youtube video about the Pink Panther melody and showed how we sometimes time the stressed syllables with the beat. The stressed and unstressed syllables will also mess with the spelling.

I've spoken English as a second language for 20+ years and stresses still mess with me.

 

[QarQing]

Why is Basque pronounciation so complex? My question is why does Basque pronounciation vary so much dialect by dialect and why is it so irregular? Like H can be silent in most dialects except standard, J can make the /zh/ sound, /h/, etc. Why is that?

 

[QarQing]

Why is Basque pronounciation so complex? My question is why does Basque pronounciation vary so much dialect by dialect and why is it so irregular? Like H can be silent in most dialects except standard, J can make the /zh/ sound, /h/, etc. Why is that?

Can anyone answer me this question

 

[Hygro]

Nope

 

[Josu]

So I've been studying Spanish recently but I'm finding it hard since, many letters make more than one sound and many are redundant (Ex: V)? What spelling reform do you think you would make? One of them would be me using C for /th/, Z for /z/ when S sounds like Z and Q for /k/? What do you think?

If Z sounds like S, my recomendation is to drop this course out or change your teacher.

 

[Josu]

Why is Basque pronounciation so complex? My question is why does Basque pronounciation vary so much dialect by dialect and why is it so irregular? Like H can be silent in most dialects except standard, J can make the /zh/ sound, /h/, etc. Why is that?

What? H is always silent in batua.

Correct pronunciation of J in batua is like the Y in yes. However there are some cases in which /x/ is accepted.

Pronunciation in basque is quite easy: we have one phonema for each letter and one letter for each phonema.

 

[QarQing]

What? H is always silent in batua.

Correct pronunciation of J in batua is like the Y in yes. However there are some cases in which /x/ is accepted.

Pronunciation in basque is quite easy: we have one phonema for each letter and one letter for each phonema.

I'm not talking about standard basque. I am talking about Batua and it's dialects overall. Read the question before you answer it.

 

[Josu]

I'm not talking about standard basque. I am talking about Batua and it's dialects overall. Read the question before you answer it.

Oh, I read it.
You were speaking about standard basque (whatever is it) here:

Why is Basque pronounciation so complex? My question is why does Basque pronounciation vary so much dialect by dialect and why is it so irregular? Like H can be silent in most dialects except standard, J can make the /zh/ sound, /h/, etc. Why is that?

So it's weird reading you saying you were talking about batua, while I am the first person mentioning batua in this post.
In consequence we can proceed in two ways, you calm down and you have a relaxed conversation about basque language with a native basque speaker or you continue in the same tone and I ignore you

 

[QarQing]

Oh, I read it.
You were speaking about standard basque (whatever is it) here:


So it's weird reading you saying you were talking about batua, while I am the first person mentioning batua in this post.
In consequence we can proceed in two ways, you calm down and you have a relaxed conversation about basque language with a native basque speaker or you continue in the same tone and I ignore you

Ok I'm really sorry. So to further improve my question, why are there so many variations of consonants like J or H across basque dialects? Why is Basque pronounciation so complex? My question is why does Basque pronounciation vary so much dialect by dialect and why is it so irregular? Like H can either be silent or /h/, J can make the /zh/ sound, /h/, or /j/ cross dialectical in basque etc. Why is that?Again, I'm really sorry for the inconvenience. Please don't block me.

 

[Josu]

Ok I'm really sorry. So to further improve my question, why are there so many variations of consonants like J or H across basque dialects? Why is Basque pronounciation so complex? My question is why does Basque pronounciation vary so much dialect by dialect and why is it so irregular? Like H can either be silent or /h/, J can make the /zh/ sound, /h/, or /j/ cross dialectical in basque etc. Why is that?Again, I'm really sorry for the inconvenience. Please don't block me.

Difference between dialects is mainly because dialects are located in isolated valleys. There has not been an unified basque until XX century and it was not taught in schools, so dialects evolved in diferent ways, Biscay has borders with Castille, so biscayan dialect has some influence from Spanish, while Labourd has influence from French.
There only basque wich is "regulated" is batua, so probably the stuff you are managing about pronunciation in different dialects is not accurate.

On the other hand,I repeat what I said before, in batua we have one phonema for each letter and one letter for each valid phonema, it can not be easyer.

 

[QarQing]

Difference between dialects is mainly because dialects are located in isolated valleys. There has not been an unified basque until XX century and it was not taught in schools, so dialects evolved in diferent ways, Biscay has borders with Castille, so biscayan dialect has some influence from Spanish, while Labourd has influence from French.
There only basque wich is "regulated" is batua, so probably the stuff you are managing about pronunciation in different dialects is not accurate.

On the other hand,I repeat what I said before, in batua we have one phonema for each letter and one letter for each valid phonema, it can not be easyer.

So the reason why basque pronounciation is so irregular and variable cross dialectically is due to it being a language isolate?

 

[Josu]

So the reason why basque pronounciation is so irregular and variable cross dialectically is due to it being a language isolate?

Mainly yes.

 

[QarQing]

Mainly yes.

Oh I see! I'm really sorry for the confusion in my previous response

 

[QarQing]

An important question: Why is the letter K such a wild card across so many languages? See, I haven't read its history but I've observed that it has many variations, a lot more than people think. In English for example, it can be either like the k in "king" or silent like the h in Spanish before N. In gernan, it's always [k]. In Norwegian, it can make both a [k] sound or a voiceless palatal fricative sound. In Swedish soft K is voiceless alveolar fricative. In Danish, K can be either g or k. Same with Czech and Slovak. In Faroese, k can be both k or ch. in Icelandic, K is either a [cʰ] sound, a k sound with aspiration, a normal [k] sound and an [x] sound. In Tagalog, K can make either [k] or [x] sound. In Turkish, K can make both [k] or [c] where it's always [c] in Azeri. In Xhosa, K is [k'] and finally in Zulu, it's either a[k] or [ɠ] sound. Finally, In Indonesian, it is like a glottal stop or like [k] and in Chinese, it's [k] with aspiration. Even in Hawaiian, it can sometimes make a [t] sound. Why is K such a wildcard letter cross linguistically? Is there a point of time when it got palatalized in those languages? Can someone please answer me?

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Takhisis can you help out here? ^^^

 

[bernie14]

But why Spanish? C and G are one way with i and e and another with a, o, and u. Ok… meanwhile English has those rules, but also breaks them, has more redundant letters, a mishmash of vowel sounds per letter. Dough, cough, rough, through, are you kidding

 

[QarQing]

@Takhisis can you help out here? ^^^

What?

 

[Birdjaguar]

What?

Takhisis is a poster with lots of language knowledge. He might well be able help with your questions.

 

[QarQing]

I've waited for over 3 hours and unfortunately, I didn't get an answer yet

 

[Birdjaguar]

patience