Assorted Language Questions

rSpelling reforms... I'd like to see a reform not of Spanish, but of IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. They have all these letters like upside-down e's ("schwa"?) that aren't in any language that I know of, and you basically have to take a course on IPA to have it be useful. Why is it the standard?

lmao WHAT?

Most IPA letters are: real letters that represent real sounds (e.g. θ or β), or modifications to existing letters to indicate around where they’d be in a western alphabet. Schwa originated out of German linguistics to distinguish between stressed “e”, which follows Latin (beten), and the unstressed e (singe).

It’s the same with rhotics: the trilled (rolled) r is /r/, the flapped r (as in oro) is /ɾ/ and the most common English r-sound, the alveolar approximate (as in neutral) is represented by /ɹ/. The point of IPA is to have distinct symbols to capture every possible distinct sound a human is capable of producing. /r/, /ɾ/, and /ɹ/ are clearly different sounds. How else would you prefer they be represented? And don’t say “Spanish r,” because I just pointed out that Spanish has *two* r’s, while, depending on the accent and context English has: the postalveolar approximate, the alveolar approximate, the alveolar trill, the alveolar flap, vowel elongation, or any of a number of vowels. The goal of IPA is comprehensiveness and precision, not simplicity.
 
There should be more vowels in English. At least 30. No double letters either - every sound should have one single letter with a unique form. "Long" vowels should have their own unique letter too. Also the different ways of pronouncing similar vowel sounds should be rendered with completely different characters, to avoid confusion. It should not be possible, for example, for me to pronounce "cot" differently to an American reading the same word - rather, an American should look at the word, realise that the particular "o" sound that I am writing and speaking is not in their exotic dialect, and conclude that they do not know what that word is. If this renders written American English unintelligible to English speakers in London, then so be it. Indeed, if it renders the English as written by my neighbour to be unintelligible to me, then so much the better. Why are they even writing me in the first place? I doesn't make sense anyway, they're Canadian.

Another added benefit: this would require larger keyboards, rejuvenating the keyboard industry and providing much-needed jobs to keymakers across the English speaking world.

1. North American English isn't all the same. Each region has distinctive dialects, or can have. For example, if you put Aimee and I in the same physical room and we had a verbal conversation, it's possible that we would have different accents.

Or take the Newfoundland accent. I can understand some English speakers from Newfoundland. But we had a neighbor from the next acreage over whose accent was so strong that I understood him less than half the time.

2.
I doesn't make sense anyway, they're Canadian.

:confused:

3. I was just thinking about the gigantic keyboards this would require. It would also be a nightmare for touch-typists.
 
1. North American English isn't all the same. Each region has distinctive dialects, or can have. For example, if you put Aimee and I in the same physical room and we had a verbal conversation, it's possible that we would have different accents.

Or take the Newfoundland accent. I can understand some English speakers from Newfoundland. But we had a neighbor from the next acreage over whose accent was so strong that I understood him less than half the time.

2.

:confused:

3. I was just thinking about the gigantic keyboards this would require. It would also be a nightmare for touch-typists.
Re #1: Of course, and all the differences in those accents would be reflected in the different characters that you use to spell the same word.

Re #3: That's a good point, another benefit is that it would provide jobs for professional typists, another industry that has been suffering lately.
 
I found this very interesting. Look in the comments for the answers and discussion.


Mandarin and Arabic often top the list of languages that are hardest to learn. But what do native speakers of those languages find the hardest to master, and why?


 
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they aren’t even really the hardest, just the hardest big languages that people (esp. the state department) would like people to learn.

They’re all nominal-accusative languages (which English is) for instance. They have nothing on, say, Ojibwe which is heavily fusional and distinguishes between proximate and obviate (so a distinction between marking “in-focus” and “out-of-focus” objects), or Xhosa, which has a high density of click sounds and a large variety of noun classes (i.e. 15 grammatical genders), or an ergative language* like Basque or any number of Australian Aboriginal languages.

*i.e. in Nominative-Accusative languages, the the subject in an intransitive verb (He slept), and the agent in a transitive verb (He saw the her) are marked the same, and the object of a transitive verb (“her” in this case) is marked differently. In an ergative language, the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are treated the same, and the transitive agent is marked differently.

So to show this in English:
Her sleeps - (“She sleeps”)
He her sees (“She sees him”)

Some languages also switch between nom-acc and erg-abs alignment depending on the word being used

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Others mark by creating a hierarchy of noun classes, and apply markers based on the direction up or down the hierarchy from the point of view of the speaker.
 
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I'm not a native speaker, so for words like 'Jimmy' and 'Tommy' my mind reads them as 'Tom-mee', two semi-distinct M's, even though I actually pronounce them differently (To-mee). Does anyone else have this happen with them? Does anyone pronounce these words with two M's?
 
TOM-ee, where the stressed first syllable of tom slurs into the unstressed "ee" second syllable.
 
I'm not a native speaker, so for words like 'Jimmy' and 'Tommy' my mind reads them as 'Tom-mee', two semi-distinct M's, even though I actually pronounce them differently (To-mee). Does anyone else have this happen with them? Does anyone pronounce these words with two M's?
Jimmy and Tommy are pronounced Jim-mhi and Tom-mhi respectively. The first M makes the /m/ sound whereas the next M makes the aspirated M sound (mh sound)
 
So what's your opinion on Scottish Gaelic? Regular or consistent? Why?
 
The lack of gender in the English language, makes it much easier to learn and speak than any other language I've learned or studied.

I cannot stress how much of an obstacle it can be, to memorize the gender of foreign language nouns. German even has three genders instead of two to keep track on. Enjoy! :lol:
 
One of my friends who studies Japanese complained that Chinese would be 2x harder to learn now that he learnt there were 'genders' in Chinese characters.

I think his example was 他 and 她, is just 'he' and 'she' respectively. He's wrong, by the way – they're pronounced the same way, it only has a different radical with man / woman in it. Maybe determining who it means in a room of people might be a challenge but I've never had that problem... Mandarin tends to just, uh, work. None of these fancy conjugations like Spanish.

What he really should be saying is that Chinese is hard to learn because the writing is not intuitively phonetic. It can be – people who learn chinese apparently notice phonetic patterns with certain radicals in characters – but I'm pretty much illiterate in writing Chinese and I'm lucky to hold a conversation : ) so writing is not anything I can really talk about.

Spanish is fun, though.
 
I honestly don't understand why too many people think Basque language is doing good. It's not. Sure, the language has seen revival efforts but its still a severely endangered language overall (especially in France). Even in Spain, its a minority language (vulnerable in Spain, severely endangered in France, overall combined, definitely endangered). Even after revival efforts, there is no surge in increase at all. The Basque language was suppressed by the Spanish and French government together and although, it has seen a resurgence of interest in recent years, the growth in the number of speakers has not guaranteed that the social use of the language will increase in the same proportion, and the quantitative and qualitative differences between the territories where Basque is used, a cross-border language that depends on three different governments, have not only not been reduced but, in some respects, seem to be accentuated.Although previous editions of the Sociolinguistic Survey provided some encouraging data, Basque continues to lose its weight in the French Basque Country. If in 1996 it was estimated that 26.4% of people over 16 years of age who at that time resided in the three provinces of Iparralde, Lapurdi, Baja Navarra and Zuberoa, spoke Basque, by 2021 that percentage had fallen to 20%, establishing the number of Basque speakers in the Northern Basque Country at 51,500. There has been a decrease in the number of speakers, but the decrease in their proportional weight has been even greater because of the increase in the population of a territory that approaches 320,000 inhabitants in recent years. Next, not only does Basque have relatively fewer fluent speakers but majority of them are passive speakers. According to the census, there are 750,000 speakers of the language, with 434,000 passive speakers and 6000 monoglots. The rest have some knowledge of the language but majority of them are passive speakers. Passive speakers are speakers have no interest in the language despite learning so much of it. In fact, the seventh edition of the Survey once again shows that where the use of the Basque language is increasing the most is in the most populated and a priori less Basque speaking areas. On the contrary, the most pronounced decline has occurred in areas with a Basque speaking majority, in towns and regions that are considered the ‘lungs’ of Basque. And this is not to be taken lightly since the decline is almost ten points. Experts attribute this to a sum of factors more social than linguistic: mobility; the progressive urbanization of the rural environment; the increase in the population of foreign origin, common to all territories and all sociolinguistic areas. As you can see, the basque language isn't doing as good as it is expected, something that many people don't realize. Anyway, that's my rant.
 
Only 6000 monoglots does sound like a very dangerous state of affairs. Can't one, at least in theory, go through life in Basque Country without ever using other languages (without also being shielded by some relative/caretaker)?
It might have been ok, if those speaking two languages, don't have one being spanish or french (but, say, english), so it won't be in direct antagonism to using basque there.
 
Only 6000 monoglots does sound like a very dangerous state of affairs. Can't one, at least in theory, go through life in Basque Country without ever using other languages (without also being shielded by some relative/caretaker)?
It might have been ok, if those speaking two languages, don't have one being spanish or french (but, say, english), so it won't be in direct antagonism to using basque there.
Exactly!
 
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.

I printed out one piece for study, 44 phonemes in English. I think this is it. We have multiple ways to spell each of them - I think I counted 101 ways.

The next fun part is what happens to spelling when we change some of the consonants when we say the word in different forms. Example put, putting. IPA should fix a lot of this. Do some of these change with dialect and do we change spelling rules based on dialect? After we finally make these changes and spell English words with IPA letters, very few people will know how to read.

There is no need to teach kids cursive handwriting anymore. If they want to know, they can look it up online and teach themselves. Their phone can read it. Instead we can teach them IPA. It is more useful.

I have been studying Spanish several years now. One thing I like is it is easier to find native speakers who are willing to talk and help learn.

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.
 
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Thank you to Arwon for the considerate thoughts on IPA, including the Polish example.

Despite the challenges in the English example words chosen on that Polish guide, I like the format. The Polish letter, the IPA letter, similar words in English, notes, and Polish words, including recorded pronunciation. Too often on the Internet, while reading articles aimed at English speakers, I've seen just a word/name/place/etc., and an IPA pronunciation, which is likely the source of my frustration with IPA; in lieu of an alternative, it's the only guide to pronunciation, but is not intuitive. This is changing as spoken guides (e.g. Forvo, but also embedded within articles) become more common.

I am curious, for those who are familiar with IPA, how did you learn it? Was it part of your school curriculum, and if so, on its own or as part of other subjects? Did you take courses on it in college? Or just study it in your own time? It never was so much as mentioned in my formal education, despite taking many language classes. But that may well be different in other parts of the world.
 
Four semesters worth of linguistics course at uni, basically the two first year intro to linguistics classes at my uni in Australia, and then a couple of more focused ones while on exchange at uni in Spain that were probably somewhere more like Australian 2nd and 3rd year specialisation - more depth in a domain of linguistics (IIRC one semester was social, one was on change and development).

That equipped me well enough to interpret basic linguistics resources like wikipedia pages and explain most of the foundational concepts and debates. I don't so much know IPA as know how to quickly reference and look it up.
 
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