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Great Vowel Shift

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Re: Great Vowel Shift

#51

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

Kranar wrote: post #40
anticristi wrote: post #15

Any non-native English speakers feeling like: So is that why we need to suffer a lingua franca that does not map 1:1 spoken and written? This must be the world's largest tech debt. :)))

Any lingua franca will end up deviating in pronunciation from how it's written. For example, Finnish is said to have very shallow orthographic depth (the technical term for this phenomenon), but you can imagine if people from across the world began speaking and writing Finnish that over 100 years you'd end up with different accents and different variations of the original Finnish. The language would branch and merge…

I don't think Finnish (or any language in a state of diglossia) is the best example here. That is, Finnish is already essentially two separate languages. Written Finnish (kirjakieli) is a somewhat artificial language that was a compromise between different dialects, because at the birth of Finnish literacy there was no longer an "original Finnish" on which to base writing.

Written Finnish is mainly a written thing, and while there is a close correspondence between the orthography and how it would be read aloud, when Finns actually speak they use spoken Finnish (puhekieli), which isn't standardized and varies from region to region.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#52

Post by mixmastamyk »

ngokevin wrote: post #16

Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English…

c can then be used as "ch", as in Italian.

x can then be used as "sh", as in Portuguese.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#53

Post by dmoy »

sltkr wrote: post #41
anticristi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont vant tu teik saids, but German haz diklention und konjugation, vich maiks it a suboptimal lingua franka. Not tu mention meni iregular verbs. Mai vot gos tu som nordik languag like Svedish.

Does German have (significantly) more irregular verbs than English?

No.

German has significantly fewer irregular verbs than English.

It's ~200 to ~300. (French is double that?)

There's enough to be moderately annoying, but not that bad. Also (in my personal opinion), German irregular verbs tend to be not-as-irregular as English.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#54

Post by yongjik »

anticristi wrote: post #19
ngokevin wrote: post #16

Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English…

I dont vant tu teik saids, but German haz diklention und konjugation, vich maiks it a suboptimal lingua franka. Not tu mention meni iregular verbs. Mai vot gos tu som nordik languag like Svedish.

Unpopular opinion: Declension and conjugation are nice! It means different forms for the act of watching X (watching birds), X that is watching (watching eyes), or X that is used for the act of watching (watching post). So you immediately know which one is which, instead of trying to figure that out from context (you have 200 milliseconds before the next sentence starts, good luck).

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#55

Post by zentiggr »

ngokevin wrote: post #16

Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English…

Very adept adaptation of the Mark Twain original!

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#56

Post by mbroncano »

ngokevin wrote: post #16

Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English…

That is lovely, thanks for ‘ze laf’. One minor note, it reads much more like Dutch to me :)

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#58

Post by orwin »

soldehierro wrote: post #49
keiferski wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is a great lingua franca IMO because of its inherent decentralization and willingness to accept new words. There is no academy regulating its use, as is the case with French and Spanish.

In the case of Spanish, I can't speak for French, having an academy (the RAE in this case) regulating the language sounds like a problem on paper, but really isn't a problem in practice. The RAE accepts Americanisms and treats American Spanish just as it would European Spanish (referring to the continent(s), not the country) and encourages lingusitic diversity. Anglicisms are only discouraged when an acceptable Spani…

I which french academy was this tolerant.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#59

Post by User23 »

mbroncano wrote: post #56
ngokevin wrote: post #16

Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English…

That is lovely, thanks for ‘ze laf’. One minor note, it reads much more like Dutch to me :)

As someone who speaks both English and German natively, I can say Dutch makes my brain hurt whenever I hear it. It’s like my brain can’t pick which neural pathways to use and the dissonance is awful.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#60

Post by fbellag »

ngokevin wrote: post #16

Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English…

I've half-jokingly, proposed a similar change to Spanish, basically:

z, c (as in "ce", "ci"): use "s" (non european spanish speakers do not distinguish these sounds anyway)

v: always use "b"

c (as in "ca", "co", "cu"), q(u) (as in "que", "quiso"): replaced with "k"

w: why do we have this letter?! use "u"

y (as vowel): use "i" (basically only used as "and" in Spanish)

y (as consonant): stays like it is now (important in some variants where it sounds pretty much as "sh" in English)

ll as in "lluvia": replaced with "y"

h (mute as in "hueso", "humano"): Just remove it (ueso, umano)

ch (as in "chorizo"): replaced with "c"

r, rr: Couldn't yet find a good replacement that's not ambiguous for the soft and vibrant sounds in all the use-cases...

ñ: this stays. it gives the language personality!

I've got not much traction with my friend, though!!!!!

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