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English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

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Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#21

Post by FooBarWidget »

Scarblac wrote: post #8
gampleman wrote: post #4

My teacher used to argue that modern English would have been better off taking the Chinese writing system rather than the Roman one. The way it works now you have all the drawbacks (i.e. you need to memorise a whole lot of pronunciation) but none of the benefit (i.e. faster reading speeds, more compact representation).

Rather than going to that extreme, English spelling could be made easier. My native language is Dutch. For Dutch there are spelling reforms every so many years. English is still using Shakespeare's spelling, I think. The advantage of spelling reforms is that spelling can stay much closer to how a word is pronounced, and that it's much more standardized. The disadvantage is that older texts become hard to read much so…

> The advantage of spelling reforms is that spelling can stay much closer to how a word is pronounced

Is that so? I'm pretty sure everybody pronounces pannenkoek as pannekoek.

Don't get me started on conjugation of loanwords such as "gedeleteted" (I hope I got that one right)

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#22

Post by tgv »

gampleman wrote: post #4

My teacher used to argue that modern English would have been better off taking the Chinese writing system rather than the Roman one. The way it works now you have all the drawbacks (i.e. you need to memorise a whole lot of pronunciation) but none of the benefit (i.e. faster reading speeds, more compact representation).

Your teacher might have overlooked the simple fact that English has taken the planet by storm. That's how hard it is. It's not the superficial, shower-thought ideas that determine the practical ease of use, and they shouldn't be used to guide linguistic changes.

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#23

Post by the_gipsy »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #20
gampleman wrote: post #4

My teacher used to argue that modern English would have been better off taking the Chinese writing system rather than the Roman one. The way it works now you have all the drawbacks (i.e. you need to memorise a whole lot of pronunciation) but none of the benefit (i.e. faster reading speeds, more compact representation).

The simplest way to use the alphabet is to do it like Spanish does: It is purely phonetic so you write the way you pronunce and you read the way it is written. Simple. That's how they end up with "fútbol" for "football": That's how it's pronunced in Spanish so that's how they spell it, and anyone can immediately read it as well. Meanwhile in French... 'taon', 'tant', 'temps', 'tends' all pronunced exactly the same be…

Have you ever heard of someone tying a cow onto a car's roof rack? Sadly, it doesn't go the other way 'round.

Also, "fútbol", but also abominations like "güisqui". The frontier between "proper foreign names" and "imported massacred names" is very blurry: You can't import/massacre every foreign name, or else any moderately modern text would read like a clown show.

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#24

Post by Karellen »

walthamstow wrote: post #10

Hiccough is very out of date. Even my mother doesn't write it like that. She thought about a rough drought in Loughborough though...

Not only is hiccough old, it's also new... at least compared to hiccup.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiccough

> Hiccough is a later spelling, and an example of folk etymology.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiccup#English

> Alternative forms

> hiccough (old-fashioned, hypercorrection)

...and see the etymology for more info.

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#25

Post by ajb »

A good description

Another amusing one is Mark Twain's plan:

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling by Mark Twain

    For example, in Year 1 that useless letter “c” would be dropped to be replased either by “k” or “s”, and likewise “x” would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which “c” would be retained would be the “ch” formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform “w” spelling, so that “which” and “one” would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish “y” replasing it with “i” and Iear 4 might fiks the “g/j” anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez “c”, “y” and “x” — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais “ch”, “sh”, and “th” rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld*

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#26

Post by gampleman »

tgv wrote: post #22
gampleman wrote: post #4

My teacher used to argue that modern English would have been better off taking the Chinese writing system rather than the Roman one. The way it works now you have all the drawbacks (i.e. you need to memorise a whole lot of pronunciation) but none of the benefit (i.e. faster reading speeds, more compact representation).

Your teacher might have overlooked the simple fact that English has taken the planet by storm. That's how hard it is. It's not the superficial, shower-thought ideas that determine the practical ease of use, and they shouldn't be used to guide linguistic changes.

A language taking over usage has little to do with its qualities, but rather with the cultural domination practiced by its native speakers.

English has some notably easy parts and some notably difficult parts. It's a language with remarkably simple grammar, but the orthography is notorious (see OP) as well as the very large vocabulary makes it difficult to master (although of course a high ceiling in a language isn't too much of a problem if you want your language to spread easily, as long as the floor is low).

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#27

Post by saalweachter »

barrkel wrote: post #13
CalRobert wrote: post #6

Then you get Hiberno-English where "ough" _can_ sound like "ock" (Ballybough road in Dublin) and "Niamh" is "Neeve" and Siobhan is "Shu-vawn"

That is less Hiberno-English and more Gaelic. Niamh and Siobhán are Irish names following Irish orthography.

I always felt like Gaelic spelling was the result of someone hearing about the written language, thinking it was a fantastic idea, and then rushing off to write down all the words without waiting to get all the details about how writing was supposed to work.

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#28

Post by eesmith »

Scarblac wrote: post #8
gampleman wrote: post #4

My teacher used to argue that modern English would have been better off taking the Chinese writing system rather than the Roman one. The way it works now you have all the drawbacks (i.e. you need to memorise a whole lot of pronunciation) but none of the benefit (i.e. faster reading speeds, more compact representation).

Rather than going to that extreme, English spelling could be made easier. My native language is Dutch. For Dutch there are spelling reforms every so many years. English is still using Shakespeare's spelling, I think. The advantage of spelling reforms is that spelling can stay much closer to how a word is pronounced, and that it's much more standardized. The disadvantage is that older texts become hard to read much so…

> English is still using Shakespeare's spelling, I think.

The UK uses a form of written English based on Samuel Johnson's dictionary. The US uses a form of written English based on Webster's dictionary. Both Johnson's and Webster's spelling reforms post-date Shakespeare.

For example, Shakespeare's grave contains the inscription:

  GOOD FREND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE,
  TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE:
  BLESTE BE Ye [the] MAN Yt [that] SPARES THES STONES,
  AND CURST BE HE Yt [that] MOVES MY BONES.
(The "Y" is a form of the thorn symbol "þ", which Early Modern English used to represent the "Th" sound. The terms in [brackets] show the modern form.)

You can see we are not using English spelling from Shakespeare's time.

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#29

Post by fer »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #20
gampleman wrote: post #4

My teacher used to argue that modern English would have been better off taking the Chinese writing system rather than the Roman one. The way it works now you have all the drawbacks (i.e. you need to memorise a whole lot of pronunciation) but none of the benefit (i.e. faster reading speeds, more compact representation).

The simplest way to use the alphabet is to do it like Spanish does: It is purely phonetic so you write the way you pronunce and you read the way it is written. Simple. That's how they end up with "fútbol" for "football": That's how it's pronunced in Spanish so that's how they spell it, and anyone can immediately read it as well. Meanwhile in French... 'taon', 'tant', 'temps', 'tends' all pronunced exactly the same be…

In case someone's curious, it's not only Spanish, and it's certainly not unusual[0].

A way to see how a (more) phonemic orthography would look like in English is to have a look at BBC Pidgin[1], though the increased "phonemicity" isn't the only difference.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography

[1] https://www.bbc.com/pidgin

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#30

Post by TheDong »

tgv wrote: post #22
gampleman wrote: post #4

My teacher used to argue that modern English would have been better off taking the Chinese writing system rather than the Roman one. The way it works now you have all the drawbacks (i.e. you need to memorise a whole lot of pronunciation) but none of the benefit (i.e. faster reading speeds, more compact representation).

Your teacher might have overlooked the simple fact that English has taken the planet by storm. That's how hard it is. It's not the superficial, shower-thought ideas that determine the practical ease of use, and they shouldn't be used to guide linguistic changes.

English took over the world, yes, but it's hard to really determine that it's due to ease of use.

The obvious reasons to me that English took over the world are because the British Empire forcibly killed other languages (often literally), and then the US's global financial and cultural influence aided it further.

I don't think it's due to English that Britain and the US had such vast linguistic influence, and just as easily if the British spoke a different language, that would be the lingua franca.

In short, there are too many factors in reality to really be able to say "so many people speak english, so obviously it's easy". No, rather, we can observe many people speak english, and perhaps that's because the internet and TV are dominated by english due to tech and hollywood, perhaps it's because the britsh rolled high on the "slavery and racism" stats a long time ago, and perhaps it's because it's easy to learn. My money's not on "easy to learn" being a leading reason there though.

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