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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

#61

Post by rlpb »

markjonsona989 wrote: post #12

(non-native here) I've been saying this for as long as I remember. Non-Anglophones often get frustrated in attempt to (de)construct a word in English like they would in other European languages only to find that it doesn't work and they don't understand why. I often say you'll have a much easier time accepting English if you consider it to be more like Mandarin; a collection of images. The only difference is that unl…

> because native Anglophones will not know either

I'm not sure that's true. There are still underlying patterns to it, even if it's very convoluted. The exceptions are in the core language that native Anglophones know well. For vocabulary in the periphery, I think native Anglophones (with the same accent) will tend to come up with the same pronunciation for an unknown word because they apply the same patterns.

For example, someone from the UK will infer the language the word was borrowed from, and then apply the rules of that language combined with the same system of English pronunciation butchery that has been applied to it to come up with the same result.

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#62

Post by martyvis »

dalmo3 wrote: post #44
markjonsona989 wrote: post #12

(non-native here) I've been saying this for as long as I remember. Non-Anglophones often get frustrated in attempt to (de)construct a word in English like they would in other European languages only to find that it doesn't work and they don't understand why. I often say you'll have a much easier time accepting English if you consider it to be more like Mandarin; a collection of images. The only difference is that unl…

As a native Portuguese speaker, the most mindblowing aspect in English for me is how words are split in syllabes. Why at-om and not a-tom? As years pass I get a better intuition and can somewhat translate that to better pronunciation but I don't think I'll ever really grok it.

And soon you learn that when it is an adjective it is a-tom-ic and not at-om-ic

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#63

Post by archgoon »

pavlov wrote: post #17
sharikous wrote: post #9

Sometimes even the entire word is pronounced differently: read/read

IMO this long/short vowel ambiguity is the #1 broken feature of English spelling, and could be reliably fixed by adopting an acute accent to mark long vowels (where a double letter isn't already doing the job). As in: I love to réad. Shé read all my books. I watched the gáme líve. Shé lives at hóme. Eurydicé had a fíníte supply of pátience. Etc. It wouldn't change any of the ASCII-only spelling rules, and would be a…

[dead]

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#64

Post by bluGill »

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…

English has more than 26 sounds, so we need more than 26 letters. There are many solutions to this problem, but all require learning a new way of writting and so will be hard to teach.

Spanish considers 'll' a different letter from 'l' and a couple other examples, but they can do that because they have about attackany sounds as the latin alphabet (I don't remember the exact number, but Spanish doesn't use some letters at all so counting would need some effort)

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#67

Post by bluGill »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #56
mytailorisrich wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It is purely phonetic No such thing as dialect or regional variation in pronunciation in Spanish then? What about Mexican Spanish?

Accents change how letters are pronounced, but it isn't a large difference, and it is consistent across all words that share that letter.

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#68

Post by ajb »

DrIronstein wrote: post #45
ajb wrote: post #25

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,…

Reminds me of Lord Timothy Dexter's book 'Pickle for the knowing ones'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pickle_for_the_Knowing_Ones

Amazing: After receiving complaints about the lack of punctuation, Dexter published a second edition in 1805, this time containing pages full of punctuation in the appendix. He tells the readers to "peper and solt it as they plese."

Amusing though these are, they illustrate why spelling reform is hard in English: spelling correctly has become a status marker, and any changed spelling looks not merely wrong, but also stupid and deserving of contempt.

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#69

Post by CJefferson »

rlpb wrote: post #61
markjonsona989 wrote: post #12

(non-native here) I've been saying this for as long as I remember. Non-Anglophones often get frustrated in attempt to (de)construct a word in English like they would in other European languages only to find that it doesn't work and they don't understand why. I often say you'll have a much easier time accepting English if you consider it to be more like Mandarin; a collection of images. The only difference is that unl…

> because native Anglophones will not know either I'm not sure that's true. There are still underlying patterns to it, even if it's very convoluted. The exceptions are in the core language that native Anglophones know well. For vocabulary in the periphery, I think native Anglophones (with the same accent) will tend to come up with the same pronunciation for an unknown word because they apply the same patterns. For ex…

In my experience, this is not very true. I hear lots of pronunciations for words like gnocchi, usually until people are shamed into saying it correctly.

Re: English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

#70

Post by js8 »

dalmo3 wrote: post #44
markjonsona989 wrote: post #12

(non-native here) I've been saying this for as long as I remember. Non-Anglophones often get frustrated in attempt to (de)construct a word in English like they would in other European languages only to find that it doesn't work and they don't understand why. I often say you'll have a much easier time accepting English if you consider it to be more like Mandarin; a collection of images. The only difference is that unl…

As a native Portuguese speaker, the most mindblowing aspect in English for me is how words are split in syllabes. Why at-om and not a-tom? As years pass I get a better intuition and can somewhat translate that to better pronunciation but I don't think I'll ever really grok it.

The anatomy of an atom.
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