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Why English doesn't use accents

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Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#131

Post by ithkuil »

eahm wrote: post #94
megablast wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mean different words too not just the sound. Where I used to go to school 10 miles away they don't understand if I speak my dialect because it's a different region. Like what? You have to give us examples.

Oh geez, for example in Italian to say here you say "qui", where I grew up I say "mchi" but my brothers say "mqui" or "mque", where I used to go to school they say "meque" with the weirdest sound. To say what are you doing in Italian is "cosa fai" but I say "co fei" and my brothers "sa fei" and where I used to go to school they say "che fe". These are just simple simple things but almost everything changes here and t…

I grew up in southern Switzerland and the dialect situation is the same as you describe.

Not necessarily every town retained their distinctive dialect in practice because people move, not all parents pass the dialect down to their kids etc.

But I remember a friend of mine lived in this village of 40 inhabitants where they said "e peu que?" instead of italian "e poi cosa?"

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#132

Post by thaumasiotes »

wredcoll wrote: post #77
jcranmer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a really bad example, because English does have fairly productive pronunciation rules [1], and trying to make 'fish' come out of ghoti requires breaking them. 'gh' only occurs as an /f/ sound when it occurs at the end of a syllable; as an initial consonant cluster, it's invariably /g/. Turning 'ti' to /ʃ/ is a fairly normal affricatization, which requires a subsequent vowel, which is lacking here (consider wo…

I want to know who thought that chinese transliterated into "english characters" should use a whole bunch of q, x and zs to represent sounds in a way that no other english word does. Why is Zhou pronounced that way?!

Who called them "english characters"?

Pinyin uses s in a very common way, z in the way of Italian, and c more or less in the manner of various Slavic languages. They are a sequence of related sounds: s is the fricative, z is affricated, and c is both affricated and aspirated.

Sh, zh, and ch are a sequence of sounds related to s, z, and c. Sh is a fricative articulated farther back in the mouth, zh is its affricated form, and ch is both affricated and aspirated.

And as a bonus, sh and ch match English usage, which isn't likely to have been a primary concern.

It's also worth noting that for many Chinese speakers, there is no difference between s/sh, z/zh, or c/ch.

(x, j, and q are what you get if you use the middle of your tongue, instead of the tip, to pronounce sh/zh/ch. They occur before front vowels; sh/zh/ch only appear before back (or central) vowels.)

A friend of mine remarked to me once that when she was in school, her teacher informed the class that English speakers would not understand what the pinyin letter "q" was supposed to mean, which I immediately confirmed. She thought this was hilarious.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#133

Post by paul_h »

eahm wrote: post #31

French.. you people have no idea how Italy is. I speak differently than my brothers because I grew up at my grandparents 3 MILES! away and if I go to my family restaurant 2 MILES the other direction there is a different accent again, and I mean different words too not just the sound. Where I used to go to school 10 miles away they don't understand if I speak my dialect because it's a different region. The whole Italy…

England has small accent shifts every 25 mins (the other audible accent / http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7843058.stm) - the situation you describe is two communication orders more complicated than that!

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#134

Post by demetrius »

KurSix wrote: post #123

The Godwin vignette at the beginning is such a clever way to dramatize what would otherwise be a dry spelling shift. Also, I never realized the irony that English avoids diacritics because of French influence

> to dramatize what would otherwise be a dry spelling shift

I don't think that's how it was developed, though. I really doubt there are real-world cases where cwen was scrubbed and queen written above it (correct me if I'm wrong!).

I think it’s more like “people stopped writing English for time being, only learned to write Norman and Latin, so when they needed to write a word or two, they’s use the spelling they knew. Eventually, this spelling because the way of writing English”.

I don’t think a situation with Godwin is plausible.

> I never realized the irony that English avoids > diacritics because of French influence

I'm not sure that's the best way to put it. Old English also generally didn’t use diacritics (modern texts add them: we’d use cwēn instead of cƿen, but these are modern invention).

So, English didn't use diacritics before Normans, and Normans didn't change this.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#135

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

asielen wrote: post #79
porphyra wrote: post #8

The Economist magazine uses a diæresis (two dots) in words like “coöperate” and “reëlect” to indicate that both vowels are pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong. This is considered old-school and uncommon though.

That is the fun thing about English. There isn't really a single right way to speak or write it. It is defined by common usage. As long as your audience understands you, it is correct. As someone else pointed out, loan words often have accents. At what point does jalapeño become en english word? There is no other english word to refer to the pepper, therefore it is now an english word and therefore english words can…

> That is the fun thing about English. There isn't really a single right way to speak or write it. It is defined by common usage. As long as your audience understands you, it is correct.

That's how all languages work - to the chagrin of l'Académie Française - English is no special exception.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#136

Post by hyperpape »

mousethatroared wrote: post #55
degun wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explanation you gave is already contained in the cited Wikipedia article. I think this "ghoti" example is more of a tongue-in-cheek mocking of pronunciation inconsistencies. If you want a jarring example, consider laughter and slaughter . I know, i know, they have different origins, but still, it confuses foreigners like me while learning the language.

But English orthography isn't meant to serve foreigners. Im ESL, I struggled with English spelling as much as the next latin speaker who's already learned to read and write in foreigner. But now that I get the reason behind it, I love it. I consider English orthography worthy of UNESCO protection, even. In fact, I am annoyed at the regular spelling of my two latin languages that have left so much history behind.

> But English orthography isn't meant to serve foreigners.

Or natives. It is slower for children to learn to read English than other languages.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#137

Post by gwd »

KurSix wrote: post #123

The Godwin vignette at the beginning is such a clever way to dramatize what would otherwise be a dry spelling shift. Also, I never realized the irony that English avoids diacritics because of French influence

> Also, I never realized the irony that English avoids diacritics because of French influence

But is that why they avoid diacritics? It sounds like English probably wouldn't have had diacritics even if the Normans hadn't come in.

Seeing my son try to learn to read things like "cycle", I feel like diacritics would make English writing a lot more accessible.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#138

Post by goodcanadian »

GianFabien wrote: post #61
OJFord wrote: post #27

It does sometimes, though its use may mark the author as among the agèd. Not to mention loanwords, which of course English is full of, and are sometimes considered properly spelt with their original accents, though many will spell them naïvely without. Diphthongs too, especially in British English, are not just an archæological find, though out of pragmatism usually written digitally with two separate characters.

On the internet the most marked issue is the difference between British English spellings (England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and the USA. It is frustrating that on most spell checked text boxes words like: harbour, labour, actualise, etc shown as misspelt. I find it most irksome that the Australian Labor Party has chosen the USA spelling in spite of being part of the Commonwealth.

It gets worse. Canadian is different to both British and American (or it has some of each) and Australian is different again from all three.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#139

Post by ykonstant »

porphyra wrote: post #8

The Economist magazine uses a diæresis (two dots) in words like “coöperate” and “reëlect” to indicate that both vowels are pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong. This is considered old-school and uncommon though.

I love this, because I always do a double take and start pronouncing it as coOUUUperate and REEEElect, giving me much entertainment (I am easily entertained!).

Edit: also see rôle, which invokes this classic: https://i.redd.it/qrfr7o4ue2z51.jpg

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#140

Post by internet_points »

eahm wrote: post #31

French.. you people have no idea how Italy is. I speak differently than my brothers because I grew up at my grandparents 3 MILES! away and if I go to my family restaurant 2 MILES the other direction there is a different accent again, and I mean different words too not just the sound. Where I used to go to school 10 miles away they don't understand if I speak my dialect because it's a different region. The whole Italy…

Similarly in Norway and Sweden, new dialects every few miles, with both pronounciation and word changes. Places that could reach each other by boat tend to have more similar dialects (while if there's a mountain in the way you can have a bigger difference, though flight distance is shorter)
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