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Why English doesn't use accents

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Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#161

Post by Luker88 »

tacker2000 wrote: post #108
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…

This article is about accents on letters (diacritics), not accents as in dialects. I found your post interesting neverthelesss.

It is probably connected.

Having so many different dialects (and full minor languages!) saying the same word slightly differently, Italians were forced to find (and use) a way to put the correct accent in writing.

Other languages probably don't have the mind boggling number of dialects Italy has. GP was not exaggerating, it really changes every few kilometers.

Like the article says: "situations like these are surprisingly few in English"

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#162

Post by pmontra »

germandiago wrote: post #70
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…

As a spanish I could say the most challenging part of english is the lack of consistency between how you write something and how you pronounce it. Spanish is totally systematic in this sense and once you can read it, you can pronounce it. English is a bit messy regarding to this, for whatever reasons.

Yes, I'll always remember the long time spent asking for the whereabouts of Ocean Drive, mispronounced by me because the correct pronunciation would require the word to be written as Oshean or maybe Oshan. It was 1995. I have had very few occasions to hear native speakers. A lot of people and I were figuring out plausible but incorrect pronunciations by applying the most usual pronunciation rules to the written words.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#164

Post by jjav »

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…

Interesting. I know that as a spanish speaker, there are some Italians whom I understand almost perfectly (like 90% and I can fill in the other 10% from context), but there are other Italians speakers where I can't understand anything at all.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#165

Post by simondotau »

xdennis wrote: post #107
o11c wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, not really. "engage", "engorge", "engrave", "engross", "engulf" are all fairly common words that are either often or exclusively pronounced that way (some dictionaries might show /in-g/, but /n/ is really /ŋ/ before g or k, even if they remain). Since these can take prefixes, this also proves we're not limited to being at the start of a word. Searching for words that can be spelled with with "ing" or "eng" finds…

- English - /ˈɪŋ(ɡ)lɪʃ/ - engage - /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/, /ɛnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ - engorge - /ɪnˈɡɔːdʒ/ - engross - /ɪnˈɡɹəʊs/, /ɪŋˈɡɹəʊs/, /ɛnˈɡɹoʊs/, /ɛŋˈɡɹoʊs/ - engulf - /ɪŋˈɡʌlf/ According to Wiktionary only engulf and engross also use /ŋ/.

I've never heard engulf pronounced similarly to English

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#166

Post by jjav »

jcranmer wrote: post #36
amelius wrote: post #12

English doesn't use accents because the speakers don't give a __ about the correspondence between the written form and the pronunciation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

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…

> That is a really bad example, because English does have fairly productive pronunciation rules

Not really. There's no way to guess how many english words are pronounced based on the written form, unless you've heard it before. And of course the pronunciation may vary wildly based on region/country as well.

The most telling evidence of this is the existence of Spelling Bee competitions in english language countries. The fact that hearing a word being spoken is challenging enough to figure out how it is written that it is a competitive sport, says it all.

There are many languages where the concept of a spelling bee competition makes no sense at all, because as soon as you hear the word being spoken, it is 100% deterministically obvious how it is written. English, not so much.

But, french is much worse!

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#167

Post by mddw »

ValentinPearce wrote: post #154
eesmith wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 6th grade, so back in 1982, I read the French SF novel "Malevil". I was astounded (speaking as a US kid here), to learn that French people born and raised in France didn't natively speak French, but instead learned their regional language. Here is an example, from https://archive.org/details/malevilmerl00merl/page/150/mode/... : > And besides, Thomas was already quite isolated enough as it was: by his youth, by hi…

IIRC in the early 1900s, coercive methods were used to stop children speaking their native regional languages, a lot of it in school. In my region of Brittany (France) the most famous example that was on posters detailing good manners would say : "Il est interdit de parler breton et de cracher par terre" meaning "It's forbidden to speak Breton and to spit on the ground", placing both on the same level.

I am afraid this quote is an urban legend. It never existed.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#168

Post by lompad »

Luker88 wrote: post #161
tacker2000 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is about accents on letters (diacritics), not accents as in dialects. I found your post interesting neverthelesss.

It is probably connected. Having so many different dialects (and full minor languages!) saying the same word slightly differently, Italians were forced to find (and use) a way to put the correct accent in writing. Other languages probably don't have the mind boggling number of dialects Italy has. GP was not exaggerating, it really changes every few kilometers. Like the article says: "situations like these are surpris…

Germany is similar. Especially in more rural areas, a couple villages away people are going to have a hard time understanding you.

Though there's typically a common dialect variant everybody speaks, usually the one spoken by the largest city in the region.

E.g. every middle-franconian understands Nuremberg franconian dialect and is able to talk in a way they would understand.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#169

Post by dijit »

lrasinen wrote: post #160
dijit wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ä in Swedish is an æ sound. Ä in Finnish is a pitched A sound, like the A in “cat”. The pitched “a” in Swedish is the default one.

Wikipedia lists both "cat" and the Finnish "mäki" under æ: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-open_front_unrounded_vo... Do you have some example words that would show the difference?

Well, mostly hearing people say the words will be telling.

Gävle in Sweden: https://forvo.com/word/g%C3%A4vle/

Linnanmäki in Finland: https://forvo.com/word/linnanm%C3%A4ki/

In the Finnish example you can hear both the soft “en” (linnan) and the higher pitched “” (maki) which is triggered with umlauts;

Where the Swedish A is softened by umlauts in the Gävle example.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#170

Post by beAbU »

diogolsq wrote: post #144
germandiago wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a spanish I could say the most challenging part of english is the lack of consistency between how you write something and how you pronounce it. Spanish is totally systematic in this sense and once you can read it, you can pronounce it. English is a bit messy regarding to this, for whatever reasons.

Portuguese and German are like that. You’ve never seen the word before, but when reading it for the first time, you’ll probably pronounce it correctly. English is awful, but French takes the crown on this one—though more because it has the same pronunciation for many different words and written forms. English, on the other hand, the alphabet doesn’t map well. Mood and flood both have “oo”, yet each is pronounced diff…

I've only really been exposed to French in music, where I've sung various French pieces of the years. But from my experience, at least French is consistent? As-written is as-pronounced.

Is this not really the case, and therefore is French also guilty of having the same vowels/consonants pronounced differently for completely arb reasons?

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