201–210 of 615 posts
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 do not want to be offensive, there are lots more , but it is an amazing sh*tshow the mapping.
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.
My son's first year teacher said (I may have the numbers slightly wrong) that Spanish has 23 phonemes (sounds the mouth makes) and 23 graphemes (ways to write sounds). English, on the other hand, has 43 phonemes and over 500 graphemes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why not use it for the "tch" sound? (Which, btb, is different than the "ch" sound.) What are you thinking of? There is no difference between those things. But your major point here is correct; on the fundamentals there is no reason for the English alphabet to feature a Q. > "C" is about the same -- by itself it always sounds exactly like "k" or "s". Why not use it for the "ts" sound? With the modern alphabet there'…
> What are you thinking of? There is no difference between those things. I'm talking about pinyin here. In Mandarin, there are to distinct sounds, one represented in pinyin by 'q', and one by 'ch'. It took me months to hear the difference, and months more to be able to pronounce them properly. I think there are other romanizations where the 'q' sound is represented "tch". (In fact, I'm inclined to think that there ar…
There aren't.
> I think there are other romanizations where the 'q' sound is represented "tch".
Well, maybe; there are a large number of romanizations of Mandarin. But there are no significant romanizations where that is true. It's q in pinyin, ch' in Wade-Giles, and ts' or k' in postal romanization.
> How else would you describe the difference between "qu" and "ju", or "chou" and "zhou"? The only difference I can feel is when your vocal cords turn on.
You could read my other comment in the thread. qu and chou are aspirated; ju and zhou aren't. Your vocal cords don't turn on at different points for those syllables. Mandarin Chinese doesn't use voicing contrasts.
> I think we're using different definitions of "voiced". Other voiced / unvoiced pairs in English include g/k, b/p, v/f, z/s. See [1] for an "official" example of "voiced" being used the way I'm using it.
Yes, I know what voicing is. You don't seem to know what consonants are used in Mandarin.
Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#Con... .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why not use it for the "tch" sound? (Which, btb, is different than the "ch" sound.) What are you thinking of? There is no difference between those things. But your major point here is correct; on the fundamentals there is no reason for the English alphabet to feature a Q. > "C" is about the same -- by itself it always sounds exactly like "k" or "s". Why not use it for the "ts" sound? With the modern alphabet there'…
> What are you thinking of? There is no difference between those things. I'm talking about pinyin here. In Mandarin, there are to distinct sounds, one represented in pinyin by 'q', and one by 'ch'. It took me months to hear the difference, and months more to be able to pronounce them properly. I think there are other romanizations where the 'q' sound is represented "tch". (In fact, I'm inclined to think that there ar…
> This is why English has combinations like sh, th, ee, oo, ou that each make only a single sound. Struggling with the th and ou here as only making a single sound. Through and rough, both not the same ou as sound. That and Thames, but this might be becaues Thames is proper noun? The only thing I like about Croatian is that there is none of this nonsense. If you understand the letters and how to pronounce them, you c…
Correct. It's "one sound" represented by two letters, but not always the same sound in different words.
> This is why English has combinations like sh, th, ee, oo, ou that each make only a single sound. Struggling with the th and ou here as only making a single sound. Through and rough, both not the same ou as sound. That and Thames, but this might be becaues Thames is proper noun? The only thing I like about Croatian is that there is none of this nonsense. If you understand the letters and how to pronounce them, you c…
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…
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…
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?!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My ear has just gotten to the point of noticing German dialects, and spotting the quizzical looks of other German/Austrian/Swiss people in the group
Fascinating. I feel like they had 1,000 years to resolve this