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Why English doesn't use accents

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Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#281

Post by Twirrim »

nelox wrote: post #278

The claim that “English doesn’t use accents” is, quite frankly, a bit naïve. After all, one only needs to step into a café for a crème brûlée, or to read a novel featuring a tête-à-tête, to see that English is perfectly comfortable with accented words. From the résumé of a job seeker to the façade of a building, from the attaché case of a businessman to the naïve assumptions of a newcomer, accents are sprinkled throu…

In almost every example you state, we've taken the word and the pronunciation, but have dropped the accent marks themselves. It's part of what makes English pronunciation a minefield.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#282

Post by pif »

taeric wrote: post #273
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…

It has become a thing where folks are taught, basically, that English is not a phonetic language. It is truly mind boggling the number of college educated folks I've talked with that start to try and argue that we don't have a phonetic alphabet. And, like, I get it. We don't have a fully regular one. But this is like the people that think we don't have a single word to describe some things, when they have to basicall…

> English is not a phonetic language.

Whoever says that English is a phonetic language does not know what a phonetic language is.

The property that characterizes a phonetic language is that you can properly pronounce a written word that you know nothing about.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#283

Post by Enginerrrd »

dadoum wrote: post #250
jjav wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

According to this paper [0] and my own experience, it's way easier to pronounce a word in French given the spelled word than in English. It's slightly harder to spell French than English for the model of the study, but it's really close. Now, in my personal experience, I feel like French has a lot of rules while English has a lot of outliers which do not follow any rules. But my native language is French, so I am obv…

Yeah as far as I know, in French words are always pronounced consistent with how they're spelled. The same is not true in English. Americans complain a lot about french spellings '-ioux', 'eau', etc. but they offer no gripe over the difference between '-ough' in 'enough' vs 'through'.

French is funny to me because the written language and the spoken language are in some ways quite different, with written french introducing considerable complexity. aller, allait, allais, allaient, alleé, etc. Since the spoken context for all the conjugations is almost always clear, I'm not sure why someone introduced the extra complexity.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#284

Post by cardanome »

jgalt212 wrote: post #218

Diacritics mostly just add a layer of unnecessary complexity, and make it hard for computers to handle. Given the above, I'm surprised Esperanto was designed using accent marks. But I suspect those weren't the most practical people.

Computers were not much of a concern in 1887.

As Esperanto was designed to be a neutral language that took words from many (European) languages, it needed an orthography that would unambiguously denote those sounds.

You can trivially transliterate the circumflex letter with digraphs using h anyway. ĝ -> gh

Still perfectly readable.

If you want a language where there is a trivial and unambiguous mapping between written and spoken language and the sounds don't exist in basic latin script, you need to do something. You can use diacritics, you can use digraphs and other tricks or well you just give up. But saying they are "unnecessary complexity" is very mistaken.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#285

Post by germandiago »

School-Cotton wrote: post #272
germandiago wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. I was speaking about standard Spanish from Spain. Xenofobia is an s, yes, and excursión is "ks" In fsct, Méjico is the traditional way to write Mexico in Spanish grom Spain until it was accepted the other form a few years ago. I still write "Méjico" myself.

Since less than 10% of Spanish speakers are from Spain, there’s no reason to assume you were specifically talking about that one country when referring to the Spanish language in general. And anyway, as you point out, even in Spain the form México is accepted now.

I thought it is perfectly reasonable to talk about spanish from Spsin the same you talk about English from England.

After all, it is where they come from originally and have their own spelling (colour vs color, etc.)

An x in standard spanish has always been the two sounds I told you and that mexican deviation is specific to Mexico.

Yes, it is over 100 million speakers but I was still assuming the root language in its original place as the reference. Sorry if I did not express it correctly.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#286

Post by speff »

Twirrim wrote: post #281
nelox wrote: post #278

The claim that “English doesn’t use accents” is, quite frankly, a bit naïve. After all, one only needs to step into a café for a crème brûlée, or to read a novel featuring a tête-à-tête, to see that English is perfectly comfortable with accented words. From the résumé of a job seeker to the façade of a building, from the attaché case of a businessman to the naïve assumptions of a newcomer, accents are sprinkled throu…

In almost every example you state, we've taken the word and the pronunciation, but have dropped the accent marks themselves. It's part of what makes English pronunciation a minefield.

If I recall correctly, the accent marks only started to get dropped when people began using keyboards. Resumé and fiancée still got an accent when it was handwritten

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#287

Post by lelandfe »

germandiago wrote: post #202
diogolsq wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Or live and live, read and read (past participle), or castle (the t is mute) or bear, beard, the ea is different. I do not want to be offensive, there are lots more , but it is an amazing sh*tshow the mapping.

If you think castle is bad, wait till you hear forecastle (“fok-sul”)

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#288

Post by yieldcrv »

adonovan wrote: post #221
yieldcrv wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm American 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

1000? Prussia dissolved only in 1947 and the nation state of Germany was reunified only in 1990. In any case, communication technology (trains, TVs) is a greater determinant of dialect than government.

suboptimal outcome for sure

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#289

Post by palmfacehn »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #276
taeric wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has become a thing where folks are taught, basically, that English is not a phonetic language. It is truly mind boggling the number of college educated folks I've talked with that start to try and argue that we don't have a phonetic alphabet. And, like, I get it. We don't have a fully regular one. But this is like the people that think we don't have a single word to describe some things, when they have to basicall…

At least one really obvious way to know that English is a phonetic language: fantasy authors create all sorts of made up names in their books. Sure, sometimes there are disagreements over how to pronounce these names, but generally readers come up with quite similar pronunciations.

The confusion may come from the various spelling conventions in the numerous loan words. In many of the counterintuitive cases, you could imagine a more phonetic spelling. The tradition has been to preserve buffet as is, instead of rewriting it as, "buffay".

The distinction is there. English can be used phonetically. We prefer to preserve the heritage of various loan words instead.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#290

Post by germandiago »

daeken wrote: post #245
MarceColl wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rules are very clear on when those are used though, you are not really arguing the original point imo. What are the dialectical variations in "ll" and "c"?

(B2-ish Spanish learner here but) "ll" is pronounced in at least three variants that I know of: "y", "j", and something between "sh" and "ch". E.g. "llama" might be pronounced like (in English writing) "yama", "zhama", or "shama". The last one really threw me for a while; it's super common in Argentina at least.

I see what you mean. I think you should stick to one form and learn by difference or you could quickly get lost.

"ll" in standard spanish is a strong english "y".

However, in spanish argentinian from the area of Buenos Aires (but not the argentinian Córdoba, which sounds more like colombian spanish) it is "sh", being that s something like a mix in-between of "j" and "s" + h as in "she" but the sound is a bit different.

Without being able to record some sound I cannot express it better but I am sure you can find something around. Javier Milei, the president, has such an accent.

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