Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why English doesn't use accents

deadlanguagesociety.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 615 posts

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#491

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

JambalayaJimbo wrote: post #332
williamdclt wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "non-phonetic alphabet" is the biggest non-issue I see people raise a stink about Myself and many friends who aren’t native have struggled with speaking fluently because of it. Most of us still mispronounce some words (my friend pronounced “draught beer” like the lack of rain, instead of like draft). Doesn’t mean things should change, but it’s certainly not a “non-issue”

How would you account for the fact that for many words, there isn't a consistent pronunciation rule for it at all? For example, I would guess that 50% of English speakers are non-rhotic.

at some point these differences would qualify as different languages...

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#492

Post by sudobash1 »

English still sometimes (albeit very rarely) uses one type of diacritic. The diaeresis is in occasional use. Now days it is mainly used in the word "naïve," but it will be familiar to readers of the New Yorker on words like "coöperate."

The diaeresis is used disambiguate when a pair of vowels make two separate vowel-sounds, instead of one. For instance, if you didn't know better, you would think that the words "naive" and "nave" (said "nāv", the congregational of a traditional church) were homophones. But the diaeresis shows you that the "a" and "i" are said independently (nah-ēv).

Of course, English also uses diacritics occasionally in some borrowed words: résumé, née, fiancée/fiancé. But these are also considered optional.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#493

Post by Tadpole9181 »

Aardwolf wrote: post #364
r00f wrote: post #303

I strongly disagree that "it's a shame" that English does not use diacritics. English is my second language (third maybe, considering that the country of my birth is bilingual), and is my favorite language to read and to write. I tried to learn French for two years and stopped, and all those excessive writing marks were among the reasons. God bless all those monks who decided to keep English writing clean.

Also agree, you can already use combinations of multiple characters to define other sounds, and that's faster to type too Shame, though, that in English the sounds that combinations of characters make, aren't well or uniquely defined (e.g. bird, word, hurt, heard, herd, ... all sound like the same vowel)

They're faster to type largely because your keyboard is English. Other languages (French, German, etc) have diacritics right there. Even Japanese isn't that much harder to type once you actually learn it (and, on fact, is quite pleasant on a smartphone even at beginner level).

On the topic of similar word sounds, this is a big thing that hangs up English speakers on romantic languages. Their vowels are sloppy and contextual, so when they're given explicit symbols that say "use this vowel", they struggle to pick that vowel out. That "symbol to sound" wiring isn't up in the noggin'. A Spanish person learning English will see the Spanish equivalent and go "duh". But an English speaker needs those "like in bird" tables.

Luckily, we have a huge phonemic index (because of all the stealing), so we're actually at an advantage from many languages once that hurdle is crossed. Spare tonality.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#494

Post by devilbunny »

int_19h wrote: post #465
devilbunny wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re seeing a word for the first time, it is pretty useful - partly with pronunciation but definitely with meaning. You do have to have some familiarity with the source languages, but if it’s an unfamiliar but nativized word, those are almost always ultimately Latin or Greek.

If you're seeing the word for the first time and need to figure out how to pronounce it, how would you know that “y” is acting as a vowel and not as a consonant in the first place?

If it's followed by a vowel, it's likely a Germanic word: yule, your, young, yellow (and you probably know the word, since our core vocabulary is still mostly Germanic). If it's at the end or between consonants, like syllabary or ontogeny, probably Greek.

You might also just happen to know a smattering (or even a lot) of Greek and Latin.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#495

Post by GianFabien »

OJFord wrote: post #64
GianFabien wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you mean misspelled

"mispelt" is a somewhat archaic British spelling. "mispelled" is more modern.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#496

Post by gavinward »

sudobash1 wrote: post #492

English still sometimes (albeit very rarely) uses one type of diacritic. The diaeresis is in occasional use. Now days it is mainly used in the word "naïve," but it will be familiar to readers of the New Yorker on words like "coöperate." The diaeresis is used disambiguate when a pair of vowels make two separate vowel-sounds, instead of one. For instance, if you didn't know better, you would think that the words "naive…

> if you didn't know better

It's funny how The New Yorker clings to this given its readership is mostly people who absolutely do know better.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#497

Post by thaumasiotes »

int_19h wrote: post #470
gwd wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> qu and chou are aspirated; ju and zhou aren't. ...Compare [ref] So the idea here is that chou and zhou are related in a similar way that the t's in "top" and "stop" are related: your mouth and vocal cords are doing the same thing, but in one case you have the puff of air and the other you don't. At any rate, going back to the original question: the logic behind the choice is still consistent. On this classification…

Languages usually have either the voiced/unvoiced distinction as phonemic, or the aspirated/unaspirated distinction. In the former case unvoiced consonants often have aspirated allophones as in English, and in the latter case unaspirated consonants often have voiced allophones especially between vowels, as in Chinese or Korean. Hence why it makes sense to map the two in this manner - if your native language uses aspi…

> But then you get Hindi with a four-way distinction, both voiced/unvoiced and aspirated/unaspirated in all possible combinations.

They're spelled that way; I don't think they're supposed to be pronounced that way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirated_consonant#Voiced_con...

>> True aspirated voiced consonants, as opposed to murmured (breathy-voice) consonants such as the [bʱ], [dʱ], [ɡʱ] that are common among the languages of India, are extremely rare.

> Languages usually have either the voiced/unvoiced distinction as phonemic, or the aspirated/unaspirated distinction.

My understanding is that all of these options are fairly common:

- two-way contrast between aspirated and unaspirated

- two-way contrast between voiced and voiceless

- three-way contrast between voiceless aspirated, voiceless, and voiced

- three-way contrast for labial and alveolar stops; two-way contrast for velar stops

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#498

Post by gavinward »

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…

I find it interesting that the Spanish consider the ñ to be a separate letter, in their 27 letter alphabet.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#499

Post by thaumasiotes »

int_19h wrote: post #469
wredcoll wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?!

How would you spell that sound in a way that is consistently recognized? "zh" is actually one of the more reasonable pinyin digraphs because it follows the same pattern as "sh". If "s" + "h" results in [ʃ], then logically "z" + "h" should result in [ʒ]. "c" is used the way pinyin uses it in many languages (e.g. pretty much all Slavic ones that use the Latin alphabet, for starters). "x" and "q" are more questionable,…

> "zh" is actually one of the more reasonable pinyin digraphs because it follows the same pattern as "sh". If "s" + "h" results in [ʃ], then logically "z" + "h" should result in [ʒ].

Note that the sound [ʒ] is common in Mandarin, but its pinyin spelling is "r". "zh" isn't voiced and is affricated.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#500

Post by JdeBP »

pests wrote: post #411
ViscountPenguin wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for the executive order claim? I can't find it on this list of executive orders signed by Lydon Johnson, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_actions_by... . And as far as I can tell the claim originates on ascii-code.com and spread from there? Googling executive order 11110 gives no primary information. Edit: found it https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/memorandum-approvi... I…

From a quick search it seems this was a Presidential Memorandum not an Executive Action. “Executive orders are generally more formal, require publication in the Federal Register, and must cite the President's legal authority, while memoranda are less formal, may not be published, and do not always require a justification of authority.” These sometimes get called executive orders, like some memos that trump has signed…

The 11110 thing is a myth, though. The closest that we get to that is that it is number 127 in the NARA's catalogue of the Johnson's public papers for 1968.

* https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/PPP-1968-book1

Post reply on HN