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From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Subject: Re: Lunatic orthography (was Re: Esperanto as a stepping stone?
Message-ID: <D27vLM.vy@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <3ergbm$g14@condor.cs.jhu.edu> <smryanD257Mr.9Mu@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 1995 01:17:43 GMT
Lines: 77

>In article <D23yws.FBA@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>English has beyond doubt the most lunatic orthography
>in existence, with French coming a close second.


In article <1995Jan9.034726.9666@midway.uchicago.edu> deb5@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>[...] Compared to non-alphabetic scripts, English orthography
>no longer seems lunatic.  Compared to Japanese script, [...]
>it is positively reasonable.

<sigh> Let's restore some of the context.  We were asked to imagine a
Chinese speaker, unfamiliar with the concept of an alphabetic script
and the Roman alphabet in particular, about to take up a European
language, `say, English or French'.  The suggestion was that the
orthographies of natural languages were too complex for our student to
handle, so he should start with Esperanto.  The existence of more
complex non-alphabetic scripts was not an issue.

My point is that the generalisation about the orthographies of the
European languages being always far more complex than the Esperanto one
is bogus, since English and French are the exception rather than the rule.

>[...] Even if I limit the word "orthography" only to alphabetic scripts,
>I'm not sure English wins the prize.  How many of you have wrestled with
>Southeast Asian scripts?

See above.


In article <3ergbm$g14@condor.cs.jhu.edu> pjt@condor.cs.jhu.edu (Paul Tanenbaum) writes:
>     I agree wholeheartedly that it can be very difficult to infer the
>pronunciation of English text from its written form.  Furthermore, I
>concede that this--in vacuo--is a serious drawback of English spelling.
>But now I pray my worthy interlocutors concede for their part that
>pronunciation is not the only linguistic feature worthy of capture by
>a writing system.  Meaning and even origins are worth recording, too.

Conceivably, but we were talking of alphabetic writing systems in
comparison to the Chinese script.  For an alphabetic writing system
the recording of meaning is by definition not a matter of high priority.
Of course there are scores of reasons for which a script entirely devoted
to the recording of sound would be far less adequate for English than
for any other European language.

>     Perhaps if Ivan signed more posts as "Ee-von" or "Aye-vin"
>(I'm not certain which pronunciation he uses), [...]

If you manage to guess that my name is not a word of English, you'll
know that it is written either according to the Roman-based spelling
of some other language or according to some romanisation for a
language which normally uses another script or is not written at all;
but in either case `consonants as in *English, vowels as in *Italian'
seems to be a good guess.  The correct pronunciation is [i'van].
(I admit I usually don't do anything to indicate the stress.)

>I'd be more convinced that he takes seriously
>his derision of orthographic lunacy.

Wrt that I refer you to my summary of the context above.


In article <smryanD257Mr.9Mu@netcom.com> smryan@netcom.com (Player) writes:
>Can you read Irish/Gaelic/Goidelic?

Yes, as a matter of fact I can read Scottish Gaelic quite well, as the
Gaelic congregation of the Greyfriars Highland and Tolbooth Kirk,
Edinburgh, will attest; I've performed there several times.

The mapping of letter to sound in Gaelic is actually fairly regular
(though in the opposite direction things do get thorny).


-- 
`Release Jesus wi this mob hangin aroon?  Nae chance!'  (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk, iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,   Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House E113, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Pk Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
