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From: kthier@festival.ed.ac.uk (K Thier)
Subject: Re: German spelling reform
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References: <D2ypr2.HC9@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <D32pG7.Bux@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 1995 16:50:29 GMT
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Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk) wrote:
: In article <D2x5A9.Auv@festival.ed.ac.uk> kthier@festival.ed.ac.uk (K Thier) writes:
: >: :    Photo -> Foto, Asphalt -> Asfalt, Katastrophe -> Katastrofe.
: >
: >: What is the advantage to losing the connection to the greek 'ph'?
: >
: >Not much. it has just been going on for a while and is regularized now.

: The obvious advantage is that there is no such thing as a Greek _ph_.
: The Greek phi is a single letter, not a pi with an aspiration mark,
: so there is no reason not to represent it by means of the German
: letter _f_.

well, there is such a thing as a Greek ph, since this since aniquity has
been the way of representing it in the Latin alphabet in Greek loan
words. Otherwise, i have just stated that the change to f is going to
happen,I do not oppose it. at most, i think it's superfluous.

: >Greek th and rh are made redundant, too.

: See above about _th_.  _rh_ makes a little more sense, but since the
: connexion to the Greek original is lost in the pronunciation, what's
: the point of keeping it in the spelling?

Not much, there's no need to change it, but people are welcome to it.

: >: We could even go so far as:
: >: ch        x
: >: x         ks
: >: chs       ks/xs (depending on circumstances)
: >
: >ch to x is absolute nonsense,

: The hell it is.  What is really stupid is the current situation,
: in which the single letter _x_ is used for a consonant cluster which
: might as well be written _ks_, while the single (and rather frequent)
: consonant /x/ is written as a digraph.

In the Latin alphabet, the letter x represents /ks/ i do not see why we
should change that. Equally does ch represent /x/ or allophones. The
development of ch to the French and English value is secondary!!
the IPA sign x is taken from the Greek alphabet, and, on a synchronic
basis, has nothing to do with Latin x (having the value of a different
Greek letter) Historically, ks was not a digraph in either alphabet

: >if you do that you can as well introduce IPA as compulsory letters.

: IPA needn't be compulsory, but it is rather well designed, so, other
: things being equal, it makes sense to keep as close to it as possible.

IPA is a scholarly way of representing sounds, not lnguage, the latter
hving a cultural context including an alphabet, or other writing system,
or even no writing system at all !

: >chs could be sensibly substituted by x,
: >but i see no need to get rid of x=ks.

: What's the point of having a single letter for /ks/, particularly
: if that letter could be used more reasonably for something else?

cf.above

Catriona
