Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE
Alice Grove MCDT - November 2015
cesium133:
That used to be indicated (and still is in Icelandic), but some printers got lazy in the 15th century. If you see "Ye olde ..." in, say, a renaissance fair, the 'Y' was in fact a thorn.
Stoutfellow:
--- Quote from: Morituri on 21 Nov 2015, 11:04 ---And, argh, don't get me started about your 'th' consonant! NOBODY (except German, again and some further-north European languages) has a consonant like that! When is it voiced and when not? No clue from the spelling. I had to practice for months before I could even say it by itself, let alone in the middle of a wreck of a word like 'twelfths' (or for that matter 'months').
--- End quote ---
Mm. Greek has the voiceless "th(eta)"; Castilian Spanish has both (written "c/z" and "d", each in particular contexts); so does Welsh. And that's just sticking to Europe.
Morituri:
Have English speakers ever noticed that sane languages usually have only five or six vowels, and not ELEVEN?
Or that in sane languages there are never more than two consonants in a row in the same word, and not FIVE?
Or that in sane languages voiced and unvoiced consonants are almost never mixed without a vowel inbetween? (yes, I know that happens even more in Eastern european languages, but the point stands...)
Or that in sane language that use alphabets (as opposed to abjads, logograms, syllabaries, or ideographic writing), the pronunciations and the spellings are usually pretty closely related?
To get through school in much of the world you have the choice; you can study three different sane languages, or you can study English. The kids who are ambitious take English - it's harder than three sane languages, but it gets you further.
cesium133:
--- Quote from: Morituri on 21 Nov 2015, 12:03 ---Have English speakers ever noticed that sane languages usually have only five or six vowels, and not ELEVEN?
--- End quote ---
Is Portuguese an insane language? French? Vietnamese? The fact that the International phonetic alphabet has far more than 11 symbols for vowels (and not all of them are used in English...) should indicate the error in this thought.
Stoutfellow:
Standard French has about thirteen oral vowels (there's some dispute as to the exact number) and four nasals. Latin had ten. Standard Italian has seven. Standard German has fifteen.
The Slavic languages are notorious for their consonant clusters; the Polish word "wszczniesz" begins with a cluster of four consonants. (That, at least, English does not do.) There are American Indian languages which have words with no vowels whatever.
Most times that English adjoins voiced and voiceless consonants, one of them assimilates to the other. ("Dogs" ends with a /z/, for example.)
As for spelling and pronunciation, I give you French and Irish as counterexamples.
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