Re: Esperantist lies (Re: Learning a language)

From: LEE Sau Dan (danlee_at_informatik.uni-freiburg.de)
Date: 07/09/04 

Date: 09 Jul 2004 11:34:31 +0200

>>>>> "Sean" == Sean O'Leathlobhair <jwlawler@yahoo.com> writes:

    Sean> I, and many (most?) other, literate, native English speakers
    Sean> were not taught that way. We can pronounce English words
    Sean> that we have not seen before. Even when my son had been
    Sean> learning to read for less than one year, if he encountered a
    Sean> word that he did not know, he would say: "Daddy, what does
    Sean> blah mean?". He would not show me the book.

The same happens routinely in a Chinese family, too. Even between an
illiterate parent and a school-attending son.

    Sean> On a good day, he would say it correctly or close enough
    Sean> for me to recognise. On a bad day, I would ask for some
    Sean> context and then be able to guess what he meant.

What makes you think the same doesn't happen in a Chinese family?

    Sean> It was very rare that I had to ask to see the book or ask
    Sean> him to spell out the word.

It's the same in the Chinese case.

    Sean> Some 6 year old children can read English words that they do
    Sean> not know.

Not that different from Chinese school-children.

    Sean> I have only related one case against your one case but
    Sean> logically that is enough for my argument and not yours.

I don't think so. Since the same thing happens in both an English and
a Chinese environment, I can't see how you can use that to convince me
that _the English script has more phonetic hints than the Chinese
script_.

  I

>> I was special in my class. At an age of 7 (before I even
>> started to learn that wierd thing called "tense"), I was
>> already able to infer the principle of an alphabetic phonetic
>> script from the English words that I've learnt. I even
>> developed a feeling of the spelling rules of English. So, I
>> was able to "predict" how the English words the teacher was
>> going to teach us in the coming lesson. The classmates came to
>> me, flipped the textbook to the page for the coming lesson, and
>> asked me how to pronounce the new words on that page. I
>> guessed the pronunciation (with high success rate!) and they
>> wrote it down by transcribing the sounds into Cantonese/Chinese
>> characters. (Don't be surprised; that's what most HK
>> schoolchildren do. We've already mastered our script at this
>> age so that we can transcribe English sounds in Chinese
>> characters!) Why were they doing this? The English teacher
>> had to teach so many new words (plus other things) in a single
>> lesson that he/she had to go quite fast. The classmates seldom
>> have enough time to do the transcription and write it down.
>> With the help of my predictions, they can catch up with the
>> teacher.
 
    Sean> You seem to be arguing against your own case now.

The "transcription" part clearly shows that my classmates have
mastered the Chinese script well before the English one. Up to an
extent that they use the former to transcribe English sounds. Why
would they need to do that if the English script has more phonetic
hints than the Chinese script?

    Sean> Although you were not taught to read English phonetically,
    Sean> you figured it out anyway.

And I'm the only one in the class to do that at that age. All my
classmates were able to pronounce unseen Chinese characters at that
age, because of the phonetic hints in the Chinese script.

    Sean> If I were teaching English to literate Chinese speakers, I
    Sean> may also start that way. Their experience with their own
    Sean> script may lead them to accept an arbitrary relationship
    Sean> between the written and spoken form.

This is simply not true. The relationship between the written and
spoken form is NOT arbitrary. There is so much phonetic hinting.

We are taught the Chinese script by being pointed out the
signific+phonetic construction, which covers 90% of the characters.
That's the trick that we use to quickly learn thousands of characters.
The first 2 hundreds may need a real rote-memorization to relate
*really arbitrary* shapes with meanings. Thereafter, we exploit the
phonetic hints.

    Sean> But after a few dozen or few hundred words, I would switch
    Sean> strategy and start to explain the phonetics.

I'd go for "hundred" and not "dozen". And I'd do it gradually: First
teach them the "difficult" sounds, such as the "th"s, and tell them
where these sounds occur: spelt with "th". Next, teach the "r" and
let them know that the "r" in the spelling hints this sound. Next,
tell them the final "s" in the spelling should correspond to a
word-final "s" sound (which they have to learn). etc. I'd rather not
teaching them the vowel spelling rules. That's too complicated and
varies from accent to accent. I'd let them discover the vowel rules
themselves.

But that's basically how we learnt the English script in Hong Kong.
The key is that we don't start with the wrong assumption that
"spelling must correspond to pronunciations (phonemically)". No.
Instead, we are gradually revealed the hints hidden in the written
forms, thus developing the concept that "spelling gives pronuniciation
hints, but not accurate phonetic transcription; for the latter, people
use IPA". As a result, we don't complain about the "weird spelling
system" of English.

    Sean> I believe that English is sometimes taught to natives that
    Sean> way. But, with a few exceptions, the teaching does soon
    Sean> switch to a phonetic mode.

Maybe, you'd be better off using the first method. Switching to
phonetic mode causes confusions and frustrations with a *mnemonic*
spelling system.

 
    Sean> Name some English words with unpredictable pronunciations
    Sean> which are not among the few hundred most commonly used
    Sean> words.

Buffet, croissant, parfait, lieutenant (British pronunciation), sword,
isle, aisle, castle, ...

Since I don't use these words on a daily basis, consider them "not
commonly used". (Who has seen a real sword nowadays?) Furthermore,
I've heard them mispronounced either by native speakers or by L2
speakers.

    Sean> The really tough ones such as: tough, cough, bough etc are
    Sean> not really very numerous and are commonly used. I accept
    Sean> that it is further from the ideal in the other direction,
    Sean> predicting the written form from the spoken is hard. But,
    Sean> for me at least, I can do it well enough to find an unknown
    Sean> word that I have heard in a dictionary.

Similarly, the Chinese characters that we really need to memorize by
heart are the few hundreds that occur most frequently. The rest
usually contain phonetic hints based on these few hundreds.

    Sean> But although, far from perfect, I claim that the English
    Sean> script contains much more than just hints. Also, most of
    Sean> the difficult bits are in commonly used words. In the less
    Sean> common words, it is mostly minor points such as f / ph
    Sean> redundancy or whether a consonant is doubled or not. Have
    Sean> you looked at the links posted by Ruud on the subject?
>> Yeah. I'm aware of those rules. Actually, those are
>> basically what I have (more or less subconciously) inferred
>> during my first 4 years of learning English, even before I came
>> to "tense".

    Sean> Tense does not have anything to do with this debate.

It's just a comparison: I have inferred these spelling rules before I
can handle the tense system of English. So, those spelling rules
aren't more difficult to master (for me) than the tense system. Thus,
if a native speaker complains about the English spellings, I can only
say he has learnt the script in a really bad way.

>> For Chinese, it's even simpler. Every Chinese schoolchild know
>> how to recognize the signific and phonetic parts of a Chinese
>> character, and can guess the pronunciation from the phonetic
>> hint, together with the *background knowledge* of the lexicon
>> of the language. That's no magic. Every schoolchild of normal
>> intelligence can do it. Our guesses are sometimes wrong, and
>> hence we need to memorize the exception. But most of the time,
>> we can rely on the phonetic hints.
 
    Sean> A good English schoolchild does not read any word wrongly.

Any?

    Sean> He or she will know all the completely unpredictable words
    Sean> and know the rules for reading the rest.

You really mean ALL? Including, e.g. "lieutenant" (British
pronunciation)?

    Sean> (Note that I did say 'good' schoolchild, there are bad
    Sean> ones who cannot read well.) Remember for my point, it is
    Sean> not necessary that everyone can achieve this, just that some
    Sean> can.

But the _average_ Chinese schoolchild can pronounce most characters
correctly based on the phonetic hints in the characters.

    Sean> Even if the rules of English were so complex that only
    Sean> Einstein was able to read it reliably, it would still show
    Sean> that the English script contained more than hints.

None of your examples of experience has shown that the English script
contains more phonetic hints than Chinese.

 
    Sean> Not only can a well educated English speaker pronounce most
    Sean> unfamiliar words accurately,
>> The same is true for a literate Chinese.

    Sean> What happens when the phonetic hint has the wrong tone or a
    Sean> wrong consonant or vowel?

As hints, we of course know the tone or initial consonant may not be
correct. (The vowel and final consonants are most of the time
correct, because the phonetic hints were carefully put there, not
arbitrarily.)

Using the signific part, we can already narrow down the possibilities
dramatically. Then, with context and a knowledge of the lexcion, we
can eliminate the wrong ones.

    Sean> The hints are often quite approximate.

Approximate ENOUGH so that together with the signific hint and context
(and our knowledge of the lexicon), we can get it right.

    Sean> If he does not know the word, how will he know how to
    Sean> correct it or even that it is wrong?

It happens so seldom. We know most single-character words in common
use. If we don't know a compound word, that doesn't matter. We still
know the characters composing it, because the characters are among the
set of known single-character words. So, we can pronounce each
constituent character in an unknown compound word, we can pronounce
the word.

    Sean> The English speaker needs to remember a few hundred
    Sean> unpredictable words. The rarer the word, the more likely
    Sean> the pronunciation is to be predictable.

The same is true for the Chinese script. Only a few hundred basic
shapes need to be rote-memorized. Rarer characters have quite
reliable phonetic hints. Rarer words are usually compound words
consisting of non-rare characters, which we already know with
familiarity.

    Sean> If there are going to be exceptions, it is better that there
    Sean> are in the common words than the rare ones. I don't think
    Sean> that is true for Chinese, is it?

It is.

 
    Sean> If I hear an unfamiliar word, I can usually find it in a
    Sean> dictionary.
 
>> Me too, for English and German, and sometimes French (if
>> liaison is absent).

    Sean> So you do acknowledge some advantage to our script.

No. I'm just saying it is no significantly more advantageous than
ours.

    Sean> Surely that also indicates that the script is providing more
    Sean> than just hints. I see this as a very valuable feature of
    Sean> the English script (and other similar scripts). There are
    Sean> many contexts when it is not possible to ask a speaker to
    Sean> explain a word (e.g. TV or radio). The ability to find it
    Sean> in a dictionary can make the difference between
    Sean> understanding and not understanding.

Chinese people seldom need to consult dictionaries. "Unknown" words
are usually compound words built from known roots (we do that
significantly more extensively than German or Dutch). So, we only
need to decompose the compound and understand the base words. Then,
we have an understanding of the compound. No need to consult a
dictionary. I myself seldom touch any Chinese dictionaries in the
past decade. There is simply no need to do so. (Do you need to
consult a dictionary for words like "Bundesverfassungsgericht", if you
already know the base words "Bund", "Verfassung", "Gericht"? Do you
need to check what "cybercafe" mean from a dictionary, if you already
know "cyber" and "cafe"?)

>> I see. You mean multiple attempts. We can often do it with
>> Chinese, too. Firstly, there are dictionaries with a phonetic
>> index (based on some phonetic transcription method -- Pinyin is
>> gaining ground). Even for dictionary without phonetic indices,
>> we can find a homonymous (or similarly sounding) character. On
>> that entry, there is usually another character of the same or
>> similar pronunciation, so that people not familiar with
>> Fan3Qie1, Pinyin, or other phonetic transcription schemes may
>> guess the correct pronunciation. We can sometimes find the
>> desired character there.

    Sean> What difference in meaning do you intend by multiple rather
    Sean> than several?

None.

    Sean> Are you suggesting that a large number of attempts are
    Sean> required?

No. Multiple == more than one.

>> Rhyme tables (supposed to be a tool for poets?) have existed in
>> China for over a millennium. They're another tool for looking
>> up characters by sounds. Of course, with computers, it's
>> quicker to use the various phonetic-based input methods to do a
>> similar lookup. Type in the phonetic transcription of a sound,
>> and you get a list of candidate characters. (Is there a
>> similar tool for English, other than using the simplistic
>> Soundex algorithm?)

    Sean> I don't know. We don't really need such tools. There are
    Sean> rhyme tables but their main purpose is to assist you in
    Sean> writing poems or songs.

That's also the main purpose of the Chinese rhyme tables.

    Sean> I have not heard of them being used as a spelling aid.

Maybe, you have not discoverd it? :)

Say, you don't know whether to spell a word as "write", "right",
"rite", "wright", ... Wouldn't a rhyme table be very useful?

    Sean> but it is possible with practise.
 
>> What is not possible with practice and suitable tools?
 
    Sean> Many things. If the association between written and spoken
    Sean> forms was completely arbitrary then no one could read an
    Sean> unfamiliar word or find an unknown word in a dictionary.

That's true. And you assume the Chinese script to be like that. But
this assumption is simply wrong.

    Sean> UK and US English share many words but do not always
    Sean> pronounce them the same way.
>> But the differences are so minor that we don't have
>> difficulties understanding both pronunciations, given time to
>> adjust our ears. The same never happend to Mandarin/Cantonese.
>>
>>
    Sean> No one calls English and French a single language.
>> >> I would call them a "European" language. :)
>>
    Sean> If you wish but I don't think that you find many others that
    Sean> would agree with you.
>> Many linguists agree that calling the Chinese branch of
>> languages "a single Chinese language" is as ridiculous as
>> calling the Romance languages "a single Romance language", or
>> even the European IE languages "a single European language".

    Sean> I agree as well. But is it relevant to our script
    Sean> discussion?

It is relevant if you consider how "buffet" is pronounced in ENGLISH.

    Sean> I thought you claimed that you learnt Mandarin easily, is
    Sean> that no evidence that Cantonese and Mandarin have a close
    Sean> relationship. The English and French do not usually learn
    Sean> each other's languages easily.
>> Go to Hongkong and ask the HKers whether they find the
>> learning of Mandarin easy. If it is really easy, then most
>> HKers should be able to understand Mandarin easily, right? But
>> this is not the case. Most HKers can't even understand a
>> simple Mandarin sentence.
 
    Sean> I would not expect a HKer to understand Mandarin without
    Sean> learning.

Now, do you expect a UK-English speaker to understand US-English
without learning (but with time for adjustment)?

Doesn't that tell you that Cantonese-Mandarin is not just "different
accents of the same language"?

    Sean> Also I would not expect an Italian to understand French
    Sean> without learning. But I thought that you had said that you
    Sean> leant Mandarin easily. Is that wrong? I am not suggesting
    Sean> mutual comprehensibility but I did think that it would be
    Sean> fairly easy to learn your second Chinese language.

That's true.

    Sean> This is often debated. The extreme ends are not mutually
    Sean> comprehensible and hence this suggests that they are not a
    Sean> single language. However it is hard to find where one stops
    Sean> and another starts. It is a continuum. Countries do have
    Sean> some significance since they often set standards. I am not
    Sean> an expert on the Germanic languages but I expect that there
    Sean> is a standard Dutch and a standard German and that they are
    Sean> not mutually comprehensible without learning.

No. I have 2 colleagues. One comes from Holland and after a few
months of staying in Germany, he can already understand much German.
He still doesn't speak German. He would use English (because others
don't understand Dutch) when he needs to speak. The other colleagues
comes from northern Germany (Plattish-speaking areas). He has not
learnt Dutch, but being exposed to Flemish for some time due to
contact with those people, he can understand some spoken Flemish.

As a third example, I've found that I can *read* simple Dutch, esp.
short notices, short instructions and warnings, where the context is
more confined. I've only learnt German, not Dutch. The colleague
from northern Germany can do it, too, but not as good as I can!
Another colleague couldn't understand the health warnings on Dutch
cigarette packs at all. (Maybe, he is seldom exposed to Dutch
spellings.) Indeed, I read out the warning by directly mapping them
to German words and pronouncing them as in standard German!

    Sean> So in at least one sense, they are different languages.

In the political sense, yes.

    Sean> I have heard that the Australian aborigines understand the
    Sean> issue better but it may be an urban myth. They do not
    Sean> classify their languages / dialects as we do. They describe
    Sean> the speech of other tribes in terms of the time that it
    Sean> takes to get to know it.

Wow! That means it's a continuous scale, instead of our binary
approach. That's much better!

>> Even Toishanese and Cantonese are mutually unintelligible,
>> although everyone considers Toishanese to be a "sub-dialect" of
>> Cantonese.
 
    Sean> Does that "everyone" include the Chinese?

Yes. Including the Cantonese and Toishanese speakers, even if they
have experienced the mutual unintelligiblity of both "subdialects".

(This experience is more and more seldom, as the Toishanese speakers
consider Cantonese a more prestigeous 'version' of their language, and
hence try to learn and speak Cantonese as much as possible. This
includes both those that are in Chinatowns (esp. San Francisco) and
those that have stayed in China. Fact: In Toishan city (Mandarin:
Tai2shan1), the local TV station broadcasts programmes only in
Cantonese! I was so frustrated by that when I wanted to learn more
Toishanese during my visit.)

    Sean> but I have often seen Danes and Swedes talk in English even
    Sean> when no other foreigners were present. I know Danes that
    Sean> claim not to speak Swedish but that may be just a joke or
    Sean> prejudice.
>> Why? They don't speak Swedish. They only understand it.
>> These are 2 different matters.
 
    Sean> The Danes usually understand Swedish easily.

That doesn't mean they can speak Swedish easily.

 
    Sean> I know the Alsace region and some of its history but I did
    Sean> not know that there was a language called Alsace.

The French TV station "France 3" has its headquarters (I think) in
Strasbourg -- the capital of Alsace. It sometimes have programmes in
the Alsace language. I've watch drammas in the Alsace language in the
afternoon of Saturdays or Sundays. I can understand it a little bit,
due to the similarity with standard German. With the French
subtitles, I can understand even more.

 
    Sean> But do you claim to be able to read the vast majority of
    Sean> unfamiliar characters accurately, including when you do not
    Sean> know the word?

Yes. And the accuracy increases with the usage frequency of those
words, as in the English case.

    Sean> Can you hear a word and find the character in a dictionary
    Sean> (unless it uses an auxiliary index such as Pinyin).

Yes and know. Most unknown words are compounds built from known
monosyllabic words. So, with enough context (e.g. when and where that
word is used), I can already derive the characters for each basic
words forming the compound. Then, I can often make sense out of the
compound directly, without using a dictionary. (Do you need a
dictionary if you hear "stimulated-light" (instead of "laser" or
"LASER"), do you want to go to the dictionary to find out how to spell
it and what it means? I don't!)

    Sean> I can do both of these for English. I would claim that I
    Sean> could read 99% of new English words correctly. Note that I
    Sean> am not claiming that 99% of English words can be read
    Sean> correctly from their spelling. I am only claiming that 99%
    Sean> of those that I don't know are. This is because I know the
    Sean> vast majority of the exceptional words. In English, the
    Sean> rarer the word, the more likely that the pronunciation is as
    Sean> expected from the spelling.

I can say so for Chinese, too.

 

>> As mentioned before, most "unfamiliar" Chinese words nowadays
>> are compounds built up from highly familiar Chinese characters.
>> So, yes, I can pronounce each character of the unfamiliar
>> Chinese compound word. e.g. new brand names. People aren't
>> that stupid to invent new product names or jargons using
>> characters that most people would mispronounce.
 
    Sean> Do you know all Chinese morphemes?

Most, if you take frequency into account.

    Sean> Even if you did, it would say nothing about the phonetic
    Sean> nature of your script, just that either your stock of
    Sean> morphemes was small or your memory was good.

You too for English.

 
    Sean> So here, English may be slightly ahead. Its "meaning hints"
    Sean> work when spoken as well as written.

Not quite. Is there an egg in an "eggplant"? Does a butterfly
produce butter, like a milk-cow produce milk? Is a "pineapple" the
fruit of a hybridization of pine trees and apple trees?

And do you think "inflammable" is an antonym of "flammable"?
Which is more valuable: "invaluable" or "valuable"?
What does "infamous" mean?

    Sean> As a native speaker, I do not have these problems. I learnt
    Sean> to distinguish "see" and "sea" before I learnt to read.

You mean a distinction in the pronunciation?

    Sean> For example, the Spanish often struggle to distinguish "sit"
    Sean> and "seat".

And they like to go to the "bitch". :)

    Sean> Also, although the phonetic values of "i" in "write" and
    Sean> "written" are quite different, the association is automatic
    Sean> to me.

I'm glad that it is written so consistently (morphologically speaking,
not phonetically speaking).

    Sean> I don't mean that they sound the same but that they are
    Sean> regarded as close and do not necessarily signal unrealted
    Sean> words.

That's why it's not a (purely) phonetic writing. The mnemonic nature
is more predominant.

 
    Sean> If I read or hear a word starting Xylo then I guess that it
    Sean> has something to do with wood.
>> What's a Xylophone? (That's the only "xylo-" word I know.)

    Sean> Xylo = to do with wood. Phone = to do with sound
    Sean> (e.g. telephone). It is an wooden instrument consisting of
    Sean> lots of bars (one per note) which you hit with a stick.

I see. I think I learnt the word in lists like "A for apple; B for
boy; ... X for what?" It's hard to find an English word beginning
with "x" where the "x" is not used as a symbol for "unknown". e.g.
X-files, X-ray.

    Sean> Xylo is a fairly obscure morpheme.

Of Greek origin? 

-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     +Z05biGVm-                          ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
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