Re: Esperantist lies (Re: Learning a language)

From: Sean O'Leathlobhair (jwlawler_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/13/04 

Date: 13 Jul 2004 13:36:16 -0700

LEE Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message news:<m3r7rlttg8.fsf@mika.informatik.uni-freiburg.de>...
> >>>>> "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.
 
But if the phonetic hint is not exact, then how do you know which word
matches what he said? Even if it was exact, there are many homonyms
to choose from. There are a few in English e.g. see / sea and meet /
meat but a child does not have to have studied reading long to sort
those ones out for himself.
 
> 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?

Because so many characters are likely to match the same phonetic hint.
 
> 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.
 
Same answer again. Anyway, would you have the option to ask him to
spell it.
 
> Sean> Some 6 year old children can read English words that they do
> Sean> not know.
>
> Not that different from Chinese school-children.
 
Again, how if the hint is not correct?
 
> 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_.
 
Because I, can pronounce almost every English word correctly including
ones that I have never read or heard before. The English language is
huge and there are many words that I have never heard said or have
ever read. Since I am only trying to prove the possibility of this,
that is enough evidence. It does not matter if you cannot do it, or
you find lots of native speakers who cannot do it. I can do it so it
is possible.
 
> >> 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?
 
Ask them not me but a guess would be that their own script is more
familiar. The Greek and Russian alphabets have just as much phonetic
information as ours but it is normal to transliterate words and names
from those languages when presented to English speakers. You can
expect an English speaker to be familiar with his own alphabet but it
is less reasonable to expect him to know other alphabets.

If there is so much phonetic information in the Chinese script, why do
foreign learners use Pinyin? Why did the Beijing government introduce
it?
 
> 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.
 
You need to ask your teachers why they ignored the phonetic
information in our 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.

Where is the phonetic in the character for man? What is wrong with
the phonetics in the English spelling of man?
 
> 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.

Exceptional English spellings are much less than 10%. Outside those
exceptions, the spelling is not just a hint but correct.
 
> 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.

Hundred rather dozen, fair enough but I would switch early with
someone whose native language used our alphabet or a similar one.
 
> 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.
 
It would be wrong to overstate the regularity of English spelling,
especially if your student were Italian or Spanish, but you seem to be
doing the reverse and failing to utilise the amount of information
that is there.
 
> 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.
 
We have a very high literacy rate here. Some of the poorest readers
and writers that I know are those that were subjected to experimental,
alternative teaching methods.
  
> 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, ...

Several of those are French. Part of achieving a high level of
literacy in English is learning to recognise words of French origin
and to apply different pronunciation rules. These alternative rules
are an approximation of the French pronunciation using English
phonemes.
 
> 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.

Remember that I have never claimed that decoding English is easy, I
have only claimed that it is possible. So some natives do make
mistakes. Also, not all the cases you have heard are necessarily
mistakes. Many words, particularly those of foreign origin, have more
than one accepted pronunciation. For example, you may pronounce
"garage" as if it were a native English word or as if it were French.

Fortunately real swords are rare these days but toy ones are still
common. They are also very common in films and stories. Have you
noticed how popular "The Lord of the Rings" is? Plenty of swords in
that.
 
> 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.
 
But in English, after the few hundred exceptions, the spellings are
not just hints but are correct. Most of the rarely used words are
first encountered in written form and are pronounced as they are
written.
 
> 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.
 
We do not need to learn tense. A native masters this long before he
learns to read. Young children often make mistakes with irregular
verbs but the usual mistake is to treat the verb as if it were
regular. E.g. my niece once said: "I rewinded the tape" rather than
"I rewound the tape". Forgetting to use tense is not a common mistake
for a native.

I would agree that if a native complains about English spelling then
he has not been taught well. I quite often explain English spelling
rules to other natives.
 
> >> 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?
 
I did say a GOOD one. See below.
 
> 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)?
 
I am familiar with the British pronunciation of lieutenant. It would
be fair enough to say that this only hinted at the pronunciation.
Nonetheless a GOOD student would read it easily enough.
 
> 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.
 
I still cannot understand how this is possible since the hint is often
wrong. Do even your children know all the morphemes of the language?
At what age do Chinese children start to learn to read? Do they know
the whole lanaguge by then?
 
> 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.
 
Yes they do. Give me English words from a reputable dictionary (e.g.
the full Oxford dictionary) and I will pronounce 99% correctly (by UK
standards). This includes words that I have never heard or seen
before. There are plenty of these, even the highest estimates of
personal vocabulary is only a fraction of the words in the full OED.
Unless you call me a liar then this is the proof of my claim.
  
> 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.
 
We may be finally approaching the explanation of the differences in
our scripts. You appear to claim to know almost all Chinese morphemes
which is why a hint is enough in your script. If true, it makes a
test of the phonetic value of the Chinese script impossible. But I do
not claim to all know all English morphemes, there are far too many,
yet I can pronounce the ones that I do not know.
 
> 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.
 
Even though the same script is used for Mandarin and Cantonese which,
as you have reminded me, are different languages and not just
different dialects?
  
> 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.

That you, as a non-native, can find English words in a dictionary,
would suggest to me that the script was working.

So how do you find an unfamiliar character in a Chinese dictionary?
You can identify the radical, then what? Count the strokes and hunt
through a long list of characters?
 
> 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"?)
 
This is a feature of Chinese that I admire. I am not criticising all
aspects of your language. In fact, I am not even criticising your
script. If native Chinese speakers are happy with their script then I
will not tell them that they should be unhappy. The only point that I
am contesting is your criticism of my language's script.
 
> >> 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.
 
So why did you say: "You mean multiple attempts". Why change my
wording?

> 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? :)
 
True but I don't believe that it can be common if I have never heard
of it.
 
> Say, you don't know whether to spell a word as "write", "right",
> "rite", "wright", ... Wouldn't a rhyme table be very useful?
 
The number of such cases is quite small and the words are quite
common. Unless you are nearly illiterate then these words do not
present a problem. An example of a more common spelling mistake is
getting the wrong doubled consonants in a word such as
"accommodation". A rhyme table would not help but it is not needed.
The likely mistakes are close together in a normal dictionary.

Anyway, I am not claiming that the spelling can be easily predicted
from the pronunciation. I am claiming that the reverse, the
pronunciation can, with a high success rate, be preditced from the
spelling. Spelling from pronunciation is harder but if you know the
rules, you can get close enough to find the word with a few (not
several) attempts. (Few and several are similar but several suggest
slightly more than few.)
 
> 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.
 
I did not say that this was true of Chinese. It was just an example
that impossible things may exist. How about Japanese? Do the
phonetic hints in the characters help the Japanese with their
pronunciation?
 
> 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.

See comments on French loan words above. I still don't see the
relevance at this point of the discussion.
 
> 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"?
 
It does and I have never claimed otherwise. Remember when I first
mentioned that I was trying to learn Chinese? I considered this issue
and realised that by selecting Mandarin, I would not be able to
practise with the Cantonese speakers who live near me. I once
attended a Chinese new year festival with the local Chinese community.
 A representative from the Chinese embassy gave a speech in Mandarin.
The rest of the audience did not understand much more than I did.
 
> 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.

A few months would seem to place it between separate dialect and
language. It is much more that UK / US / Australian speakers need to
understand each other. In fact, they understand most of what each
other say immediately and only trip up on a few words such as lorry /
truck and nappy / diaper.
 
> 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.

And in the sense if you take someone who has never left Berlin and
then drop them into Amsterdam, they will only understand a little of
what they hear.
 
> 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!

Very nice, if it is true. Unfortunately I am not sure if it is.
 
> >> 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.
 
True but it was you that asked whether or not they were the same
language.

The Danes that I was speaking of, also claim to not understand Swedish
but as I said, that may be a joke or prejudice. What is more common,
and may explain the choice of English in some cases, is that the
Swedes often do not understand Danish easily. So even if the Dane can
understand Swedish, if he cannot speak it, he still may be unable to
communicate. The Swede may be able to reply in Swedish but I expect
that when addressed in English, they are most likely to reply in
English. Also it is quite possible that the Dane spoke English so
well that the Swede did not know that they were not English. Some
Danes can fool me.
  
> 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!)
 
If you had never seen a television would you know what it is from any
of the English, German or Chinese names? The German and Chinese may
be formed more simply than the English but even if the English had
used native roots, it would still not fully describe the object. For
example, a telephone is a two way device but a television is one way.
Is that apparent in any of these languages?
 
> 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.
 
But how do you do it if it have never seen or heard the word before?
If your answer is that there are no such words then you have not
demonstrated that your script is as effective phonetically as ours but
just that your language has fewer phonemes. No one can remember a
high percentage of English phonemes. There are far too many.
 
> >> 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.
 
Our stock of morphemes is vast and my memory is not good.
  
> 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?
 
The flammable / inflammable confusion is indeed bad but the problem is
a clash of dialects. Flammable is not a word in my dialect. The
derivation of inflammable is: flame, inflame, inflammable. There is
no flammable for me since flame is not a verb. Other dialects
analyse these words differently and do have a flammable.

I do not see a problem with valuable / invaluable. Invaluable means
that it cannot be valued i.e. its value is unknown. This could be
because its value was infinite hence its common figurative use for
very valuable.
 
> 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?
 
No, "see" and "sea" sound the same to me and I think that they would
to any living native speaker. (But they were not always the same.
The sounds have converged.) I meant that no problem or ambiguity
arises from these words. I would not expect any native to have
trouble reading a sentence with either of these words.
 
> Sean> For example, the Spanish often struggle to distinguish "sit"
> Sean> and "seat".
>
> And they like to go to the "bitch". :)
 
It does not sound that way to me. To me, they appear to always use
the vowel of "seat" even when "sit" would be correct. So they do go
to the "beach" but if I annoyed them, they may call me a "beach".
 
> 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).
 
The use in English of i for the sound in write is quite different from
its use in other languages which use the Latin alphabet but this does
not mean that English is not phonetic, the sound of "i" is usually
predictable. Similarly the value of j in English is quite different
from its value in German but this does not mean that either language
is unphonetic. Apart from the silent w, "write" and "written" are
correctly spelt. The final silent "e" in "write" signals the long
pronunciation of the "i". The double "t" in "written" signals the
short pronunciation. The "w" is of course unnecessary (see below) but
not a problem to reading since it would always be silent at the
beginning of a word before an "r".

The reason for the "w" in write is historical. The same applies to
see / sea, the odd long vowel sounds in English, and many other
oddities of English spelling. The spelling has not changed for a very
long time even though the language has. The cost of this consistency
is that the pronunciation rules are more complex than they need to be.
 The benefit is that we can read old books in their original form and
the morphology is simpler than it may be with a simpler spelling
system. Again, note that I am not claiming that the rules of English
spelling are simple but only that they exist. Many of the more
phonetic European languages, e.g. Spanish and Finnish, have had
reforms.
 
> 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.
 
No, this makes English spelling different from many other languages
with the same script but it does not mean that it is unphonetic. The
spelling does usually signal whether "i" should have its "written"
sound or its "write" sound (see above). That one of these sounds is
closer to that of long "e" is irrelevant. To a native, at least, the
two "i" sounds and the two "e" sounds are all quite different.

If you do not understand the rules that predict the sound of "i" then
it may explain why you think English is so unphonetic. After you have
learned the possible sounds of each letter, the next thing you should
learn are rules such as how to pronounce "c" and how to choose among
the several sounds each vowel letter has.
  
> 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?

Yes, most of the strangest spellings, e.g. words starting "ps", come
from Greek. Some charts uses "X for xylophone" but it is not a good
example since initial X sounds like Z and not its normal value (note
that this is predictable).

Seán O'Leathlóbhair

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