Re: Chinese dictation

From: Lee Sau Dan (danlee_at_informatik.uni-freiburg.de)
Date: 11/23/04 

Date: 24 Nov 2004 03:21:46 +0800

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

    Sean> I was replying to LSD's surprise that two L2 speakers of
    Sean> English could communicate in IPA when a native speaker could
    Sean> not. My reply was that this should not be surprising. IPA
    Sean> may be useful to learners of English but it is not necessary
    Sean> for native speakers.

IPA is also useful to native speakers, and definitely not necessary
for learners.

So, whether an English speaking person knows IPA and whether he's a
native speaker are 2 independent things.

>> In the context of this discussion, context is exactly what's
>> being assumed to be absent.

    Sean> Ideally context would never be required but English spelling
    Sean> is not ideal.

Yeah. Without context, you can't know what [wrait] means, even if it
is correctly spelt as "right". (Which side is 'right'?)

    Sean> Even in a very regular language such as Spanish, context is
    Sean> sometimes required for dictation. There are a number of
    Sean> homophones distinguished in writing only by accents and I
    Sean> think that the silent h adds a few more.

"Ha" vs. "a", for instance.

Besides the silent "h", think of "ci/ce" vs. "zi/ze", "gi/ge"
vs. "ji/je" and also that "b" and "v" are homonymous in Spanish. (In
South American, "z" and "s" are homonymous.)

    Sean> I think that even Esperanto has some problems in which the
    Sean> word boundary is unclear.

e.g. "kolego", which could mean "colleague" or "big necked (person)".

    Sean> In none of these cases (English, Spanish or Esperanto) does
    Sean> the problem render the script unusable.

True. Actually, distinguishing homonyms in writing helps the reader
to gain speed and avoids (some) ambiguities. 

-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     §õ¦u´°                          ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

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