Cristophe said:
> Which is something you shouldn't do, especially if you''re using English
words,
> because of the many divergent dialects of English and the internationality
of
> the list. Saying something like "like the |a| of |father|" could lead to
five
> or six possible sounds, depending on the origin of the reader. Or you may
> simply be misunderstood if you're talking to a foreigner who knows English
only
> as a second language and speaks it with his own accent which has nothing
to do
> with any English dialect out there :)) . So on this list basically use the
IPA,
> or you'll never be sure you can be understood correctly.
>
/agree. This also makes writing in tiri'n, even tiri'n transliteration,
somewhat bizarre, since even Jeff and I disagree on pronunciation of words
at times. By that I simply meant that the great majority of people wouldn't
understand what I meant if I wrote something using the IPA, and since I have
to explain pronunciation to the people who read my comic (for instance,)
that's what I end up doing half the time...:\
> Actually, English doesn't have more vocabulary than most languages of
> civilisation. That's an erroneous idea. Even the Guiness Book lists French
for
> having the largest vocabulary rather than English (but I won't back up
this
> claim, as I have no idea how you can even count a vocabulary :)) ). And a
lot
> of the English vocabulary consists of words and derivatives and compounds
which
> could easily be written using strings of characters (actually, I think
I've
> seen such an attempt to write English using the Chinese characters, though
I
> don't remember where I saw it), like it's done in Chinese already. So I
doubt
> that English would need more characters than Chinese does. I'm not even
sure it
> would be unfit. After all, English is arguably even more isolating than
> Chinese :))) .
All right, I withdraw my statement. I'm not really sure where I read it.
Though, it was a nice thing to keep in mind when I thought another language
was too daunting.
How is english more isolating than chinese? (just curious :)
> Sorry to have gender in our language. But we're a majority here (I mean
that
> most languages in the world have gender or class systems, while only a
minority
> doesn't have them, and even then may have kept some remnants of them
:)) ).
True, true. English speakers can still refer to ships as she after all,
which always amused me.
Grammatical gender itself doesn't bug me, it adds variety. French gender
doesn't seem to be COMPLETLEY arbitrary or unintelligible or anything.
Personally, I just don't understand why verbs need to agree in gender...
that's just an odd concept to me.
Though I guess it makes sense if I stop to think that we conjugate verbs
differently for different amounts of people in English, andsomeone said this
counts as a grammatical gender.
I was mostly mad, though, because our teacher tested us on passé compose
using etre (I don't know the e with circumflex code offhand :) and only
taught us the gender bit, not the agreeing in number part. So the entire
class failed miseably. Go us!
On another note, though, pairs like acteur/actrice and so on make me nervous
because I hate making THAT kind of gender distinctions in any language.
>Here again someone who doesn't understand the basic logic behind the
>presence
>of the so-called "silent" letters of French. Actually, more than 95% of the
>French orthography can be justified in terms not only of morphemic value
>but of
>*phonemic* value! Have you ever heard of the phenomenon of liaison which is
>so
>important to spoken French? (incorrect liaisons are extremely bad practice,
>they can even create misunderstandings)
All right, that's true. I can still say French spelling is a disaster,
though, because pronouncing it is so confusing. ;)
What I've been wondering, though, is what the HECK is that 'oe' character?
Does it have a specific pronunciation, or does it just show up in eggs and
sisters to mock me, never offering an explanation?
I wish my teacher corrected pronunciaton. There're people in my class STILL
saying "ill est trace bow," and it makes it hard for me to have any clue.
Andreas Johansson wrote:
> The main reason I find this slightly difficult to believe is that my own
> main trouble with subtitles (in English and Swedish) is that the damn
things
> come too slow - I either waste mental effort at not reading them several
> times, or do and have trouble fitting sentenses together. I would usually
> find it a substantial improvement if the subtitles went blank for half of
> the normal showing time. Now I'm a fast reader, but not a spectacularly
fast
> one. So I'm thinking the difference may be that Westerners make the things
> slow so that even bad readers can follow, while the Japanese and Chinese
> concentrate at maximize enjoyability for average readers. A cultural
> difference unrelated to script, that'd be.
Yes, that is very frustrating. It seems like people 'condense' the
translations in order to use up less reading time/be less redundant/what
have you.
Randomly, I wonder if there's any correlation between reading speed and
speaking speed (not at the same time, of course)?
I read and speak really quickly (so only my sister and mother can
understand me :)) and I've noticed that certain people who read slowly or
have trouble reading speak slowly.
-Kendra, being far too chatty :)
http://www.refrigeratedcake.com
http://www.refrigeratedcake.com/other/theatre -- Vade Mecum (comic)