From: keth@...
Message: 1019
Date: 2001-03-11
>Now, I'm not particularly sensitive about criticism of Icelandic? I do not recall making an "error"
>orthography, or of anything Icelandic; erraneous conclusions are what
>I am sensitive about, however. I wouldn't involve myself in this
>discussion, except that I have a very hard time containing myself in
>the face of such error.
>> For comparison, I'd like to state that the dictionaries we used forWell, it was a simple statement of fact.
>Norwegian in school, did not include any etymologies at all. Nor did
>they include any phonetic pronounciation guidelines. That is because
>Norwegian is very much pronounced "as is".
>
>I'm not Norwegian, but even if I were, I think I'd be careful with
>such statements;
>first, which of the two official NorwegianThere aren't a "myriad" of dialects in Norway.
>orthographies (or languages, so-called) do you refer to, Bokmål or
>Nynorsk? Second, with the myriad Nowegian dialects, how can one make
>a conclusive statement about Norwegian pronunciation?
>Most languages have a variety of dialects, which often causesIn Norway there aren't any "dialects" but only regional languages.
>problems in orhography. Spanish orthography, for example, fits to allOf course Spanish exists over large regions of the world.
>the dialects, yet to none of them; that is, in most versions of
>Spanish, there are some two symbols that represent the same sound (or
>rather, phoneme), yet in another version, the same two symbols
>represent different phonemes. For example, in European Spanish, "se"
>and "ce" are generally pronounced differently ("ce" sounding like
>ON "þe" [Te]), while in American Spanish, they're pronounced the same
>(both as "se"); meanwhile, in a typical European Spanish
>dialect, "eya" and "ella" would sound the same (as "eya" [ejA]),
>while an American Spanish dialect (such as, say, Ecuadorian) would
>have two different sounds there, pronouncing "ella" as [eZA] or even
>[edZA] ([dZ] being the "j" in "just"). The point is that in the case
>of Spanish, and many other languages, the orthography serves all the
>dialects equally, keeping all distinctions between sounds that are
>made in the various dialects.
>I think you make things hopelessly difficult.
>What I'm trying to say is that the quality of an orthographic system
>is not just how well it transcribes "the spoken language" (which
>spoken language?). Accurate transcriptions ultimately fall prey to
>the great variety of the spoken language: between generations,
>between dialects, sociolects, even idiolects (e.g. if we were to
>transcribe English accurately, which "either" should it be?).
>> But if the Icelandic school childeren all needIt was an if-sentence.
>> to know SAMPA and IPA in order to learn to pronounce their own
>> language, then that would of course modify ones view on how close
>> written Icelandic is to an approximately phonetic spelling system.
>
>How did you come up with that? Why not present it in question form
>first?
>"Do Icelandic school children need to know SAMPA and IPA in order toI think you are'nt used to if-statements.
>learn to pronounce their own language?"
>
>Would at best have been a very silly question, but as a serious
>statement, it baffles me.
>You see, children learn to speak long before they learn to read orThank you! Well, in my school days we were not required to know
>write; they still do so, will do so, and have always done so. Even
>outside of Norway, they do.
>
>As regards SAMPA and IPA, then students of some high schools learn
>rudimentary IPA at age 17, for one semester; nobody has heard of
>SAMPA, though.