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there is a law inside the alphabet

Helen said:
Of course not, why would it? You do understand that linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive?
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This simple fact really escapes a lot of people. Folks will just talk the way they talk, and it's up to orthography to try to keep up. Linguistics is an option. Communication is a necessity.

In contrast to English, Italian does a remarkable job of being efficiently and systematically represented by the Roman alphabet. I can look at an Italian word and instantly know how it should be correctly pronounced. Similarly, I can hear an Italian word and instantly know how to spell it. In fact, when I ask an Italian, "Come se scrive il tuo nome?" the speaker will almost always simply say their name again only more slowly—not by a letter-for-letter deconstruction as we do in English.

This behavior is very telling. It presumes (correctly) that I can divine an Italian word's Roman spelling simply by listening to the phonemes more carefully. But it also tacitly acknowledges that Italian is in fact pronounced differently in different regions and that those differences may obscure nuances throughout connected discourse. Therefore if the speaker takes pains to enunciate, the spelling is reliably revealed. I don't have a problem understanding invecce ("instead") when pronounced crisply with back-of-the-throat vowels in Milan, or with sloshy consonants and Chicago-esque nasalized vowels in Palermo. It's only when I want to express those nuances in pronunciation that I need to turn to something more expressive like the IPA.
 
Aw fooey. Has anybody here ever heard a native-speaking Cheyenne
boy of 12 expressing his anger? One kid I remember with awe ended his tirade
with the particle xux, a frequent flyer in Cheyenne. He said

"Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxhuxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx! X!"

His grandpa tried to calm him, but he stormed off. Hey, any virtuoso
performance requires a good exit.

Ain't a lot of privacy in a summer teepee camp at Sheridan Rodeo.
 
sackett said:
Aw fooey. Has anybody here ever heard a native-speaking Cheyenne
boy of 12 expressing his anger? One kid I remember with awe ended his tirade
with the particle xux, a frequent flyer in Cheyenne. He said

"Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxhuxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx! X!"

His grandpa tried to calm him, but he stormed off. Hey, any virtuoso
performance requires a good exit.

Ain't a lot of privacy in a summer teepee camp at Sheridan Rodeo.
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Looks a lot easier than the Kiwi's....

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu​

1765468874143.png
The name Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu translates roughly as "the summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his kōauau (flute) to his loved one"
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Wikipedia

And they have the nerve to say our Aussie town names are too hard lol
 
Helen said:
I agree. He clearly knows too much...
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And he imparts his knowledge to others.
"He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." - Ecclesiastes 1:18
We are entitled to the pursuit of happiness.
Therefore by increasing our knowledge he is trampling on Americans rights.


Hmm, could be a good election slogan.
 
Rolfe said:
It's not that rare with names around here. When type was introduced it didn't have a letter for the Scots "yoch", denoting a sort of "yuh" sound, so the printsetters used a lower-case z which (as it was at the time) was the closest "looks-like" they had for the yoch - assuming people would read what they saw and understand what was meant. Now we have all these names with a z in the spelling that isn't pronounced. Then people start pronouncing it...
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Famously the thorne went away with type set and instead of a single letter for the th sound, we have th and a bunch of ye olde cheese shops.
 
malbui said:
* smiles at the thought of English speakers trying to reproduce the sound represented by ‘-ouille’ *
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Or -euil/-euille, which, according to people in my French conversation group, is proof that French is actively trying to kill them.

And I've had a David Watts earworm for days now thanks to junkshop's self deprecatory posts.
 
These posts are mildly entertaining, even mildly instructive, but they lead
this thread -- they lead us, we serious people! -- away from the Great Undertaking
that Alphabetwork has unfolded. He is clearly on a quest into the Unknown. Specifically,
he has, so far as I know, gone where no man has gone before:

He is the Cosmos's first PHONEME DENIER!

You start. You gasp. You clutch for support as Reality sways. But steady yourselves
all, these strange seas are navigable yet.

So quit looking at me like that.
 
erwinl said:
And if they’ve done that.
The Dutch sounds for ‘ei’, ‘ij’, ‘ou’, ‘au’.
And to finish. Let them correctly pronounce the words ‘gauw’, or ‘Scheveningen’. :cool:
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Scheveningen is easy. My mother taught me that one just before I went there on holiday. No idea about gauw, don't think I ever heard the word.

Now do Stronachlachar.

ahhell said:
Famously the thorne went away with type set and instead of a single letter for the th sound, we have th and a bunch of ye olde cheese shops.
Click to expand...

I hadn't realised it was typesetting that did for that one too. Icelandic seems to have managed to keep it.
 
Rolfe said:
Scheveningen is easy. My mother taught me that one just before I went there on holiday. No idea about gauw, don't think I ever heard the word.

Now do Stronachlachar.



I hadn't realised it was typesetting that did for that one too. Icelandic seems to have managed to keep it.
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Gauw, means quickly in English.

Use the sound from the ch in the Scottish loch, but softer, more to the middle of the mouth.
Pronounce the au a bit like the o in dowel (just the o sound, not the added w sound in dowel).
The w in gauw is, most often, silent, but if pronounced a bit softer than as used in dowel. But silent is the best option.

With stronachlachar, I have the feeling the first ch is pronounced like a k, and the second one as in loch?
 
Last edited:
No, both as in loch. The t shouldn't really be there, it's not in the Gaelic root word, but it always seems to creep into anglicisations.
 
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