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Re: Optimum number of symbols

From:JS Bangs <jaspax@...>
Date:Thursday, May 23, 2002, 18:00
Andreas Johansson sikyal:

> >In other words, purely phonemic scripts, which would insist on > >one written form for the two meanings of /Rat/, may in fact be > >less useful to the speakers involved. And afterall, writing's > >_raison d'etre_ is to serve speakers interests, in whatever > >way seems to them most useful. You cannot tell objectively > >(and I think this was one of Nik's points) what the speakers > >will feel is the most salient interest. > > Interesting. This is rather the opposite of what I was taught. > > In a phonology book I read some years ago, the very pair "Rad" and "Rat" was > mentioned as an example of phonemic writing, since no matter how identically > the two words are realized in speech, the spelling maintains the phonemic > contrast in the underlaying forms /rad/ and /rat/. The underlaying /d/ of > "Rad" makes it's presence clear when no longer final, as in "Räder" [rE:d6] > ([r]=whatever rhotic you use when speaking German).
Indeed. The problem would lie in a *phonetic* script, which would write both of them as |rat|. The phonemic script, on the other hand, writes /rad/ as |Rad| and /rat/ as |Rat|, while the people pronounce both as [rat]. This seems to be an argument for phonemic scripts, not against them. Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu "If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time." --G.K. Chesterton