Re: Optimum number of symbols

At 9:53 am +0200 23/5/02, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
[snip]
>*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)
Maybe - but the impression I have from French speakers is that liaison is
practised more by some than others.  In a school where I was teaching many
years ago, one of the French teachers was truly French (and defended any
criticism of her language with truly Gallic vigor!) - but she commented on
the French of one her brightest pupils as being full of liaisons which one
never heard now and that it sounded old-fashioned; she put it down to the
fact the girl's father was Belgian  :))

[snip]
>
>You just cannot compare the English orthography,
You can, of course.  You can compare French orthography with any other
orthography you wish.  Why not?

>which is plain irregular, with
>the French orthography, which is extremely regular, if not the simplest
>orthography there is.
Well, I assure you my daughter-in-law, whose 100% French through & through,
takes a _very different_ view of her native orthography.  She still
maintains that English is simpler.

>I'm just not sure that we could make it simpler, in the
>case of the French language.
I find it annoying when I stumble across a hitherto unknown word (i.e.
unknown to me) ending in -s.  Is that final -s to be pronounced or not?
I've been told there are "rules" but there are, it seems, exceptions a
plenty.  Final -t is silent, isn't it.  Well, usually - bu not if he word
is 'est' (= east), 'ouest' or 'aout' /ut/  (So what with the initial {a}?)

>The French orthography is probably near optimal
>for the language, and any change would make it less optimal rather than more.
Many say precisely that about English  :)))

I quote David:
At 3:06 pm -0400 23/5/02, David G. Durand wrote:
[snip]
>Actually, I think that many people would argue otherwise -- this is a
>contributing factor in why these systems have not been reformed. For
>an educated speaker of English, the morphemic representations in
>English give useful information about the structure of unknown or
>infrequently encountered words. Even in English, regular rules can
>explain the pronunciation of most words.
>
>The morphemic representation also strikes a compromise in the
>representation of English dialects, in which vowel quality is highly
>variable. The writing system  provides distinct spellings for
>distinctions that are not universally present. This enhances written
>communication in English, and acts as a unifying force on the
>English-speaking (and writing) community. English dialects vary not
>just in phonetic inventory, but phonemic inventory, so even a "pure"
>phonemic system would introduce spelling variations.
All perfectly true IMO.

Now back to Christophe's mail:

[snip]
>
>The problem is that you take evolution to be always directed towards the
>better, and that what is added is always 'enhancements'. I'm sorry, but this
>Darwinian illusion has long been proved wrong.
Here I'm in a 1000% agreement (or more) with Christophe :)))

Ray.

=======================================================
Speech is _poiesis_ and human linguistic articulation
is centrally creative.
                                 GEORGE STEINER.
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