Re: Comparison of philosophical languages

Tristan wrote:
>Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>>I'll happily agree that English orthography is pretty complex and not
>>terribly regular, and that the English vowel system is somewhat, er,
>>sophisticated,
>
>Why? It's not a regular system of alternation, but it seems to be to be
>a fairly normal system with a few more distinctions...
Well, I'm told that most languages has around 5-7 vocalic phonemes. English
certainly beats that with a far margin (as does my mothertongue Swedish - my
ideolect has 17 contrasting vowels in stressed sylllables, plus at least one
diphthong), and that inventory includes quite a few "blurry" vowels camping
in the interior of the vowel tetragon.

>>but orthography is surely pretty peripheral, and every
>>language has a "sophisticated" bit or two. What makes you think that
>>English, as a whole, is "exceptionally difficult"? I've never heard of
>>data
>>suggesting that anglophone children has later speech development on
>>average
>>that children learning other languages, f'rinstance.
>
>I've heard that /T/ and /D/ aren't mastered till about four or five, and
>they're the only sounds I can remember actually learning (not counting
>particular words; I used to say hopsital for hospital). Maybe that
>counts as difficult?
Quite possibly. I don't really know alot about these issues. If anybody
knows what is actually known on this I'd be happy to hear.


                                         Andreas

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