Re: Co-ordinated spelling

On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 02:14:15AM +0000, Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
[snip]
> I've always been fascinated by instances where spelling serves to keep
> languages similar in script, while their spoken versions have drifted apart.
> As for example the Scandinavian languages. Another example (perhaps mostly
> unknown to this list) is Faroese and Icelandic; the two languages are only
> barely mutually comprehensible, yet their phonemic structure is similar due
> to a regular parallel development from their root-language (Old Norse),
> which allowed the Faroese to construct themselves a writing system modelled
> on the Icelandic. So that Icelanders and Faroese can easily read each
> others' newspapers.
Well, I don't know how much this relates to what you're interested in, but
if you think about it, written Chinese basically does the same thing.
Chinese "dialects" are so different that they might as well be considered
different languages (in fact, they are quite mutually incomprehensible).
However, the writing system is consistent across dialects (barring a few
rare exceptions), so that the speaker of one dialect can write a note and
be understood by a speaker of another dialect, but if he spoke to the
other person, the other person would have absolutely no clue what he was
talking about.

> I'll move on to my point now. What I've been playing around with, is to
> gather all the languages of one family, such as Germanic, and respell all of
> them in one co-ordinated fashion, with the aim of maximizing their internal
> comprehensibility. I'm not suggesting this to be done for real, but it is an
> entertaining linguistic exercize. It requires the speller to track down all
> the regular changes of the root-phonemes, and making innumerable
> compromises.
[snip]

Interestingly, Korean and Japanese have adapted the Chinese writing system
in addition to their own script, so that when written in the Chinese
writing system, it can be understood (with some effort) by someone who
reads Chinese. I'm not very familiar with Korean or Japanese, though, so
perhaps somebody more suitably clued can elaborate on this one. :-)

I have heard, however, that the Korean writing system was invented
deliberately for the sake of being "different" from Chinese. So much for
trying to reconcile members of a language family... :-)


T