Re: German Spelling Reform (fwd)

Barry Garcia wrote:
>
> rnierse@anwb.nl writes:
> >That's my experience too. People think they say what they write,
> >especially
> >in Holland. The final -n in verbs (like in "werken", "lopen") and in
> >plural
> >forms of nouns (like in 'dingen") is never pronounced in Dutch. Stil
> >lnearly everybody thinks it is. Once I worked at Air Holland. When
> >boarding, the stewardesses pronounced Dutch too well, pronouncing the
> >/n/'s. I told them they didn't have too, because it is not pronounced.
> >They
> >refused to believe and we had a big argument!
>
> And here i was, all this time thinking the n's were pronounced. Silly me
> :) *Blush*. Well at least i see the other side of the fence (meaning, i
> see why people have a hard time spelling in English, the spoken and
> written are two different things, as in Dutch).
>
        Don't forget French, with all its silent letters everywhere. Those
three languages suffer from the same problem: once the spelling
corresponded nearly to the phonemic reality, but then the phonemic
reality changed, but not the spelling (well, Dutch seems to me more
accurate than French in that respect. The irregularities seem consistent
at least - /@/ for -en suffix, /@x/ for -ig ending in every word that
has it, etc...). By the way, a question for the Dutch of the list. How
do you pronounce the -sch at the end of a word (like in historisch)? My
handbook says it is pronounced /s/, but in a lesson it pronounces it
/S/. And when you add a -e at an adjective which ends with -sch, how do
you pronounce it? Still /s@/ (or /S@/), or /sx@/? (just some questions
to improve my Dutch - still at the beginning -)

> ____________________________________________________________________
>
>      "Raw to the floor like reservoir dogs"  - A.V. Helden
> ____________________________________________________________________
--
        Christophe Grandsire

        Philips Research Laboratories --  Building WB 145
        Prof. Holstlaan 4
        5656 AA Eindhoven
        The Netherlands

        Phone:  +31-40-27-45006
        E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com