Phonemic languages

[Mattheus]

Thanks for the explanation about this term 'phonemic'. I've never heard of it, ergo thanks for enlightening me. English is aggravating indeed for foreign speakers who have to put up with its irregular pronunciation, spelling, and its inconsistency in diphthongs, not to mention the th sound. For example, the diphthong 'ea' is pronounced differently in each of these words: beach, dread, great, ocean. Also, the same sound can be spelt differently in green, bean, piece, peace. Meat and meet, piece and peace. Not trying to be mean, but you see what I mean? haha haha Are those called homophones or homonyms? Then what about this: record, wind, bow, read, lead, where depending on context, each can be pronounced in two ways. Read and lead can both sound like 'ee' in 'green' and 'e' as in bed. Imagine non-native English speakers who mistake sweat for sweet, or vice versa. In this aspect the language can be a nuisance, pointing to a lack of consistency and organisation, whereas German and Polish are very systematic, that is, highly phonemic, there are no peculiarities in pronunciation, although their grammars are more complex. Similarly to what you said about Spanish, where every letter and diphthong is pronounced always the same way, with some exceptions of course. Maybe this follows the ancient rule 'one letter,one sound' except for diphthongs, which are pronounced as one sound.

In classical Latin however, there are no exceptions in pronunciation so far as I can tell; 'c' is always hard, 'v' sounds like w, and all the letters are pronounced. A word like philosophia even had the h lightly included, and constantia was spoken as written among the educated classes. To me, nothing could be simpler than that. So to answer your question, Maximilianus, I would therefore have to say that Latin is highly phonemic and very, very scientific and systematic, but at the same time its sound charms the ear. It is both systematic, well organised, and yet artistic at the same time.

I think you may be already familiar with this site and article, if not, I strongly suggest you add it to your list of favourites: http://avitus.alcuinus.net/schola_latina/soni_en.php

Omnia bona!
Mattheus

[Lepus]

I'm inclined to agree that English is a very difficult language to learn for the non-native speaker, and that German is in fact very phonetic. I'm currently studying German along with Latin and there are a lot of simmilarities and differences throughout the three languages. Note the word 'est' in German and Latin. Pronounced the same, different meanings.

I believe the word you were looking for is 'homonym'

[Mattheus]

Is there such a word 'est' in German? If you're thinking of the third person singular of the verb to be, then it's er/sie/es ist

[Maximilianus]

I can't tell much about German. Certainly not my field... so... what's est in German, Lepus?
Lepus is right about homonyms, Mat. Read my next post, please. I talk a little about phonemics on it.

[Maximilianus]

You see, Mattheus, you never heard of the term “phonemic” for almost the same reason why almost anybody didn’t. The term is quite rare amongst common people; being more exclusive of persons such as philologists and linguists for whom on the contrary it is very common. It all began with the word “phoneme”; the smallest unit of speech that can be used to make a word different from another that is the same in every other way. For example the “b” in “big” and the “p” in “pig” represent two different phonemes. After that there came the adjective “phonemic”, “phonemically” as its adverb, and finally “phonemics”, which is the study and description of the phonemes of a language, and therefore the keystone of every would-be linguist.

Let’s walk a little further on phonemics.

Homographs: words with the same spelling, but different in meaning, origin, grammar or pronunciation. Example: the noun “record” and the verb “record” are homographs of each other. Others would be as you mentioned “read” (infinitive with “ee” sound) and its conjugated form “read” with “short e” sound like in “bed”; and also “lead” (verb) and “lead” (noun). The same rule applies to “wind” (as a noun) and “wind” (as a verb), and also to “bow” (when bending the upper body) and “bow” (when talking about the weapon or the piece of wood to play the fiddle).

Homonyms: words with both the same sound and spelling, but different in meaning or origin, like “mean” (adjective) and “mean” (verb) or “bear” (noun) and “bear” (verb).

Homophones: words that sound the same, but being different in spelling, meaning and origin, such as “piece” and “peace”, “meat” and “meet” or “knew” and “new”.

As you already noticed, we need a honed wit to master English phonemics. Anyways it remains being one of the most beautiful tongues I’ve ever listened to, at least to my humble opinion. Probably my feeling has to do with the fact that it is the language that I best know besides my mother tongue, but I actually taste beauty immersed within its sounds, its randomness and its unnumbered variable forms. To my ears English sounds magical. Besides, it lets me have these conversations with my Web friends, since as far as I know you don’t speak Spanish and I don’t speak the rest of languages you may be versed in.

I understand that French is weakly phonemic as well. All in all it sounds fantastic. I can understand why people call it the language of love. Its sounds are very refined, mesmerizing like a spoken symphony without instruments, but surely you both know this better than I do; I haven’t taken up French yet. Is French used in Cambridge, Lepus, or is it mainly an English-speaking city?

So Polish is also highly phonemic! Is this a constant in every Slavic language? What do you know about Russian, for example? And I see that learning Latin pronunciation shouldn’t be so hard. I had already stumbled upon this link you gave me, Mattheus, but I did not bookmark it back then, so gratias tibi for reminding me. By the way, how do I put the whole as a Latin phrase? Can it be Gratias tibi pro memoro? I bet it is wrong, frak it!! (LOL).

You hit the nail on the head!! Highly phonemic languages follow the very basic principle of “one letter, one sound”. Now, I wonder why being both German and English derived from the same family of West Germanic tongues, their phonemic rules are so different? I believe it has to do with the fact that English accepted more influence from other languages, whereas German must have done this in a lesser degree.

And if Latin is so scientific and artistic at the same time, it must be worth the effort. Regarding characteristics, it must be quite similar to Spanish, thus if you can deal with one then you can deal with the other.

Ergo, I’ll wait for replies.

Omnia bona et bene ambula, friends!!

Maximilianus

PS: I once heard in a movie that in order to properly speak English you need to learn how to put your tongue between your teeth (comment on the “th” sound that is so frequent).

[Mattheus]

Thanks for the very detailed explanation. If you don't mind my asking, did you write this all from the top of your head? If so, you're the man, Max! Homographs, homonyms, and homophones. This all very interesting and enlightening. We could do this, it's a kind of symbiosis. You provide me with knowledge, and I reciprocate. Awesome, man.

French is weakly phonemic. It has many silent letters. Italian is even more phonemic, and even more so the language of love, I think.

Thank you for reminding me would gratias tibi pro admonitione ago.

From what I hear on the website audio samples, Old and Middle English were much more phonemic. The later Norman Conquest in 1066 changed the course of the language forever, in introducing French and Latin words and pronunciation, (hence the ensuing enmity between French and English up to this day) weaking the English phonemic system. Germans, on the other hand, have a word of their own for almost everything, they're highly conservative about the infiltration of foreign words into their language. Icelandic is a superb example; their island is so remote, and because of that, they have adhered to their original tongue since about the 9th c., and due to limited contact with the outside world, Icelandic has barely changed from the epoch of the great sagas. But that is another (Norse or Scandinavian) branch of the Germanic tongues.

I would say Spanish is similar to Latin, instead of the other way around, because the former came before the latter. Spanish has consonants which do not appear in Latin (I think you could confirm that and even expand upon that). No offence to you Max, but Spanish along with other Romances is a corruption (I won't say bastardisation) of Latin. Dont' you agree? Today's Spanish evolved from the native Celtic Iberians' speech mixed with Latin. Same thing with the others, like French.

As for the 'th' sound, it is one thing that stumps all foreigners. There are two types, the voiced th as in this and the unvoiced in thin. I was once interested in Icelandic, and I know they have symbols corresponding to those two. And believe it or not, that's what I found on the Beowulf website, thanks to you, and explains the same symbols and their function. No mention of Icelandic, though. I'm proud to say I came to that conclusion myself. Scholarly hubris, I guess. Ignosce mihi.

Omnia bona!
Mattheus

[Mattheus]

Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that I have noticed over the course of finding those pdf book files, that most of the pre-XIXth century Latinists were mostly Germans. But English and French aren't lacking.

[Maximilianus]

Sorry for not replying before; been busy with some inevitable stuff.

The top of my head is actually crowded, so I get phonemics out of the bottom of it (hahaha just kidding). The truth is that sometimes I forget some concepts; that’s why I never get rid of books or notebooks that can remind me of things I seldom see, or that I may have seen fewer times than wanted or needed. Anyways this keeps being interesting, because if we don’t have someone with whom to talk about certain matters that are not so common, then we forget them at all, and all we learnt about them will be lost because we lack a person to remind us of them. So this feedback is quite useful indeed to keep the mind alert, at least alert about linguistics, which is our main interest here.

Another interesting detail about Old English is that all nouns had gender. Differently from what happens in Spanish, in Old English the sun is feminine and the moon is masculine, while in Spanish it is the opposite. Curious detail, I wonder why that is so.

In my opinion, Germans and Icelanders have done a better job at preserving their mother tongue. I applaud their love for their origins. For example in Spanish-speaking countries there is presently a total mess of words of different origins, especially English. I’m not against the use of loan words when really needed, but here they are even used in replacement of words that do really exist in Spanish, like when they say off-the-record instead of extraoficial (the Spanish still-existing but apparently despised equivalent). Seemingly Spanish native speakers are not willing to keep being Spanish speakers anymore. I feel like vomit when I hear them saying English words that are totally unnecessary in every stupid chance they have. They are so disgusting, pretending they master a language they don’t even know just because of a couple words they heard somewhere, and they don’t even have the decency to pronounce them correctly, because they never had the decency to learn English at all. These people definitely make me so sick in the stomach that I’d better start writing about something else.

Are you aware of any interesting downloadable material about the sagas? I’m interested in the subject. Well, tell me if you know about anything related to this, okay?

Well, what I actually meant is that Spanish is one of Latin’s children, only that maybe I didn’t say it clearly. It is true that Spanish has consonants of its own, like the ”ch” (equal to the English “ch” in “church” only that taken as one letter in our alphabet), and the “ñ” (pronounced much like the “ng” in “going”, but with a slight difference). We also have the “k” which I think is not in the Latin alphabet (sorry if I’m wrong). It is also true that much of our present vocabulary has Arabic roots, due to the Moorish invasion of Spain that lasted several centuries.

Curiously, a couple days ago my dad and I were watching 300, and the DVD included one of these antipiracy warnings in Icelandic, and I saw these characters that are also present in Old English to represent voiced and unvoiced “th”. I did not know that Icelandic uses these characters too; interesting new knowledge.

Remember to tell me of any web resource to read about the sagas, in case you know of any.

Omnia bona, amice!!
Maximilianus.

[Maximilianus]

Interesting detail.

Mattheus said:

Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that I have noticed over the course of finding those pdf book files, that most of the pre-XIXth century Latinists were mostly Germans. But English and French aren't lacking.

[Mattheus]

Good to hear I peaked your interest about the sagas. I remember reading Njal's saga a long time ago, but to tell you the truth, I don't really remember nor was very attracted to it. Maybe if I read it now it would all come back to me with a different appreciation. (You know how it is sometimes with things that you have put off for a while, then one day, you 'revisit' them and see them in a new light?) Anyway, here is one page I found: http://www.squirrel.com/asatru/free.html
Oh and guess what, scroll down and there you see...Beowulf. Which leads me to conclude that those early medieval stories were related and had a common culture, at least the Germanics, that is. Another page http://www.sunnyway.com/runes/sagas.html says this: The sagas are as interesting to read now as they were in the era they were created. Think of them as soap-operas of the first millennium. That site should provide enough material, I think.

Do you ever ask those people who throw in random English words the reason why they do that? Does it raise their status as a person or something? Or do you simply not have the patience to inquire into such things that they themselves couldn't possibly answer? Try to make them see how absurd it is...if possible.

Yes, it is interesting to note how much Old English and Icelandic had in common. Remember, they're both from the Germanic group, and back then they were probably closer together. English hadn't begun to drift off in its own direction due to Latin. Maybe they sounded similar. I don't know about that, but if I'll ever find an audio file of the original sagas, I'll compare.

In your opinion, is Spanish from the Americas much different from the European version? Also, they say that Portuguese is very similar. Assuming you do not know a word of Portuguese, would you able to have a conversation with a Brazilian, or is their language completely different? How do you perceive this?

As for corruptions, I think every language has undergone some form of corruption. We definitely know about the Romance languages; before Latin arrived in the conquered provinces, the native peoples had their own tongues, correct? Well, Germans and Poles have a different story, each belonging to a different ethnic and cultural background. There are words in Polish derived from many other languages, the same thing holds true for German , although to a lesser degree. In English, however, we have everything: kielbasa (Polish sausage), kindergarten (German word for kids' school), hors d'oeuvres (French appetizers?), lasagna, pizza, spaghetti, hehe the list goes on, Gestalt, Gesundheit, mardi gras (Shrove Tuesday - before Ash Wednesday), the list goes on...

Do speak your opinion. Valeas!

[Maximilianus]

Hi Mat, sorry this took long.

Revisiting things we had once left behind truly seems to have a different impact on us, and this is due to the fact that at least to some point we are not exactly the same persons we used to be back then. It happened to me several times too. We change and, hopefully, evolve from one condition to another. Our minds and spirits change, hopefully for better and not for worse, and there is when we begin seeing things from a different angle, like when we realize that our father is not superman and that superman doesn’t actually exist.

By the way, thanks for the links about the sagas. I was some time ago acquainted to the story of Sigfrid and the Ring of the Nibelungs. Since I have changed a little since then I think it is about time that I revisit the story again, as well as visit some new ones (new to me). It is amazing what we can discover into things we take for granted once we delve into them from another angle.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t compare the sagas with a soap-opera. If the latter had the level of wits involved in the former, then we wouldn’t be suffering the insufferable halfwits of today. A humble opinion, of course.

About the random pseudo-Anglophones, well, what to be said about them? I humbly believe I know what their problem is. It seems they are unhappy being born here and not there, so they feel like pretending they are not here, they wear clothes with English inscriptions whose meaning they wouldn’t even glimpse in their best dreams (and not because they are poetic quotes from Tennyson, but simply due to the fact that they only barely speak a bit of their mother tongues and nothing further). Now, if you ask them why they do it they would merrily say “because the American way is the best and I want to be like them”, and when they say “like them” they are by no means talking about Washington, Franklin or any of the Founding Fathers. Nope, they are more like talking about rappers, technos and whatever so-called artist they come across in their sorry lives. I figure is up to each one to choose a model to take as example, if you want to resemble an American fellow.

American Spanish is different from the Spanish spoken in Spain in the sense of accent and, sometimes, additional meanings of some words. There are words that have some additional meaning there that we don’t have here, and the same also happens among countries of the same region here. Regarding accent we speak mostly the same as people do in Uruguay (the eastern neighbor country) mainly due to the fact that we share some common genesis, but in Chile (the western neighbor) the accent is noticeably different. Regarding meaning, the Spaniards, to give an example, use words we never use and vice versa. To refer to a halfwit they often say gilipollas (adjective and noun), while here its abbreviation gil remains in use. In Chile people often use the word despeluchada to mean naked; that’s a word we don’t use here, but they do. I will send you further details by mail; it would be inappropriate to post them here.

Portuguese and Spanish are somewhat similar, though the former language applies certain modifications to the Latin alphabet that Spanish doesn’t include. They use the cedilla below the letter c to indicate that it is pronounced similarly to an English s before the vowels a, o, u, due to a historical palatalization, in words like precauções (in Spanish spelled precauciones; precautions in English). Spanish writing makes no use of cedillas and we don’t have the tilde above certain vocals as they do. Instead we have the ñ, which they don’t have (being spoken similarly as the English ng ending). All differences considered, and I just named the ones I know for I don’t actually master the language, it is possible to understand one language from the other; their sounds are different but not so much.

Spanish has many words of different origin too. We also have the Italians pizza, lasagna (often spelled lasaña) and milanesa (an exquisite dish born in Milan, Italy, which is very popular in my country) and the Spanish-Arabian words ojalá (interjection to mean “God willing”), alhaja (jewel), Alhambra (a city in Spain founded by Moors during the invasion) and alcázar (a type of castle). Of course, there are many others, but Italian and Arabian words are the most common due to immigrants from both nationalities, of whom we have many.

Omnia bona tibi!!

[Mattheus]

This is all very interesting, Maximilianus. Comparative linguistics is a truly fascinating subject. What can I say...I'm thrilled! Verba mihi deficiunt. It is amazing how languages affect each other, and I think, that in turn affects people. Is it langauge that people fashion or vice versa? Are they molded by it?

[Nicholas Shanks]

Hi, Iʼm new here, and just found this thread. To address some questions/points that came up:
Russian is phonemic. As is my mother's tongue (note genitive), Hungarian, and probably most other languages. Certainly all new world languages are highly phonemic because they havenʼt had enough time to change since the introduction of writing to them.

The letters for dental fricatives in Icelandic are Eth (Ð, ð) /ɛθ/ for the unvoiced, and thorn (Þ, þ) /θɔː(ɹ)n/ for the voiced. Note that the name of the letter Thorn is pronounced with an "eth" :) In old english (anglo saxon), thorn and eth are used interchangeably for both voiced and unvoiced.

Written english as it now stands is not phonemic however when it was standardised, at the time of the introduction of the printing press from mainland Europe, it was, and standard english took the dialect of the East Midlands as itʼs form, as this was found by book publishers to be more easily understood (and therefore most saleable) by speakers of other dialects, than those other dialects were to one another.

Brazilian Portuguese is sufficiently different from Lusitanian Portuguese that software is translated into both languages where it is not translated into both Castilian and Mexican Spanish for the large populations in the US. This leads me to think that the portuguese variants are further apart from each other than the spanish variants are.

oh, and "Salve, tout le welt" ;-)