Re: Pronunciation dictionaries?
Peter T. Daniels
> How should one find pronunciation dictionaries (printed books that use
> IPA)?
>
> Is there a pronunciation dictionary for Spanish? I haven't been able
> to find any. And no, I don't want a web site with audio files.
Are there words in Spanish whose pronunciation is not predictable from
their orthography? How many?
IPA isn't particularly useful in dictionaries of pronunciation,
because its symbols aren't language-specific. You'd need to read pages
and pages of introduction to know what they specifially indicate for
each language and dialectal variation.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>How should one find pronunciation dictionaries (printed books that use
>IPA)?
>
>Is there a pronunciation dictionary for Spanish? I haven't been able
>to find any. And no, I don't want a web site with audio files.
There's no need, because the transition between Spanish spelling to
pronunciation is 100% unambiguous, and can be expessed in simple
rules. About one page (perhaps two is covering all regional varieties)
will do.
See Spanish (X-Sampa) (site is down at the moment, can't check URL)
Explantion of symbols: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA
Pronunciation to spelling is not 100% unambiguous for Spanish,
although also relatively simple.
For languages with more complicated spelling systems, general
dictionaries, both bilingual and monolingual, usually cover
pronunciation.
--
Ruud Harmsen
http://rudhar.com
Ruud Harmsen
<gram...@verizon.net>: in sci.lang:
>> Is there a pronunciation dictionary for Spanish? I haven't been able
>> to find any. And no, I don't want a web site with audio files.
>
>Are there words in Spanish whose pronunciation is not predictable from
>their orthography? How many?
Wow! PTD agrees with me?!?
>IPA isn't particularly useful in dictionaries of pronunciation,
>because its symbols aren't language-specific. You'd need to read pages
>and pages of introduction to know what they specifially indicate for
>each language and dialectal variation.
Exaggerated nonsense, especially in the case of Spanish.
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:43:17 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> >> Is there a pronunciation dictionary for Spanish? I haven't been able
> >> to find any. And no, I don't want a web site with audio files.
>
> >Are there words in Spanish whose pronunciation is not predictable from
> >their orthography? How many?
>
> Wow! PTD agrees with me?!?
No, my message was posted 37 minutes before yours.
> >IPA isn't particularly useful in dictionaries of pronunciation,
> >because its symbols aren't language-specific. You'd need to read pages
> >and pages of introduction to know what they specifially indicate for
> >each language and dialectal variation.
>
> Exaggerated nonsense, especially in the case of Spanish.
So besides not knowing about English dialects, you also don't know
about Spanish dialects.
Keep going, Ruud. The more nonsense you write, the more comments
you'll get.
Brian M. Scott
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
<news:a1fd5bf3-902d-4654...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com>
in sci.lang:
> On Apr 19, 7:40 am, p.nummi...@suomi24.fi wrote:
>> How should one find pronunciation dictionaries (printed
>> books that use IPA)?
>> Is there a pronunciation dictionary for Spanish? I
>> haven't been able to find any. And no, I don't want a
>> web site with audio files.
> Are there words in Spanish whose pronunciation is not
> predictable from their orthography? How many?
Not many, so far as I know.
> IPA isn't particularly useful in dictionaries of
> pronunciation, because its symbols aren't
> language-specific. You'd need to read pages and pages of
> introduction to know what they specifially indicate for
> each language and dialectal variation.
Piffle. A pronouncing dictionary typically gives standard
pronunciations and ignores most dialectal variation, so
that's not likely to be an issue. And for all that it's no
substitute for hearing the real thing, IPA is extremely
useful for giving a decent first approximation.
Brian
Peter T. Daniels
> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:43:17 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
The purpose of a pronouncing dictionary is not a "first approximation."
Ruud Harmsen
>> > pronunciation, because its symbols aren't
>> > language-specific. You'd need to read pages and pages of
>> > introduction to know what they specifially indicate for
>> > each language and dialectal variation.
On Apr 19, 12:07=A0pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>> Piffle. A pronouncing dictionary typically gives standard
>> pronunciations and ignores most dialectal variation, so
>> that's not likely to be an issue. And for all that it's no
>> substitute for hearing the real thing, IPA is extremely
>> useful for giving a decent first approximation.
Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:57:53 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net>: in sci.lang:
>The purpose of a pronouncing dictionary is not a "first approximation."
So what else do you propose as an alternative, for pronouncing
dictionaries to use if IPA "isn't particularly useful"?
Brian M. Scott
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
<news:6cbdc25c-5d43-4f85...@e67g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
in sci.lang:
> On Apr 19, 12:07 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:43:17 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
>> <news:a1fd5bf3-902d-4654...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com>
>> in sci.lang:
[...]
>>> IPA isn't particularly useful in dictionaries of
>>> pronunciation, because its symbols aren't
>>> language-specific. You'd need to read pages and pages of
>>> introduction to know what they specifially indicate for
>>> each language and dialectal variation.
>> Piffle. A pronouncing dictionary typically gives standard
>> pronunciations and ignores most dialectal variation, so
>> that's not likely to be an issue. And for all that it's no
>> substitute for hearing the real thing, IPA is extremely
>> useful for giving a decent first approximation.
> The purpose of a pronouncing dictionary is not a "first
> approximation."
Depends on who's using it. You're right, if you're talking
about its use by native speakers or those already familiar
with the actual sound of the language, but they're hardly
the only users. (And that's *decent* first approximation.)
Brian
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> >> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:43:17 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
> >> > IPA isn't particularly useful in dictionaries of
> >> > pronunciation, because its symbols aren't
> >> > language-specific. You'd need to read pages and pages of
> >> > introduction to know what they specifially indicate for
> >> > each language and dialectal variation.
>
> On Apr 19, 12:07=A0pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
> >> Piffle. A pronouncing dictionary typically gives standard
> >> pronunciations and ignores most dialectal variation, so
> >> that's not likely to be an issue. And for all that it's no
> >> substitute for hearing the real thing, IPA is extremely
> >> useful for giving a decent first approximation.
>
> Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:57:53 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> >The purpose of a pronouncing dictionary is not a "first approximation."
>
> So what else do you propose as an alternative, for pronouncing
> dictionaries to use if IPA "isn't particularly useful"?
Obviously, a pronunciation key tailored to the particular language.
US dictionaries have been using pretty much the same one since the
1840s (long before there was an IPA), and the OED used its own until
the very recent backward step of switching to IPA in the "3rd ed."
Peter T. Daniels
> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:57:53 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
Second-language learners aren't likely to find a dedicated pronouncing
dictionary particularly useful; for them, the pronunciation key in a
standard desk or student dictionary is well-suited.
euripides
> How should one find pronunciation dictionaries (printed books that use
> IPA)?
>
> Is there a pronunciation dictionary for Spanish? I haven't been able
> to find any. And no, I don't want a web site with audio files.
Well, Spanish pronucuation is so straight forward that I do not really
see the need for one. And actually most SPanish letters are roughly
pronnounced lije the Finnish ones. Just look for a good description of
Spanish pronunciation and you should be done.
Brian M. Scott
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
<news:3fded5df-a670-4499...@8g2000hse.googlegroups.com>
in sci.lang:
>> [...]
*If* it uses IPA. Which rules out most U.S. desk and
student dictionaries.
Brian
Peter T. Daniels
> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:53:20 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
A student of English needs to be able to use the pronunciation keys
found in English dictionaries, which except for the (new) OED, isn't
IPA. (Has IPA been inflicted on the whole family of smaller Oxford
dictionaries?)
Brian M. Scott
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
<news:eefb8483-94f8-421e...@y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>
in sci.lang:
> On Apr 19, 7:19 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:53:20 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
>> <news:3fded5df-a670-4499...@8g2000hse.googlegroups.com>
>> in sci.lang:
[...]
>>> Second-language learners aren't likely to find a dedicated
>>> pronouncing dictionary particularly useful; for them, the
>>> pronunciation key in a standard desk or student
>>> dictionary is well-suited.
>> *If* it uses IPA. Which rules out most U.S. desk and
>> student dictionaries.
> A student of English needs to be able to use the pronunciation keys
> found in English dictionaries,
Eventually that would certainly be handy. There's no reason
to inflict those keys on them initially, however.
> which except for the (new) OED, isn't IPA. (Has IPA been
> inflicted on the whole family of smaller Oxford
> dictionaries?)
One may hope.
Brian
Ruud Harmsen
>> their orthography? How many?
Sun, 20 Apr 2008 03:35:25 -0700 (PDT): p.num...@suomi24.fi: in
sci.lang:
>I cannot know that without a pronouncing dictionary. Actually, it is
>probably not possible to count all the words of a language or how many
>of them are illogical in orthography.
>
>If somebody could guide me in pronouncing dictionaries, I would
>appreciate that.
Don't you have a Spanish course book? Any that I've ever seen
explained how sounds and spelling relate.
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language#Sounds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_phonology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_chart_for_Spanish
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espanjan_kieli
There isn't much else to know, with that knowledge you can pronounce
any Spanish word reasonably well (after some practice, of course, as
with any foreign language one learns).
And as someone said, there are some (purely coincidental) similaraties
between Finnish and Spanish pronunciation, e.g. in the apical
(non-laminal) s.
Christian Weisgerber
> A student of English needs to be able to use the pronunciation keys
> found in English dictionaries, which except for the (new) OED, isn't
> IPA. (Has IPA been inflicted on the whole family of smaller Oxford
> dictionaries?)
My old Oxford Advanced Learner's, "revised and reset" in 1985,
certainly uses IPA--and anything else would have been very surprising
in this part of the world. Seen from here, non-IPA pronunciation
keys are a bizarre American atavism, much like pounds and inches.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
Trond Engen
> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> A student of English needs to be able to use the pronunciation keys
>> found in English dictionaries, which except for the (new) OED, isn't
>> IPA. (Has IPA been inflicted on the whole family of smaller Oxford
>> dictionaries?)
>
> My old Oxford Advanced Learner's, "revised and reset" in 1985,
> certainly uses IPA--and anything else would have been very surprising
> in this part of the world.
Pronunciations were rendered in IPA symbols in my first English school
book in fourth grade -- some 30 years ago. Moreover, as (despised
boring) homework we maintained our own glossaries in small notebooks
where we copied every new word with spelling to the left and
pronunciation to the right. Four years later it was the same procedure
with French. We never got IPA explained, though. I think we were meant
to pick up a rough value of each symbol along the way but not to be able
to write it.
> Seen from here, non-IPA pronunciation keys are a bizarre American
> atavism, much like pounds and inches.
And serving sizes ... Nevertheless. This bizarre American atavism is
getting increasingly common in undertranslated pocket dictionaries and
travel guides to exotic places like sher-NAYV or KAHR-law-vee VAH-ree.
(I used to see it as an excuse for the parodic accent of American
tourists, but now I must admit that it's far worse when spoken loud by a
Norwegian.) The last few years I've even seen American pronunciation
spelling in online newspaper articles that are translated from
syndicated American material.
--
Trond Engen
- from SHEE-un, NAWR-gay
Joachim Pense
> Christian Weisgerber skreiv:
>
>> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>> A student of English needs to be able to use the pronunciation keys
>>> found in English dictionaries, which except for the (new) OED, isn't
>>> IPA. (Has IPA been inflicted on the whole family of smaller Oxford
>>> dictionaries?)
>>
>> My old Oxford Advanced Learner's, "revised and reset" in 1985,
>> certainly uses IPA--and anything else would have been very surprising
>> in this part of the world.
>
> Pronunciations were rendered in IPA symbols in my first English school
> book in fourth grade -- some 30 years ago.
Same over here in Germany: English and French school books used IPA
regularly, and that was common. Not that learning to read it was
particularly enforced, though.
Joachim
Peter T. Daniels
That is NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST what I'm talking about.
The standard American pronunciation key uses macron, breve,
circumflex, and dieresis to make all the necessary vowel distinctions,
and in some instances it does it without respelling the words (my
school King James Bible from 1958 gives pronunciations for all the
unfamiliar names right in the text).
Trond Engen
> On Apr 20, 2:34 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:
>
>> Christian Weisgerber skreiv:
>>
>>> Peter T. Daniels <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> A student of English needs to be able to use the pronunciation
>>>> keys found in English dictionaries, which except for the (new)
>>>> OED, isn't IPA. (Has IPA been inflicted on the whole family of
>>>> smaller Oxford dictionaries?)
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> Seen from here, non-IPA pronunciation keys are a bizarre American
>>> atavism, much like pounds and inches.
>>
>> And serving sizes ... Nevertheless. This bizarre American atavism is
>> getting increasingly common in undertranslated pocket dictionaries
>> and travel guides to exotic places like sher-NAYV or KAHR-law-vee
>> VAH-ree. (I used to see it as an excuse for the parodic accent of
>> American tourists, but now I must admit that it's far worse when
>> spoken loud by a Norwegian.) The last few years I've even seen
>> American pronunciation spelling in online newspaper articles that
>> are translated from syndicated American material.
>
> That is NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST what I'm talking about.
>
> The standard American pronunciation key uses macron, breve,
> circumflex, and dieresis to make all the necessary vowel
> distinctions, and in some instances it does it without respelling the
> words (my school King James Bible from 1958 gives pronunciations for
> all the unfamiliar names right in the text).
Sorry about that. I didn't know of a third system. I can see that added
dots and lines can help to identify syllables and distinguish between
homographs and thus serve as a guide to pronunciation within an oddly
spelt language like English, but how could that system work for
languages that differ from English in phonetics and ortography?
And, if Americans learn a better system in school, why does Berlitsh
exist at all? Do you export stuff that's not allowed on the home market?
Is that legal under international trade law?
--
Trond Engen
- blaming an international conspiracy involving the Standard
Pronunciation Imposition Enforcement System. I hope they're not on to m
Peter T. Daniels
THAT'S THE POINT. The 19th-century American dictionary phonetic
symbols were devised FOR THE PRONUNCIATION OF (AMERICAN) ENGLISH.
The vowels called in English "long a," "long e," etc., i.e., the ones
that "say their names," are written with macron. Remember, we had the
GEV and no one else did, so ordinary people don't associate letters
with their Latinate ( > IPA) values, so IPA is particularly confusing
for the English-reader.
> And, if Americans learn a better system in school, why does Berlitsh
> exist at all? Do you export stuff that's not allowed on the home market?
> Is that legal under international trade law?
By "Berlitsh," do you mean "phonetic respelling"? One big reason it
exists is that the American dictionary symbols (such as <oo> with
macron or breve) are not generally available -- initially on
typewriters, and now in ordinary fonts.
LEE Sau Dan
Peter> THAT'S THE POINT. The 19th-century American dictionary
Peter> phonetic symbols were devised FOR THE PRONUNCIATION OF
Peter> (AMERICAN) ENGLISH.
And OF THE 19TH-CENTURY, right?
Peter> The vowels called in English "long a," "long e," etc.,
Peter> i.e., the ones that "say their names," are written with
Peter> macron. Remember, we had the GEV and no one else did, so
Peter> ordinary people don't associate letters with their Latinate
Peter> ( > IPA) values, so IPA is particularly confusing for the
Peter> English-reader.
That involves just a bit of learning. How is learning the 26 letters
(52 glyphs) of the alphabet, _in correct order_ (which is so
arbitrary, unlike Devanagari and its derivatives), more difficult?
Peter> By "Berlitsh," do you mean "phonetic respelling"? One big
Peter> reason it exists is that the American dictionary symbols
Peter> (such as <oo> with macron or breve) are not generally
Peter> available -- initially on typewriters, and now in ordinary
Peter> fonts.
If there is such a need, why people at that time didn't invent
"typewriter IPA", something akin to ASCII IPA?
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
Bart Mathias
> Christian Weisgerber skreiv:
>
>> Seen from here, non-IPA pronunciation keys are a bizarre American
>> atavism, much like pounds and inches.
>
>
> And serving sizes ... Nevertheless. This bizarre American atavism is
> getting increasingly common in undertranslated pocket dictionaries and
> travel guides to exotic places like sher-NAYV or KAHR-law-vee VAH-ree.
> (I used to see it as an excuse for the parodic accent of American
> tourists, but now I must admit that it's far worse when spoken loud by a
> Norwegian.) The last few years I've even seen American pronunciation
> spelling in online newspaper articles that are translated from
> syndicated American material.
And still some people don't believe the end of the world is at hand.
Bart Mathias
Brian M. Scott
<tron...@engen.priv.no> wrote in
<news:I9SdnTYh-Yk...@telenor.com> in sci.lang:
> Peter T. Daniels skreiv:
[...]
>> The standard American pronunciation key uses macron, breve,
>> circumflex, and dieresis to make all the necessary vowel
>> distinctions, and in some instances it does it without respelling the
>> words (my school King James Bible from 1958 gives pronunciations for
>> all the unfamiliar names right in the text).
> Sorry about that. I didn't know of a third system.
See <http://www.bartleby.com/61/12.html> for an example.
> I can see that added dots and lines can help to identify
> syllables and distinguish between homographs and thus
> serve as a guide to pronunciation within an oddly spelt
> language like English, but how could that system work for
> languages that differ from English in phonetics and
> ortography?
It doesn't: it's strictly for English.
> And, if Americans learn a better system in school, why
> does Berlitsh exist at all?
Three reasons: (1) it's not really suitable for anything but
English (though I grant that the usual substitute isn't any
better); (2) typographical convenience; (3) most Americans
probably don't remember the dictionary symbols anyway.
Brian
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> >>>>> "Peter" == Peter T Daniels <gramma...@verizon.net> writes:
>
> Peter> THAT'S THE POINT. The 19th-century American dictionary
> Peter> phonetic symbols were devised FOR THE PRONUNCIATION OF
> Peter> (AMERICAN) ENGLISH.
>
> And OF THE 19TH-CENTURY, right?
In 1850, it was used for 1850 pronunciations. In 2008, it's used for
2008 pronunciations.
> Peter> The vowels called in English "long a," "long e," etc.,
> Peter> i.e., the ones that "say their names," are written with
> Peter> macron. Remember, we had the GEV and no one else did, so
> Peter> ordinary people don't associate letters with their Latinate
> Peter> ( > IPA) values, so IPA is particularly confusing for the
> Peter> English-reader.
>
> That involves just a bit of learning. How is learning the 26 letters
> (52 glyphs) of the alphabet, _in correct order_ (which is so
> arbitrary, unlike Devanagari and its derivatives), more difficult?
Please try to think before typing. The letters of the alphabet are
mastered in or before kindergarten, at age 4. There is no special
"order" of phonetic symbols; they're not used for making lists.
And 26 items is a hell of a lot easier to learn the order of than 214.
Or maybe you don't remember ever learning to read your language?
Do they still start PRC children with pinyin -- the same set of
letters, plus a peculiar array of diacritics -- which they then have
no use for after a couple of years?
> Peter> By "Berlitsh," do you mean "phonetic respelling"? One big
> Peter> reason it exists is that the American dictionary symbols
> Peter> (such as <oo> with macron or breve) are not generally
> Peter> available -- initially on typewriters, and now in ordinary
> Peter> fonts.
>
> If there is such a need, why people at that time didn't invent
> "typewriter IPA", something akin to ASCII IPA?
Please learn some facts. There is extensive published correspondence
between Kroeber and Sapir on how to transcribe American languages
using a typewriter.
LEE Sau Dan
Peter> Do they still start PRC children with pinyin -- the same
Peter> set of letters, plus a peculiar array of diacritics --
Peter> which they then have no use for after a couple of years?
Dunno. I don't live in that region.
António Marques
>> Are there words in Spanish whose pronunciation is not predictable from
>> their orthography? How many?
>
> I cannot know that without a pronouncing dictionary.
Of course you can. You only need open any grammar which will tell you
that 'spanish is pronounced as it is written' in order to know that. I
suppose finnish isn't very different.
Also, spanish phonetics are simple enough that no situations like the
german one where <st> can be st- [St] or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
I'd be hard pressed to come up with any counter-example to this
regularity, but then I'm not spanish. Possibly, foreign words not yet
naturalised may do it.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
LEE Sau Dan
António> Of course you can. You only need open any grammar which
António> will tell you that 'spanish is pronounced as it is
António> written' in order to know that. I suppose finnish isn't
António> very different.
"As it is written" is too simplistic a description. How do you
pronounce the "c" (in Europe) and "g"? Do you pronounce the "h"?
António> Also, spanish phonetics are simple enough that no
António> situations like the german one where <st> can be st- [St]
António> or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
But you pronounce "c" (in Europe) and "g" depending on what follows.
So, how is that simpler than the German "st", "sp"?
Ruud Harmsen
<dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
>>>>>> "António" == António Marques <m....@sapo.pt> writes:
>
> António> Of course you can. You only need open any grammar which
> António> will tell you that 'spanish is pronounced as it is
> António> written' in order to know that. I suppose finnish isn't
> António> very different.
>
>"As it is written" is too simplistic a description. How do you
>pronounce the "c" (in Europe) and "g"? Do you pronounce the "h"?
True, but some straightforward rules cover all that.
> António> Also, spanish phonetics are simple enough that no
> António> situations like the german one where <st> can be st- [St]
> António> or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
>
>But you pronounce "c" (in Europe) and "g" depending on what follows.
>So, how is that simpler than the German "st", "sp"?
--
Ruud Harmsen
http://rudhar.com
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> >>>>> "António" == António Marques <m...@sapo.pt> writes:
>
> António> Of course you can. You only need open any grammar which
> António> will tell you that 'spanish is pronounced as it is
> António> written' in order to know that. I suppose finnish isn't
> António> very different.
>
> "As it is written" is too simplistic a description. How do you
> pronounce the "c" (in Europe) and "g"? Do you pronounce the "h"?
>
> António> Also, spanish phonetics are simple enough that no
> António> situations like the german one where <st> can be st- [St]
> António> or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
>
> But you pronounce "c" (in Europe) and "g" depending on what follows.
> So, how is that simpler than the German "st", "sp"?
The former is completely predictable from the phonological/
orthographic environment. The latter depends on morpheme boundaries,
which are not marked.
BIG difference.
One might just as easily wonder how anyone can read Chinese, with
endless blocks of characters one after the other, no indication of
what goes with what.
LEE Sau Dan
[on Spanish]
>> But you pronounce "c" (in Europe) and "g" depending on what
>> follows. So, how is that simpler than the German "st", "sp"?
Peter> The former is completely predictable from the phonological/
Peter> orthographic environment. The latter depends on morpheme
Peter> boundaries, which are not marked.
Peter> BIG difference.
Peter> One might just as easily wonder how anyone can read
Peter> Chinese, with endless blocks of characters one after the
Peter> other, no indication of what goes with what.
If they could do that will ALL CAPS Old Greek, then why can't we do
that with Chinese, Korean, Thai, etc.?
António Marques
Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:11:32 +0800: LEE Sau Dan
> <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
>
>>>>>>> "António" == António Marques <m....@sapo.pt> writes:
>> António> Of course you can. You only need open any grammar which
>> António> will tell you that 'spanish is pronounced as it is
>> António> written' in order to know that. I suppose finnish isn't
>> António> very different.
>>
>> "As it is written" is too simplistic a description. How do
>> you pronounce the "c" (in Europe) and "g"? Do you pronounce the
>> "h"?
Each of [h], [cg][aou] and [cg][ei] has only one possible
interpretation. You might have a point with -u- (cf. qu, gu). However,
'pronounced as it is written' will be the layman's description for 'any
written form has only one possible, instantly determinable, reading'.
> True, but some straightforward rules cover all that.
>
>> António> Also, spanish phonetics are simple enough that no António>
>> situations like the german one where <st> can be st- [St] António>
>> or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
>>
>> But you pronounce "c" (in Europe)
(What's with the 'in Europe'?)
>> and "g" depending on what follows. So, how is that simpler than
>> the German "st", "sp"?
In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above represents. Whereas you
can always be sure what <ce> is.
Kindly cut the gnumacs quoting. No one else uses it. It's distressing.
LEE Sau Dan
>>> situations like the german one where <st> can be st- [St]
>>> António> or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
>>>
>>> But you pronounce "c" (in Europe)
António> (What's with the 'in Europe'?)
Well... I'm having the difference in pronunciation of letters
"c"[ei]/"z" across the Atlantic.
>>> and "g" depending on what follows. So, how is that simpler
>>> than the German "st", "sp"?
António> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above
António> represents.
I never have problems with that.
António> Whereas you can always be sure what <ce> is.
[s] or [T]?
António Marques
>>>>>> "António" == António Marques <m....@sapo.pt> writes:
>
> >>> situations like the german one where <st> can be st- [St]
> >>> António> or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
> >>>
> >>> But you pronounce "c" (in Europe)
>
> António> (What's with the 'in Europe'?)
>
> Well... I'm having the difference in pronunciation of letters
> "c"[ei]/"z" across the Atlantic.
/T/ and /s/ have merged in most spanish dialects. That has nothing at
all to do with the Atlantic, nor does it bear on the question. Given the
dialect you're using, you'll use the corresponding sound. Mind you, some
dialects have /T/ for both <c> and <s>.
> >>> and "g" depending on what follows. So, how is that simpler
> >>> than the German "st", "sp"?
>
> António> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above
> António> represents.
>
> I never have problems with that.
Who talked about problems, never or seldom or often?
What does st stand for, (-)st- or -s + t-? You can't know.
> António> Whereas you can always be sure what <ce> is.
>
> [s] or [T]?
Whichoneever the dialect you're using has.
Harlan Messinger
> (This is really in reply to LSD.)
>
> Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>> Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:11:32 +0800: LEE Sau Dan
>> <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
>>
>>> situations like the german one where <st> can be st- [St] António>
>>> or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
>>>
>>> But you pronounce "c" (in Europe)
>
> (What's with the 'in Europe'?)
>
>>> and "g" depending on what follows. So, how is that simpler than
>>> the German "st", "sp"?
>
> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above represents. Whereas you
> can always be sure what <ce> is.
>
> Kindly cut the gnumacs quoting. No one else uses it. It's distressing.
Especially when someone's newsreader starts wrapping the text upon
quoting it.
Harlan Messinger
>>>>>> "António" == António Marques <m....@sapo.pt> writes:
>
> >>> situations like the german one where <st> can be st- [St]
> >>> António> or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
> >>>
> >>> But you pronounce "c" (in Europe)
>
> António> (What's with the 'in Europe'?)
>
> Well... I'm having the difference in pronunciation of letters
> "c"[ei]/"z" across the Atlantic.
>
>
> >>> and "g" depending on what follows. So, how is that simpler
> >>> than the German "st", "sp"?
>
> António> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above
> António> represents.
>
> I never have problems with that.
Do you think that someone who doesn't know German would know which
pronunciation applies in "sonstigen" and which in "einsteigen"?
> António> Whereas you can always be sure what <ce> is.
>
> [s] or [T]?
Why are you pretending to be so naive as not to know the difference
between pronunciation that varies between *words* and pronunciation that
varies between *different people's speech*? *Within one person's speech*
it's always one or the other, *regardless of the word*.
LEE Sau Dan
António> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above
António> represents.
>>
>> I never have problems with that.
António> Who talked about problems, never or seldom or often?
António> What does st stand for, (-)st- or -s + t-? You can't
António> know.
Examples?
Harlan Messinger
>>>>>> "António" == António Marques <m....@sapo.pt> writes:
>
> António> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above
> António> represents.
> >>
> >> I never have problems with that.
>
> António> Who talked about problems, never or seldom or often?
>
> António> What does st stand for, (-)st- or -s + t-? You can't
> António> know.
>
> Examples?
See my other post: "sonstigen" vs. "einsteigen".
António Marques
No, I do it on purpose.
António Marques
>>>>>> "António" == António Marques <m....@sapo.pt> writes:
>
> António> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above
> António> represents.
> >>
> >> I never have problems with that.
>
> António> Who talked about problems, never or seldom or often?
>
> António> What does st stand for, (-)st- or -s + t-? You can't
> António> know.
>
> Examples?
Sonny, I've given it to you. '<st>' in the middle of a string of
letters. That's the example. It works in spanish: '-ce-' is |ze| (using
the preferred spanish notation, not IPA); how you pronounce the |z| is
up to your dialect. What's '<st>' in the middle of any string of letters
in german? The answer is you don't know without further information.
I'll make a drawing for you:
- You find this scorched piece of paper you wrote 10 years ago. You know
the writing in it was spanish. All that survives are the characters
<ce>. You can instantly know how they were pronounced.
- You find this scorched piece of paper you wrote 10 years ago. You know
the writing in it was german. All that survives are the characters
<st>. You couldn't tell how they were pronounced if you had a gun to
your head.
António Marques
What's the purpose? LSD'll just merrily tell you that those can be
deduced from sonst and steigen.
Sometimes, the difference between Duscian and LSD is that Duscian is
more reasonable.
LEE Sau Dan
>> Examples?
Harlan> See my other post: "sonstigen" vs. "einsteigen".
Easy. The first derives from "sonst". So, the last "s" is /s/.
The second derives from "steigen". Initial "st" is always /St/ in
Hochdeutsch.
I never mispronounced these even when I was a beginner.
I cannot think of ways of misbreaking these words into the morphemes.
So, your examples are bad ones (just like "ghoti").
LEE Sau Dan
António> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above
António> represents.
>>
>> I never have problems with that.
Harlan> Do you think that someone who doesn't know German would
Harlan> know which pronunciation applies in "sonstigen" and which
Harlan> in "einsteigen"?
Do you think that someone who doesn't know Spanish would know how to
pronounce its words?
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> >>>>> "Harlan" == Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> writes:
>
> António> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above
> António> represents.
> >>
> >> I never have problems with that.
>
> Harlan> Do you think that someone who doesn't know German would
> Harlan> know which pronunciation applies in "sonstigen" and which
> Harlan> in "einsteigen"?
>
> Do you think that someone who doesn't know Spanish would know how to
> pronounce its words?
Yes.
Ruud Harmsen
<dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
>>>>>> "António" == António Marques <m....@sapo.pt> writes:
>
> António> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above
> António> represents.
> >>
> >> I never have problems with that.
>
> António> Who talked about problems, never or seldom or often?
>
> António> What does st stand for, (-)st- or -s + t-? You can't
> António> know.
>
>Examples?
Haustür, Stand. As PTD mentioned, it's all a matter of morphology.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>>> António> What does st stand for, (-)st- or -s + t-? You can't
>>> António> know.
>>>
>>> Examples?
>>
>> See my other post: "sonstigen" vs. "einsteigen".
>
>What's the purpose? LSD'll just merrily tell you that those can be
>deduced from sonst and steigen.
Yes, because that's the only correct answer. In other word:
morphology, word- and syllable structure.
Ruud Harmsen
<dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
>Do you think that someone who doesn't know Spanish would know how to
>pronounce its words?
It's possible to learn that.
E.g. I am capable of pronouning a modern Greek text in a remarkably
good approximation (but very slowly, and stammering, and with
mistakes, so more practice needed; but that doesn't invalidate the
point), without having the slightest clue what it means. Same with
Hungarian. More difficult with German.
Craoi...@gmail.com
> How should one find pronunciation dictionaries (printed books that use
> IPA)?
>
> Is there a pronunciation dictionary for Spanish? I haven't been able
> to find any. And no, I don't want a web site with audio files.
When I was starting to learn Spanish, I used a medium-sized Spanish-
English-Spanish dictionary published by Collins, with an orange cover.
It had IPA transcriptions for Spanish headwords. I bought it in
Ireland. I guess it is the same book as this one:
Craoi...@gmail.com
> On Apr 19, 7:40 am, p.nummi...@suomi24.fi wrote:
>
> > How should one find pronunciation dictionaries (printed books that use
> > IPA)?
>
> > Is there a pronunciation dictionary for Spanish? I haven't been able
> > to find any. And no, I don't want a web site with audio files.
>
> their orthography? How many?
Probably few, but it is nice to have the pronunciation indicated
anyway.
There are few Armenian words whose pronunciation is not predictable
from the orthography, but I can assure you that I would be much
happier if my Eggenstein-Arutunian would indicate pronunciation too.
António Marques
>>>>>> "Harlan" == Harlan Messinger <hmessinger...@comcast.net> writes:
>
> António> In every way. You *can't* know what <-st-> above
> António> represents.
> >>
> >> I never have problems with that.
>
> Harlan> Do you think that someone who doesn't know German would
> Harlan> know which pronunciation applies in "sonstigen" and which
> Harlan> in "einsteigen"?
>
> Do you think that someone who doesn't know Spanish would know how to
> pronounce its words?
YES, SD. THAT is precisely what we've been trying to explain to you. One
needs only a very simple letter -> sound mapping to know how to
pronounce a spanish word. Whereas with german that doesn't suffice.
--
LEE Sau Dan
António> What does st stand for, (-)st- or -s + t-? You can't
António> know.
>>
>> Examples?
Ruud> Haustür, Stand. As PTD mentioned, it's all a matter of
Ruud> morphology.
Haustür is obvisouly Haus+Tür. Both roots are in the very basic
vocabulary.
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> >>>>> "Ruud" == Ruud Harmsen <realemailons...@rudhar.com.invalid> writes:
>
> António> What does st stand for, (-)st- or -s + t-? You can't
> António> know.
> >>
> >> Examples?
>
> Ruud> Haustür, Stand. As PTD mentioned, it's all a matter of
> Ruud> morphology.
>
> Haustür is obvisouly Haus+Tür. Both roots are in the very basic
> vocabulary.
And if you don't know the language, you can't know that.
Adam Funk
>>>>>> "Ruud" == Ruud Harmsen <realema...@rudhar.com.invalid> writes:
>
> António> What does st stand for, (-)st- or -s + t-? You can't
> António> know.
> >>
> >> Examples?
>
> Ruud> Haustür, Stand. As PTD mentioned, it's all a matter of
> Ruud> morphology.
>
> Haustür is obvisouly Haus+Tür. Both roots are in the very basic
> vocabulary.
Right. But I think the point is that you could learn to pronounce
(read aloud) Spanish or Finnish reasonably well from the spelling
*without* having any idea what the words or morphemes mean.
--
Agent Rogersz: "It happens sometimes. People just explode.
Natural causes." (Cox 1984)
António Marques
> On 2008-04-23, LEE Sau Dan wrote:
>
>>>>>>> "Ruud" == Ruud Harmsen <realema...@rudhar.com.invalid> writes:
>> António> What does st stand for, (-)st- or -s + t-? You can't
>> António> know.
>> >>
>> >> Examples?
>>
>> Ruud> Haustür, Stand. As PTD mentioned, it's all a matter of
>> Ruud> morphology.
>>
>> Haustür is obvisouly Haus+Tür. Both roots are in the very basic
>> vocabulary.
>
> Right. But I think the point is that you could learn to pronounce
> (read aloud) Spanish or Finnish reasonably well from the spelling
> *without* having any idea what the words or morphemes mean.
Everybody knows that that is the point. That has never stopped LSD from
dragging around being obtuse in the past.
--
Joachim Pense
Cannot done with German; you for some words, vowel length is not
predictable, for some accent isn't. The issues at composition joints have
been mentioned.
Joachim
Paul J Kriha
Quite so.
Sometimes you have to know even more than just the meaning
of the words. You also have to know their origin, if they are
native or borrowed. If you don't know that and you haven't
heard the word pronounced, you can't be sure how to
pronounce <v> or <ch>, etc.
E.g. "Volant", "Volumen", "Volt" versus "Volk", "vollbringen", "Völlerei"
"Charakter" versus "Charterflug" versus "Chance" versus "Chemie"
pjk
Helmut Richter
> Sometimes you have to know even more than just the meaning
> of the words. You also have to know their origin, if they are
> native or borrowed. If you don't know that and you haven't
> heard the word pronounced, you can't be sure how to
> pronounce <v> or <ch>, etc.
> E.g. "Volant", "Volumen", "Volt" versus "Volk", "vollbringen", "Völlerei"
> "Charakter" versus "Charterflug" versus "Chance" versus "Chemie"
Minimal pairs can also be found within the native words:
sie schalten [a] they switch, they scolded
sie schalten [A:] they formed (concrete formwork)
Sucht [U] addiction
er sucht [u:] he searches
Bucht [U] the bay
er bucht [u:] he books
Erbrecht ['?ErbrECt] law of succession
erbrecht! [?Er'brECt] vomit! (pl.)
and with loan words:
Web [E] Web
web! [e:] weave!
Montage ['mo:ntA:g@] Mondays (pl.)
Montage [mOn'tA:Z@] mounting
--
Helmut Richter
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>Erbrecht ['?ErbrECt] law of succession
Dann also ['?ErprECt], mit Auslautverhärtung.
>erbrecht! [?Er'brECt] vomit! (pl.)
--
Ruud Harmsen
http://rudhar.com
Helmut Richter
> Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:04:12 +0200: Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de>: in
> sci.lang:
>
> >Erbrecht ['?ErbrECt] law of succession
>
> Dann also ['?ErprECt], mit Auslautverhärtung.
Muss ich im Wörterbuch nachschauen, hören kann ich den Unterschied nicht.
Wenigstens hier im Süden ist die Auslautverhärtung nicht so radikal wie in
den Wörterbüchern: zwar Verlust der Stimmhaftigkeit (die es im Süden für
s,b,d,g eh nicht gibt), aber keine Aspiration und keine Erhöhung der
Spannung.
Solange der "Siebs" noch von Theodor Siebs persönlich bearbeitet wurde, stand
auch drin, dass Rad [rA:d_0] und Rad [rA:t] verschieden zu sprechen sind;
erst nach seinem Tod haben seine Epigonen den Unterschied nivelliert.
> >erbrecht! [?Er'brECt] vomit! (pl.)
--
Helmut Richter
Peter T. Daniels
> Montage ['mo:ntA:g@] Mondays (pl.)
> Montage [mOn'tA:Z@] mounting
In English, "montage" is a rapid sequence of film clips (as pioneered
by Eisenstein -- would it have been named by him from French before
1917, or does the term come from French film theorists later?); what
do you call that in German?
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>Solange der "Siebs" noch von Theodor Siebs persönlich bearbeitet wurde, stand
>auch drin, dass Rad [rA:d_0] und Rad [rA:t] /
<Rat>, ohne Zweifel. Oder?
>verschieden zu sprechen sind;
>erst nach seinem Tod haben seine Epigonen den Unterschied nivelliert.
--
Ruud Harmsen
http://rudhar.com
Helmut Richter
The French loan "Montage" has quite a number of meanings, some also in the
production of motion pictures. Your specific question should be answered
by someone who is more knowledgeable in that area than I am.
In not so specialised contexts, it is the most normal word for any
assembly of technical parts (that reminds me that I should have my snow
tyres removed -- and the labour costs of the motorcar mechanics will
appear on their bill as "Montage"). Also, a carpenter working several days
out of town will say "ich bin auf Montage".
--
Helmut Richter
Helmut Richter
> <Rat>, ohne Zweifel. Oder?
Ja, natürlich. Kommt vom Kattnpäist.
(Das Wort gibts nicht. Aber es gibt einen Bäcker, der seine Roggensemmeln
unter dem Namen "Roggenroll" verkauft.)
--
Helmut Richter
Christian Weisgerber
> > Montage [mOn'tA:Z@] mounting
>
> In English, "montage" is a rapid sequence of film clips (as pioneered
> by Eisenstein -- would it have been named by him from French before
> 1917, or does the term come from French film theorists later?); what
> do you call that in German?
The same.
In technical jargon, "Montage" and the corresponding verb "montieren"
refer to installing, assembling, erecting, fitting, setting up
something.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
Christian Weisgerber
> sie schalten [A:] they formed (concrete formwork)
> Montage ['mo:ntA:g@] Mondays (pl.)
> Montage [mOn'tA:Z@] mounting
Replace [A:] with [a:].
LEE Sau Dan
Christian> In technical jargon, "Montage" and the corresponding
Christian> verb "montieren" refer to installing, assembling,
Christian> erecting, fitting, setting up something.
How are these different from "Anlage" and "anlegen"?
benl...@ihug.co.nz
> Peter T. Daniels <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > Montage [mOn'tA:Z@] mounting
>
> > In English, "montage" is a rapid sequence of film clips (as pioneered
> > by Eisenstein -- would it have been named by him from French before
> > 1917, or does the term come from French film theorists later?); what
> > do you call that in German?
>
> The same.
>
> In technical jargon, "Montage" and the corresponding verb "montieren"
> refer to installing, assembling, erecting, fitting, setting up
> something.
>
The word in this broad sense is 18th century French, borrowed by
German and Russian but not English. The specific sense of assembling
film footage first appears in French in 1914. The OED's first citation
in English is a note by Ivor Montagu to his translation of Pudovkin's
_On Film Technique_ (1929), where he says that the word is used in
French, German and Russian, but the only English equivalent is
"editing". For this basic cinematic process, I think French and
Russian still use "montage", English "editing", German "Schnitt" (e.g.
in film credits). However, the Russian film theorists emphasized the
particular expressive and ideological effects that could be achieved
by skilful editing, and when the word is used in English it's in this
narrower sense ("dynamic editing, and the ways it could control a
film's structure, meaning and effect" - Mast & Kawin, _A Short History
of the Movies_, 8th ed, p.174).
Ross Clark
Ruud Harmsen
Weisgerber): in sci.lang:
Also English mounting, although that has a more limited meaning.
Ruud Harmsen
Weisgerber): in sci.lang:
>Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>
>> sie schalten [A:] they formed (concrete formwork)
>> Montage ['mo:ntA:g@] Mondays (pl.)
>> Montage [mOn'tA:Z@] mounting
>
>Replace [A:] with [a:].
Depends on the dialect.
Better write /[mOn'ta:Z@/ ? Length is phonemic in German. Whether it's
[a] or [A] doesn't really matter much.
Helmut Richter
> Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:34:38 +0000 (UTC): na...@mips.inka.de (Christian
> Weisgerber): in sci.lang:
> >Replace [A:] with [a:].
Why should I?
Former editions of Siebs had and other dictionaries have [a] and [A:]
whereas the 19th edition of Siebs (and perhaps older ones which I did not
check) has [A] and [A:]. I see no reason to disagree with all of them and
use [a:].
The situation is confusing in that for all other vowels than <a> the close
vowel which appears for long German vowels except <ä> (SAMPA [e:], [2:],
[i:], [y:], [o:], [u:]) is the one that has a common small Latin letter in
IPA and in SAMPA whereas the open vowel which appears for short stressed
German vowels (SAMPA [E], [9], [I], [Y], [O], [U]) is the one that has an
odd-shaped small letter in IPA and a capital letter in SAMPA. Only for one
or two sounds written <a> it is the other way round.
> Depends on the dialect.
> Better write /[mOn'ta:Z@/ ? Length is phonemic in German. Whether it's
> [a] or [A] doesn't really matter much.
For the other vowels, *both* length and open/close distinction matters, and
the latter perhaps more: without context, I would more likely interpret [vyst@]
as "Wüste" and not as "wüsste". For <a>, the two sounds are so similar and
are rendered so differenty across the German-speaking countries, that length
is more distinctive than sound. Yet, I consider it a blunder of Siebs to
regard them as indistinguishable. It is probably a consequence of their
general preference of Northern closed vowels: "erst" [e:] instead of [E],
"Maus" [Ao] instead of [aU], "Mäuse" [O2] instead of [OI], etc.
--
Helmut Richter
Helmut Richter
> >>>>> "Christian" == Christian Weisgerber <na...@mips.inka.de> writes:
>
> Christian> In technical jargon, "Montage" and the corresponding
> Christian> verb "montieren" refer to installing, assembling,
> Christian> erecting, fitting, setting up something.
>
> How are these different from "Anlage" and "anlegen"?
First difference: Like some other words -- for instance "Übersetzung",
"Konstruktion", "Bau" -- "Anlage" may mean both the process and its
result. "Montage" is only the process, never its result.
Second difference: "Anlage" is more the design and implementation of a
structure, not so much the assembly of its parts. A machinery can be called
an "Anlage" when complete but the process of its assembly is a
"Montage". "Anlage" as a process would be used for instance for a garden or
park -- here the same word is also used for the result.
As most compounds consisting of a preposition ("an") and an unspecific verb
("legen"), "anlegen" has at least 20 entirely different meanings, some but
not all of which give rise to a noun "Anlage".
einen Garten anlegen
eine Briefmarkensammlung anlegen
einen Dominostein anlegen
...
--
Helmut Richter
Athel Cornish-Bowden
> p.num...@suomi24.fi wrote:
>
>>> Are there words in Spanish whose pronunciation is not predictable from
>>> their orthography? How many?
>>
>> I cannot know that without a pronouncing dictionary.
>
> Of course you can. You only need open any grammar which will tell you
> that 'spanish is pronounced as it is written' in order to know that. I
> suppose finnish isn't very different.
>
> Also, spanish phonetics are simple enough that no situations like the
> german one where <st> can be st- [St] or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
What you say is plainly true of Spanish, whatever regional variant one
wants, but something I've sometimes wondered is how far it applies to
Portuguese. People who know Spanish but not Portuguese tend to find
pronuncation of the latter, especially in Portugal, completely
bizarre. Is that just because they don't know the rules, or are the
rules more ambiguous than they are Spanish?
--
athel
Ruud Harmsen
>> Of course you can. You only need open any grammar which will tell you
>> that 'spanish is pronounced as it is written' in order to know that. I
>> suppose finnish isn't very different.
>>
>> Also, spanish phonetics are simple enough that no situations like the
>> german one where <st> can be st- [St] or -s t- [st] seem to occur.
Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:04:08 +0200: Athel Cornish-Bowden
<athe...@yahoo.co.uk>: in sci.lang:
>What you say is plainly true of Spanish, whatever regional variant one
>wants, but something I've sometimes wondered is how far it applies to
>Portuguese.
It isn't. Mapping Portuguese spelling to its sounds requires fairly
long and complicated descriptions (here's mine:
http://rudhar.com/foneport/en/alfaport.htm ). The same thing for
Spanish could be about a tenth or less of its size.
Even with a detailed description, the mapping isn't 100% unambiguous,
largely because the difference between mid-low and mid-high vowels is
not usually marked in spelling. (/e/ vs. /E/, and /o/ vs. /O/).
Ref. http://rudhar.com/foneport/en/noteport/notep008.htm
The system used in the 1878 proposal (and also the system proposed in
it, which is different) ARE unambiguous. But the one is no longer used
(or never was?) and the other was never accepted.
Ref. http://purl.pt/38 , http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19663 .
>People who know Spanish but not Portuguese tend to find
>pronuncation of the latter, especially in Portugal, completely
>bizarre. Is that just because they don't know the rules, or are the
>rules more ambiguous than they are Spanish?
Both. An extra factor is that 3 of its very frequent unstressed vowels
are very short, and unvoiced (whispered) between unvoiced consonants
and finally.
Ref. http://rudhar.com/foneport/en/noteport/notep016.htm
The result is that to the beginner the language sounds are one long
bizarre sequence of consonsants only, with no clue whatsoever as to
where words might begin. As a result, these words (of which maybe over
95% are similar to those of Spanish, and to a high but lower degree
also French and Italian) are simply not recognized, what's worse, not
heard.
It's not a matter of not knowing what words mean, but there simply are
no words, or so it seems.
But with enough exposure (ref. http://rudhar.com/radio/radiopt.htm ),
this problems vanishes, as I know from experience. As a matter of
fact, the pronunciation of the Portuguese of Portugal is very
accurate, not sloppy at all; evertything is really there, it's only
hard to detect at first.
Christian Weisgerber
> > >Replace [A:] with [a:].
>
> Why should I?
Because it is commonly used in dictionaries and probably represents
the actual sound as well.
> Former editions of Siebs had and other dictionaries have [a] and [A:]
I'm surprised to hear this. Duden Vol. 4 uses /a/ and /A/ but
points out that this is done for phonological symmetry and that it
isn't clear if these are realized with different vowels qualities.
Elsewhere I've only ever seen [a] and [a:] (or /a/ and /a:/).
Richard Wordingham
> For languages with more complicated spelling systems, general
> dictionaries, both bilingual and monolingual, usually cover
> pronunciation.
Unfortunately, most schemes for Thai, including the native one, leave
ambiguities. Where Thai spelling can't resolve the ambiguities in vowel
lengths in monosyllabic words, the (Thai) Royal Institute Dictionary makes
no effort to improve on matters. It is also not to be trusted when the
spelling contradicts the pronunciation.
Richard.
Richard Wordingham
news:81591$480e212f$16...@news.teranews.com...
> Harlan Messinger wrote:
>> See my other post: "sonstigen" vs. "einsteigen".
> What's the purpose? LSD'll just merrily tell you that those can be
> deduced from sonst and steigen.
I though "Wachstube" was the standard ambiguous case, at least in Antiqua.
It's also notorious as a word that can't be automatically converted from
Antiqua to Fraktur, again because it isn't obvious where the
syllable/morpheme break occurs.
Richard.
Richard Wordingham
news:q919c9hvx4gl.1j...@40tude.net...
> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:05:59 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>> which except for the (new) OED, isn't IPA. (Has IPA been
>> inflicted on the whole family of smaller Oxford
>> dictionaries?)
> One may hope.
IPA forces one to choose an accent. Doesn't that produce unnecessary
complications for words like 'pure', 'bomb'. 'cloth' and 'past'? I concede
that words like 'plastic' and 'dog' may be insoluble, but the old OED scheme
with breves, macrons and slurs did a good job of covering multiple accents,
frequently without resorting to respelling.
Also, IPA dates as pronunciations change. It's bad enough that the inverted
'v' is traditionally misused for a central vowel.
Richard.
Brian M. Scott
<jrw...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in
<news:Za9Rj.16369$244....@newsfe1-win.ntli.net> in
sci.lang:
> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
> news:q919c9hvx4gl.1j...@40tude.net...
>> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:05:59 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>>> which except for the (new) OED, isn't IPA. (Has IPA been
>>> inflicted on the whole family of smaller Oxford
>>> dictionaries?)
>> One may hope.
> IPA forces one to choose an accent.
The OED uses IPA and typically gives both British and U.S.
pronunciations, sometimes more than one of each.
> Doesn't that produce unnecessary complications for words
> like 'pure', 'bomb'. 'cloth' and 'past'?
Your unnecessary complication is my useful additional
information. And IPA is a damn' sight more generally
useful.
[...]
Brian
benl...@ihug.co.nz
> "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote in messagenews:q919c9hvx4gl.1j...@40tude.net...
>
> > On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:05:59 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
> >> which except for the (new) OED, isn't IPA. (Has IPA been
> >> inflicted on the whole family of smaller Oxford
> >> dictionaries?)
> > One may hope.
>
> IPA forces one to choose an accent.
I assume we are talking here about an IPA-based _phonemic_
representation. I don't think any dictionary (even the "Pronouncing
Dictionaries") tries to provide full phonetic detail.
In this sense, one is forced to choose an accent only insofar as there
are phonemic differences in the pronunciation of a word. This applies
to the old annotated-spelling system as much as to IPA. You can either
stick to a single norm, or list variants. Where the variation is
systematic (as in loss of postvocalic /r/) the traditional spelling
does function as a kind of pan-dialectal representation, but it's easy
enough to do this in IPA too.
Doesn't that produce unnecessary
> complications for words like 'pure', 'bomb'. 'cloth' and 'past'?
'pure' Assuming you are talking about the 'pyewa' vs 'pyaw'
pronunciations, you could have a rule that -ure with superscript bar
implies the two pronunciations. Might apply to half a dozen words.
'bomb' ?? Are you talking about the 'bum' pronunciation (given as an
alternative in OED Online, but not mentioned in any other source I've
looked at, and previously unknown to me)? Or the American variation
between -a- and -o- type vowels in this and many other words. I don't
see that either system handles either problem neatly.
'cloth' : vs. 'clawth'? My COD (7th ed) lists them as alternatives. If
you tried to subsume them under a modified spelling, it would work for
'broth', but not for 'moth' or 'Goth'.
'past'. COD respells this with -ah-. You could account for a lot of
these words by using trad spelling with an interpretation rule that
says that, in certain environments, both /&/ and /a:/ pronunciations
exist. But you would have to list exceptions (plastic, lass, mass,
molasses...), and in any case this is no simpler than a similar rule
applied to an IPA representation.
Note that the annotated spelling system will need other interpretation
rules, e.g. to explain that <ar> with ligature in 'farce' sounds the
same as <ah> in 'grass'. or that ligatured <ir>, <er>, and <ur> in
'first', 'terse' and 'curse' all sound the same, unless you're
Scottish.
I concede
> that words like 'plastic' and 'dog' may be insoluble, but the old OED scheme
> with breves, macrons and slurs did a good job of covering multiple accents,
> frequently without resorting to respelling.
>
> Also, IPA dates as pronunciations change.
Not unless there are phonemic changes, in which case both systems
will date.
Ross Clark
Ruud Harmsen
Weisgerber): in sci.lang:
>Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>> > >Replace [A:] with [a:].
>>
>> Why should I?
>
>Because it is commonly used in dictionaries and probably represents
>the actual sound as well.
If so, what is meant by [a] here? Front vowel or central vowel? If
front, that is certainly not a good description of the /a:/ in the
German that I've ever heard (but I haven't heard it all).
What's more, front, central of back is phonemically irrelevant in
German, for /a/ and /a:/, all that matters is open, and long/short.
Richard Wordingham
news:bf7ef403-3e71-4ad5...@z24g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> On Apr 28, 12:50 pm, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> IPA forces one to choose an accent.
> I assume we are talking here about an IPA-based _phonemic_
> representation. I don't think any dictionary (even the "Pronouncing
> Dictionaries") tries to provide full phonetic detail.
> In this sense, one is forced to choose an accent only insofar as there
> are phonemic differences in the pronunciation of a word. This applies
> to the old annotated-spelling system as much as to IPA. You can either
> stick to a single norm, or list variants. Where the variation is
> systematic (as in loss of postvocalic /r/) the traditional spelling
> does function as a kind of pan-dialectal representation, but it's easy
> enough to do this in IPA too.
See remark on bastardisation below.
> 'bomb' ?? Are you talking about the 'bum' pronunciation (given as an
> alternative in OED Online, but not mentioned in any other source I've
> looked at, and previously unknown to me)? Or the American variation
> between -a- and -o- type vowels in this and many other words. I don't
> see that either system handles either problem neatly.
I was thinking of the latter. Are you saying that there is too much
selectional variation in these words?
> 'cloth' : vs. 'clawth'? My COD (7th ed) lists them as alternatives. If
> you tried to subsume them under a modified spelling, it would work for
> 'broth', but not for 'moth' or 'Goth'.
Enlighten me. What's the difficulty? The Oxford Dictionary of English
Etymology captures the variation by writing /klɔ̀þ/ but /mɔþ/, which is
bastardised IPA.
> 'past'. COD respells this with -ah-. You could account for a lot of
> these words by using trad spelling with an interpretation rule that
> says that, in certain environments, both /&/ and /a:/ pronunciations
> exist. But you would have to list exceptions (plastic, lass, mass,
> molasses...), and in any case this is no simpler than a similar rule
> applied to an IPA representation.
I have a version of Chambers that handles this with 'â'. 'Plastic' is a bit
of a problem because the first vowel gets lengthened by some people.
> Note that the annotated spelling system will need other interpretation
> rules, e.g. to explain that <ar> with ligature in 'farce' sounds the
> same as <ah> in 'grass'. or that ligatured <ir>, <er>, and <ur> in
> 'first', 'terse' and 'curse' all sound the same, unless you're
> Scottish.
That's the difference between use by a native speaker and by a non-native
speaker. Explaining ligatured (or slurred in the OED editions I'm familiar
with) <ar>, <er>, <ir> and <ur> as being the sounds in 'farce', 'terse',
'first' and 'curse' works very well for native speakers. The problem with
an IPA system is that it will say that 'farce' and 'grass' rhyme if it is
based on RP or similar.
>> Also, IPA dates as pronunciations change.
> Not unless there are phonemic changes, in which case both systems
> will date.
Isn't /ʍ/ for Maori <wh> unnatural when the typical pronunciation is now
more like [f]?
You then have to anchor the phonemes by reference to particular words. The
vowels of British 'moat' and non-rhotic British 'bare' are particular
cases - 'IPA' actually becomes just the script for another writing system.
>> It's bad enough that the inverted
>> 'v' is traditionally misused for a central vowel.
I think this is a particularly sad case of IPA symbols effectively coming to
be used arbitrarily.
Richard.
Brian M. Scott
<jrw...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in
<news:kYsRj.60164$h65....@newsfe2-gui.ntli.net> in
sci.lang:
[...]
> Isn't /turned-w/ for Maori <wh> unnatural when the typical
> pronunciation is now more like [f]?
I've never seen it described as turned-w; I understood it to
be [P], with [f] encroaching.
> You then have to anchor the phonemes by reference to
> particular words. The vowels of British 'moat' and
> non-rhotic British 'bare' are particular cases - 'IPA'
> actually becomes just the script for another writing
> system.
How so? In what way are /@U/ and /E@/ misleading?
[...]
Brian
benl...@ihug.co.nz
> <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
>
> news:bf7ef403-3e71-4ad5...@z24g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On Apr 28, 12:50 pm, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >> IPA forces one to choose an accent.
> > I assume we are talking here about an IPA-based _phonemic_
> > representation. I don't think any dictionary (even the "Pronouncing
> > Dictionaries") tries to provide full phonetic detail.
> > In this sense, one is forced to choose an accent only insofar as there
> > are phonemic differences in the pronunciation of a word. This applies
> > to the old annotated-spelling system as much as to IPA. You can either
> > stick to a single norm, or list variants. Where the variation is
> > systematic (as in loss of postvocalic /r/) the traditional spelling
> > does function as a kind of pan-dialectal representation, but it's easy
> > enough to do this in IPA too.
>
> See remark on bastardisation below.
>
> > 'bomb' ?? Are you talking about the 'bum' pronunciation (given as an
> > alternative in OED Online, but not mentioned in any other source I've
> > looked at, and previously unknown to me)? Or the American variation
> > between -a- and -o- type vowels in this and many other words. I don't
> > see that either system handles either problem neatly.
>
> I was thinking of the latter. Are you saying that there is too much
> selectional variation in these words?
I think there's a lot, from what I read. (I tend not to notice it, and
I find it mysterious because it doesn't correspond to any contrast in
my dialect.) But my point was that modified-orthography doesn't deal
with this any better than IPA-phonemic.
> > 'cloth' : vs. 'clawth'? My COD (7th ed) lists them as alternatives. If
> > you tried to subsume them under a modified spelling, it would work for
> > 'broth', but not for 'moth' or 'Goth'.
> Enlighten me. What's the difficulty?
It was you that suggested there was a difficulty. Remember you
suggested these words as problems for IPA-based phonemic
representation. I'm pointing out that the same problems exist for
modified orthography systems. In this case you end up having to list
the variants in both systems, or, if you try to represent them by a
special notation or rule, it applies to maybe two words.
The Oxford Dictionary of English
> Etymology captures the variation by writing /klɔ̀þ/ but /mɔþ/, which is
> bastardised IPA.
You seem to feel that the "funny letters" of IPA like open-o and
inverted-v must be preserved from "bastardization" and used in
precisely the phonetic senses defined by D.Jones, even in a phonemic
orthography. But IPA also includes all 26 letters of the normal
alphabet. Do we have to observe the same taboo with those? This would
pretty much make any Roman-based phonemic transcription unworkable.
> > 'past'. COD respells this with -ah-. You could account for a lot of
> > these words by using trad spelling with an interpretation rule that
> > says that, in certain environments, both /&/ and /a:/ pronunciations
> > exist. But you would have to list exceptions (plastic, lass, mass,
> > molasses...), and in any case this is no simpler than a similar rule
> > applied to an IPA representation.
>
> I have a version of Chambers that handles this with 'â'. 'Plastic' is a bit
> of a problem because the first vowel gets lengthened by some people.
>
> > Note that the annotated spelling system will need other interpretation
> > rules, e.g. to explain that <ar> with ligature in 'farce' sounds the
> > same as <ah> in 'grass'. or that ligatured <ir>, <er>, and <ur> in
> > 'first', 'terse' and 'curse' all sound the same, unless you're
> > Scottish.
>
> That's the difference between use by a native speaker and by a non-native
> speaker.
Well, even native speakers aren't necessarily going to be familiar
with all dialects.
And let's remember that this thread started with a query from a non-
English speaker (actually about Spanish, but never mind). For non-
native users IPA makes much more sense because it uses the letters
with their common international sounds.
Explaining ligatured (or slurred in the OED editions I'm familiar
> with) <ar>, <er>, <ir> and <ur> as being the sounds in 'farce', 'terse',
> 'first' and 'curse' works very well for native speakers.
What would these native speakers be doing with this information? Would
they be straining their ears and vocal cords to capture some elusive
distinction in pronunciation between <er> and <ir>, which isn't there?
The problem with
> an IPA system is that it will say that 'farce' and 'grass' rhyme if it is
> based on RP or similar.
Why is that a problem? If it's based on RP, they do.
> >> Also, IPA dates as pronunciations change.
> > Not unless there are phonemic changes, in which case both systems
> > will date.
>
> Isn't /ʍ/ for Maori <wh> unnatural when the typical pronunciation is now
> more like [f]?
Who would use inverted-w in a phonemic transcription? It's not really
a sound change so much as a convergence towards a government-endorsed
standard which is easy for English speakers.
> You then have to anchor the phonemes by reference to particular words. The
> vowels of British 'moat' and non-rhotic British 'bare' are particular
> cases - 'IPA' actually becomes just the script for another writing system.
??
>
> >> It's bad enough that the inverted
> >> 'v' is traditionally misused for a central vowel.
>
> I think this is a particularly sad case of IPA symbols effectively coming to
> be used arbitrarily.
There may be something we can agree on. I think some IPA-based English
transcriptions suffer from spurious
phonetic precision. I would not like to have to get along without
schwa or inverted-v in writing English, but I think epsilon, upsilon,
and that horrible turned-script-a thing (Cardinal 13) are unnecessary
if you are talking about the phonemics of English-in-general.
I don't know what's going on at OED Online -- it looks as though
various people have had a bash at IPA representation with quite
different agendas. (See my recent remarks here about "pirate".) If
there is a logic underlying it all, I wish someone would direct me to
an exposition of it.
Ross Clark
benl...@ihug.co.nz
> On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:19:44 GMT, Richard Wordingham
> <news:kYsRj.60164$h65....@newsfe2-gui.ntli.net> in
> sci.lang:
>
> [...]
>
> > Isn't /turned-w/ for Maori <wh> unnatural when the typical
> > pronunciation is now more like [f]?
>
> I've never seen it described as turned-w; I understood it to
> be [P], with [f] encroaching.
Although it was not uniform throughout the country, I think turned-w
might be a better guess for what the missionaries heard (in the Bay of
Islands region), given that they failed to distinguish it from /w/ for
quite a while.
Ross Clark
Adam Funk
> Right. But I think the point is that you could learn to pronounce
> (read aloud) Spanish or Finnish reasonably well from the spelling
> *without* having any idea what the words or morphemes mean.
However, I think that in Finnish morphology is useful for determining
where to put the secondary stress (AIUI, the primary stress is always
on the first syllable); for example, "Helsinkiläinen" has the
secondary stress on "läi" because the morphology is "Helsinki" +
"läinen" (adjectival suffix).
Perhaps someone with a good knowledge of Finnish could confirm or
correct this?
--
Allo, la gare d'Arboujah? Un de nos fous s'est échappé et a sauté
dans le train qui va arriver chez vous. Voici son signalement...
António Marques
> On 2008-04-21 15:32:30 +0200, António Marques <m....@sapo.pt> said:
>
>> p.num...@suomi24.fi wrote:
>>
>>>> Are there words in Spanish whose pronunciation is not
>>>> predictable from their orthography? How many?
>>>
>>> I cannot know that without a pronouncing dictionary.
>>
>> Of course you can. You only need open any grammar which will tell
>> you that 'spanish is pronounced as it is written' in order to know
>> that. I suppose finnish isn't very different.
>>
>> Also, spanish phonetics are simple enough that no situations like
>> the german one where <st> can be st- [St] or -s t- [st] seem to
>> occur.
>
> What you say is plainly true of Spanish, whatever regional variant
> one wants, but something I've sometimes wondered is how far it
> applies to Portuguese.
I think the situation with portuguese is similar to the one with german.
> People who know Spanish but not Portuguese tend to find pronuncation
> of the latter, especially in Portugal, completely bizarre. Is that
> just because they don't know the rules, or are the rules more
> ambiguous than they are Spanish?
The rules aren't very ambiguous, but there are important differences,
mostly derived from the fact that portuguese phonetics is much more complex:
- Portuguese has nine vowel phonemes, *not* coutning the nasal versions
of some of them: a, @, e, E, i, +, o, O, u.
- Unstressed vowels are generally very much reduced
- Vowel sandhi is omnipresent
- Vowels always interact with nasals, e.g. em > [@~j]
Now, the writing system mostly represents phonemes in an ideal way. The
difference is that, while in spanish you mostly have to replace each
letter by the appropriate phonetic realisation, in portuguese there are
many possible realisations, though in general in any given case only one
is possible according to phonotaxis. Phonotaxis used to work well:
- Vowel phonemes used to be only seven (a e E i o O u), the others being
their unstressed versions. Even so, the difference between e/E and o/O
is only shown when they need a stress mark: e/o bear a circumflex, E/O
bear an acute. And nowadays, there are unstressed versions of those
seven vowels which more like them and distinct from the original
unstressed sounds, which in turn may sometimes appear in stressed
position. Even so, the old rules remain, and most of the modern
exceptions are deducible, thoug not all.
- Stress is not marked in oxytones ending in i/u/dihpthong/r/l/n/x,
since nearly every such word is an oxytone. This is an important
difference from spanish. Conversely, those paroxytones which do end in
i/u/dihpthong/r/l/n/x need a stress marker. All proparoxytones need one;
and 'falling diphthongs' are an unknown concept, so a word like se´ria
'serious' is a proparoxytone, whereas seria 'would be' is an oxytone.
- Some frequent words which wouldn't normally need a stress mark bear
one in order to be distinguished from other frequent words: pa´ra
'stops' / para 'to', da´ 'gives' / da 'of the', e´ 'is' / e 'and', and
countless others, especially monosyllables. NB a distinction is only
made if the vowels are really different.
In general, I'd say that you have to have a command of portuguese
phonotaxis to know how to pronounce written words unambiguously, and
even then there are exceptions. It's not like in english, but it isn't
like in spanish either. To have it the spanish way we'd need a handful
more of vowels in the alphabet; the 'solution' presented in Ruud's
linked book doesn''t cut it; it's tied to a specific dialect (for which
by the way it is no longer adequate) and leaves the important parts as
they are, even if it mangles morphology. In fact, all it does is to mark
the difference between open and closed vowels (the part that Ruud
cherishes because he already knows the rest), and introduce some
'consistency' at the expense of diasystemic morphophonology (e.g. using
ãi for ãe).
--
António Marques
* This signature does not include a prefab parting phrase *
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>- Portuguese has nine vowel phonemes,
[...]
>- Vowel sandhi is omnipresent
What do you mean by that?
a + a = à and a + o = ó?
Or something else?
AFAIK, apart from the above, all vowels are simply pronounced as
written.
>- Stress is not marked in oxytones ending in i/u/dihpthong/r/l/n/x,
>since nearly every such word is an oxytone. This is an important
>difference from spanish.
Aren't the rules for final -r and -l the same in Spanish and
Portuguese?
And -n is rare in pt, -x is rare in both languages (and they have the
same rule), diphthongs ending in -u or -i (i.e. most) fall under the
general rule for that vowel (a rule which indeed is different from
Spanish), and in -ão one could also count the ~ as a stress mark, as
is the case in manhã etc.
There are different ways of describing the same rules (see a
discussion I had (here too?) a long, long time ago (2000?), in which
some people insisted I had it all wrong, although in fact I only used
a different description that nevertheless led to the same results.
http://rudhar.com/foneport/en/alfaport.htm#Stress
>In general, I'd say that you have to have a command of portuguese
>phonotaxis to know how to pronounce written words unambiguously, and
>even then there are exceptions. It's not like in english, but it isn't
>like in spanish either. To have it the spanish way we'd need a handful
>more of vowels in the alphabet; the 'solution' presented in Ruud's
>linked book doesn''t cut it; it's tied to a specific dialect (for which
>by the way it is no longer adequate) /
As that really so? That 1878 spelling (as used in the book, don't know
about what they propose) seemed to correspond nicely to the current
standard pronunciation, even when considering both Portugal and
Brazil.
>and leaves the important parts as
>they are, even if it mangles morphology.
Yes. It proposes "mudal-a" instead of "mudá-la".
Considering the probable history
mudarla > mudala
not
mudarla > mudar-a > muda-la
the current spelling seems better.
>In fact, all it does is to mark
>the difference between open and closed vowels (the part that Ruud
>cherishes because he already knows the rest), and introduce some
>'consistency' at the expense of diasystemic morphophonology (e.g. using
>ãi for ãe).
Yes. (But cf. Góis, which is still written Goes on old cornerstones in
the area. Piódão used to be Piodam.)
Ref:
http://purl.pt/38
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19663
http://pt.wikisource.org/wiki/Reprezenta%C3%A7%C3%A3o_%C3%A0_Academia_Real_das_Ci%C3%AAncias_sobre_a_ref%C3%B3rma_da_ortografia
António Marques
> - Stress is not marked in oxytones ending in i/u/dihpthong/r/l/n/x,
Or -z.
António Marques
> Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:28:26 +0100: António Marques <m....@sapo.pt>: in
> sci.lang:
>
>> - Portuguese has nine vowel phonemes,
> [...]
>> - Vowel sandhi is omnipresent
>
> What do you mean by that?
> a + a = à and a + o = ó?
> Or something else?
Not else, further. e + V = iV, -o + V = V, etc.
> AFAIK, apart from the above, all vowels are simply pronounced as
> written.
Well, all those cases are 'pronounced as written' in the sense that
their written form has only one possible reading within the same dialect.
>> - Stress is not marked in oxytones ending in i/u/dihpthong/r/l/n/x,
>> since nearly every such word is an oxytone. This is an important
>> difference from spanish.
>
> Aren't the rules for final -r and -l the same in Spanish and
> Portuguese?
I suppose so. When I wrote 'important difference' I was thinking of i/u.
The others were an afterthought. (Talk about a redundant sentence.)
> And -n is rare in pt, -x is rare in both languages (and they have the
> same rule),
(But rare or not, the rule is there...)
> diphthongs ending in -u or -i (i.e. most) fall under the
> general rule for that vowel (a rule which indeed is different from
> Spanish),
Yeah, but to the speaker's mind (at some level which seems to be
important here) the dihpthongs are unitary, not a sequence of vowels.
> and in -ão one could also count the ~ as a stress mark, as
> is the case in manhã etc.
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, the tilde is NOT a stress mark.
My earliest recollection of you is precisely you trying to prove that
the tilde works as a stress mark, at least in some words. (Namely, in
those words in which it coincides with stress.)
In 'manha~' the tilde looks like a stress marker because the word is
stressed on the last syllable and there is no other marker. There is no
other marker because it would have to be placed over the tilde, which
isn't very aesthetic. It's simpler to add words ending in -V~ to the
list above (in which I forgot to include -z).
There is another rule that makes -om oxytone. It's seldom relevant these
days, of course. I didn't mean to present the whole set of rules, of
course, just to illustrate why portuguese spelling must be more complex
than that of spanish.
> There are different ways of describing the same rules (...)
Of course there are; that applies to every set of rules in the universe.
What matters is that a certain set is economical, consistent and elegant
so that users have the least effort acquiring it.
Making the tilde sometimes a stress marker and sometimes not (whilst
moreover gaining nothing in the process) would go against the
fundamental principle ingrained in everyone's mind that a diacritic, in
portuguese, can either mark stress (´, ^) or it can't (`, ~).
>> In general, I'd say that you have to have a command of portuguese
>> phonotaxis to know how to pronounce written words unambiguously, and
>> even then there are exceptions. It's not like in english, but it isn't
>> like in spanish either. To have it the spanish way we'd need a handful
>> more of vowels in the alphabet; the 'solution' presented in Ruud's
>> linked book doesn''t cut it; it's tied to a specific dialect (for which
>> by the way it is no longer adequate) /
>
> As that really so? That 1878 spelling (as used in the book, don't know
> about what they propose) seemed to correspond nicely to the current
> standard pronunciation, even when considering both Portugal and
> Brazil.
The element that automatically springs to mind is eic- for exc-, but I
think I saw others. And what should one do with free variation?
In what regards 'standard pronunciation', my impression is that your
view of its psychological role is tainted by the realities in countries
with more dialectal variation. To give you an example, you might suppose
that, if tomorrow it were decreed that -elh- would start being written
-âlh- (reflecting the pronounciation one finds in Lisbon), people from
other dialects wouldn't mind it much more than people from Lisbon, since
it would be a matter of representing the 'standard', and the Lisbon can
lay claim to the 'standard', so people from outside wouldn't be
concerned anyway. However, that is not so. That -elh- is expected to
represent a number of varieties. The 'standard' is expected to encompass
most of them, within some limits. Just what those limits are is mostly
tied to muutal comprehension of fast speech.
I don't think everyone is supposed to pronounce 'standard german'
precisely the same way, but some people from other countries seem to
think that that is the case with 'standard portuguese', and that
'standard portuguese' is the variety spoken is Lisbon (which one?). If
there is a thing called 'standard portuguese', it is strongly ties to
the written forms. That means it may distinguish between 'rio' and
'riu', which some varieties sometimes taken as the 'standard' don't.
People who do care about such things as a 'standard' here in this
country are more concerned with questions such as should 'espectadores'
have a /k/ or not than with how laminal or not should the /s/ be.
>> and leaves the important parts as
>> they are, even if it mangles morphology.
>
> Yes. It proposes "mudal-a" instead of "mudá-la".
The [l] mostly belonging to the syllable following it, this one is
particularly disingenious.
> Considering the probable history
> mudarla > mudala
Yes.
> not
> mudarla > mudar-a > muda-la
> the current spelling seems better.
>
>> In fact, all it does is to mark
>> the difference between open and closed vowels (the part that Ruud
>> cherishes because he already knows the rest), and introduce some
>> 'consistency' at the expense of diasystemic morphophonology (e.g. using
>> ãi for ãe).
>
> Yes. (But cf. Góis, which is still written Goes on old cornerstones in
> the area. Piódão used to be Piodam.)
-ói- is usually written with ´, though one common exception is comboio.
Surnames can use old spellings if that usage has been continuous.
John Atkinson
"Adam Funk" <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote..
> On 2008-04-23, Adam Funk wrote:
>
>> Right. But I think the point is that you could learn to pronounce
>> (read aloud) Spanish or Finnish reasonably well from the spelling
>> *without* having any idea what the words or morphemes mean.
>
> However, I think that in Finnish morphology is useful for determining
> where to put the secondary stress (AIUI, the primary stress is always
> on the first syllable); for example, "Helsinkiläinen" has the
> secondary stress on "läi" because the morphology is "Helsinki" +
> "läinen" (adjectival suffix).
>
> Perhaps someone with a good knowledge of Finnish could confirm or
> correct this?
I'm certainly not such a person, but here's what Tiit-Rein Viitso in the
Routledge book on Uralic has to say on the matter:
"In all Fennic dialects [...] most words have primary stress on the
first syllable. Quadrisyllabic and longer words have secondary stress on
odd non-final syllables, i.e. there is a tendency towards trochaic
stress patterning [OK, we all knew that]. [This] is counteracted by
certain derivational suffixes that attract secondary stress , e.g.
Finnish 'pakenem`ninen, escaping. In addition, in Finnish [...],
quinquesyllabic and longer words with a short third and a long fourth
syllable have their secondary stress on the fourth syllable, e.g.
'todel'lisenl, real (sing Genitive), todelli'sessa, real (sing
Inessive).
In some Finnish dialects [there are further complications]."
So, consider yourself confirmed.
John.
Craoi...@gmail.com
Pakeneminen, actually. But yes, that's how it works. I can think of
only two words which have normally non.initial stress, and one of them
is a recent loanword from English: "jumalauta" and "okei". Both can
have initial stress too.
John Atkinson
<Craoi...@gmail.com> wrote...
> On Apr 30, 9:40 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> > "Adam Funk" <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote..
>
> > > determining
>> > where to put the secondary stress (AIUI, the primary stress is
>> > always
> >> on the first syllable); for example, "Helsinkiläinen" has the
> >> secondary stress on "läi" because the morphology is "Helsinki" +
> >> "läinen" (adjectival suffix).
>
>> > Perhaps someone with a good knowledge of Finnish could confirm or
>> > correct this?
>
>> I'm certainly not such a person, but here's what Tiit-Rein Viitso in
>> the
>> Routledge book on Uralic has to say on the matter:
>
>> first syllable. Quadrisyllabic and longer words have secondary stress
>> on
>> odd non-final syllables, i.e. there is a tendency towards trochaic
>> stress patterning [OK, we all knew that]. [This] is counteracted by
>> certain derivational suffixes that attract secondary stress , e.g.
>> quinquesyllabic and longer words with a short third and a long fourth
>> syllable have their secondary stress on the fourth syllable, e.g.
>> 'todel'lisenl, real (sing Genitive), todelli'sessa, real (sing
>> Inessive).
>> In some Finnish dialects [there are further complications]."
>
> So, consider yourself confirmed.
> [...] But yes, that's how it works. I can think of
> only two words which have normally non.initial stress, and one of them
> is a recent loanword from English: "jumalauta" and "okei". Both can
> have initial stress too.
I don't think those were what Viitso was thinking of. Restoring the
contents of that first square bracket...
"In all Fennic dialects a few words (mostly conjunctions) are usually
unstressed, a few are often unstressed, and most words have the primary
stress on the first syllable."
John.
Athel Cornish-Bowden
[ ... ]
Thanks for this detailed explanation. Very helpful.
Incidentally, to my ears Brazilian Portuguese is noticeably less
baffling than Portuguese Portuguese, and I've heard similar opinions
from many Latin American Spanish speakers. On one occasion in Lisbon my
wife was talking (in Spanish) to some Brazilians who said that they had
great difficulty understanding what people in Lisbon said to them. Is
it simply that unstressed vowels are more reduced in Portugal than they
are in Brazil?
--
athel
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>> and in -ão one could also count the ~ as a stress mark, as
>> is the case in manhã etc.
>
>NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
<snip> <snip> <snip> <snip> !!!! (;-)
>NO, NO, NO, NO, the tilde is NOT a stress mark.
>
>My earliest recollection of you is precisely you trying to prove that
>the tilde works as a stress mark, at least in some words. (Namely, in
>those words in which it coincides with stress.)
Exactly. In other words (with the same effect):
~ is always a stressmark, except in three VERY RARE (and very clear
and recognizable) situations:
1) When a 'stronger' stress mark ' or ^ overrides it. Example: sótão,
bênção.
2) For morphological reasons, when suffixes are added. Examples:
mãozinho, manhãzinha.
3) Composite words, indicated with a hyphen: mão-de-obra, mão-cheia,
mão-posta etc.
--
Ruud Harmsen
http://rudhar.com
Ruud Harmsen
<athe...@yahoo.co.uk>: in sci.lang:
>Incidentally, to my ears Brazilian Portuguese is noticeably less
>baffling than Portuguese Portuguese, and I've heard similar opinions
>from many Latin American Spanish speakers.
When I wasn't very good at understanding Portuguese (although I could
already read it failry easily), I thought pt-BR was easier to
understand because it has all the vowels in place. (Although, on
closer examination, some are elided there too sometimes!).
But now that I am quite used to pt-PT as a result to exposure (mostly
listening to the radio a lot), I understand almost all pt-PT but have
great difficulty understanding pt-BR.
>On one occasion in Lisbon my
>wife was talking (in Spanish) to some Brazilians who said that they had
>great difficulty understanding what people in Lisbon said to them. Is
>it simply that unstressed vowels are more reduced in Portugal than they
>are in Brazil?
Probably. But it's all a matter of getting used to it. I hear quite a
few bilingual interview on Portuguese classical music radio (Antena
2), Spanish-Portuguese, sometimes even Italian-Portuguese, and they
really seem to have very little difficulty understanding each other,
even when the Portuguese speak up-tempo. But these are often
musicians, singers, etc. who hve worked in Portugal for some time, so
they know what to expect. That makes a lot of difference.
Cf. the situation for me when trying to understand Frisian. It's a
closely related language, but also very different from Dutch, English
and German which I already know. It was very difficult at first, but
gets a lot easier over time.
António Marques
>>> and in -ão one could also count the ~ as a stress mark, as
>>> is the case in manhã etc.
>> NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
>
> <snip> <snip> <snip> <snip> !!!! (;-)
>
>> NO, NO, NO, NO, the tilde is NOT a stress mark.
>>
>> My earliest recollection of you is precisely you trying to prove that
>> the tilde works as a stress mark, at least in some words. (Namely, in
>> those words in which it coincides with stress.)
>
> Exactly. In other words (with the same effect):
> ~ is always a stressmark, except in three VERY RARE (and very clear
> and recognizable) situations:
NO.
These are neither very rare, nor do they have anything consistent about
them that makes them clear and recognisable.
> 1) When a 'stronger' stress mark ' or ^ overrides it. Example: sótão,
> bênção.
There is no concept of relative strength of stress marks in portuguese.
The available diacritics either mark stress or they don't. This is a
fundamental principle of the orthography. Breaking it is simply not an
option. For instance, they tried to break it by having adverbs formed
from -e^s words keep the ^ (*corte^smente). It didn't work.
> 2) For morphological reasons, when suffixes are added. Examples:
> mãozinho, manhãzinha.
Just what it is that happens for morphological reasons? (I know what it
is; I'm pointing out that this item is not homomorph with the preceding
one.)
There is no concept of having to look at morpheme composition to know
where primary stress lies in a word. This is another one of the
fundamental principles of the orthography. Breaking it is simply not an
option.
OF COURSE one can build all kinds of rules to end up with the same
result. The problem here is that a good orthographic system follows
structuring principles, which in turn ideally take advantage of the
language's phonology, phonotaxis and yes, morphology - and, at least for
portuguese, in that order. It's not just a random house of cards to
which you add at will as long as the output is the same. To gleefully
violate two important principles as these ones* perhaps suggests that
your understanding of the orthography is not the same one found in the
normal portuguese speaker. And the reason I dwell so much on this is
that I wish you understood it so that you wouldn't mislead other people.
It also suggests that one of the principles of your understanding of the
orthography is that anything you put over a vowel is a stress mark
unless otherwise exceptioned. But this idea, which may be a generalist
assumption no matter what the language, is quite alien to the portuguese
mindset. Yet you seem to have chosen it as a founding block and then
introduce whatever wuirks are needed so that you can keep it. Drop it.
It gains you nothing. It's a deterrent.
I suppose you are aware that the tilde is not even called an 'acento'.
You might as well say that -m is a stress mark (cf. bombom) except when
it follows a or e.
> 3) Composite words, indicated with a hyphen: mão-de-obra, mão-cheia,
> mão-posta etc.
Each element in an hyphenated complex obeys the same rules as if it were
not part of any complex. This is another one of the fundamental
principles of the orthography. (In this case, the implication is just
that your rule is superfluous.)
Adam Funk
>> I'm certainly not such a person, but here's what Tiit-Rein Viitso in the
>> Routledge book on Uralic has to say on the matter:
>>
>> "In all Fennic dialects [...] most words have primary stress on the
>> first syllable. Quadrisyllabic and longer words have secondary stress on
>> odd non-final syllables, i.e. there is a tendency towards trochaic
>> stress patterning [OK, we all knew that]. [This] is counteracted by
>> certain derivational suffixes that attract secondary stress , e.g.
>> Finnish 'pakenem`ninen, escaping. In addition, in Finnish [...],
>> quinquesyllabic and longer words with a short third and a long fourth
>> syllable have their secondary stress on the fourth syllable, e.g.
>> 'todel'lisenl, real (sing Genitive), todelli'sessa, real (sing
>> Inessive).
>> In some Finnish dialects [there are further complications]."
>>
>> So, consider yourself confirmed.
It's a bit more complicated than I said, but that's not too
surprising.
> Pakeneminen, actually. But yes, that's how it works. I can think of
> only two words which have normally non.initial stress, and one of them
> is a recent loanword from English: "jumalauta" and "okei". Both can
> have initial stress too.
Interesting, thanks.
--
Classical Greek lent itself to the promulgation of a rich culture,
indeed, to Western civilization. Computer languages bring us
doorbells that chime with thirty-two tunes, alt.sex.bestiality, and
Tetris clones. (Stoll 1995)
Ekkehard Dengler
> - Some frequent words which wouldn't normally need a stress mark bear
> one in order to be distinguished from other frequent words: pa´ra
> 'stops' / para 'to', da´ 'gives' / da 'of the', e´ 'is' / e 'and', and
> countless others, especially monosyllables. NB a distinction is only
> made if the vowels are really different.
You've explained it well, but allow me to vent this pet peeve of mine: I
think it's really unfortunate that an accent is used to distinguish "pêra"
("pear") from the obsolete preposition "pera" (which I know only from
dictionaries), while "fora" ("had gone/been") and "fora" ("outside",
"except") are indistinguishable in writing even though they do occur in
similar contexts and are not homophones.
Regards,
Ekkehard