Hi Pano
George Anastassopoulos
Pano Kougiouri,
Epikoinonise mazi mou mesw tou electronic mail.
Xairetismata apo th Biku.
Geia sou
Giorgos kai Biku
Anastassopoulou.
Constantinos A. Caroutas
Why is Viki spelled with ypsilo at the end? Shouldn't it be eta?
All feminine names/nouns ending in the sound e write it with eta
is the rule I remember. Besides, I understand that the Greek
short Viki comes from Vasiliki. If the ending of Vasiliki is eta,
that of Viki should be eta too.
Anyway, I think we should abolish eta, ypsilo, omega, ksi, psi,
and two-lettered vowels and consonants, and invent one character
to represent ou and another to represent gg. Additionally, we
need a symbol to mark the dipthongs that are pronounced like a
single vowel.
By the way, I thought that U (with lower case the present lower
case ypsilo) should represent ou and an F (looks like two gamma;
lower case should be a crossed lowercase gamma) should represent
gg (F used to be a Greek letter representing a sound between beta
and phi). Regarding the dipthongs pronounced like a single vowel,
I think that the yota should be dropped and a dash should be placed
in the letter before. For example, milia= mi~la.
These changes would result in a unique way to write Greek --just
like there was a unique way when the alphabet was adopted about
27 centuries ago. These changes are long overdue.
Constantinos A. Caroutas
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
You now have a vermilion potion (j)
M. S. Vassiliou
Speaking as one who was raised in the U. S. and cannot spell Greek
to save his life, I applaud some of Constantine's suggestions.
I wonder, however, if we should not go a bit further. (I *know* I
am going to get a lot of crap for this suggestion, and I
probably deserve it. I have mixed feelings about it myself). Should we
consider dropping our venerable and prestigious old alphabet and
simply adopting the Roman one? It should be possible to spell Greek
in a standard way using this alphabet. This would certainly make
Greek text lose some of its color and uniqueness, but might also
serve to make Greek easier to deal with in the information age. It would
be nice to be able to encode Greek as Standard ASCII. Of course I
realize that using, say, the 8-bit Latin-Greek Alphabet defined in
ISO 8859 permits easy encoding of Greek, but how many machines support
all 9 eight-bit sets of ISO 8859? Will they ever? On the other hand,
as memory and processing power expand, it may be that my concern
will become moot. It may be that
all alphabets will be easily encodeable by using a wide-field code
(e.g. the sixteen-bit Unicode described in last month's _Byte_) that
may someday be suppored by all machines. So maybe we would end up
going Roman for nothing. (Still, think of the advantages: We could use
the same scanner software for OCR...)
Oh well... Fire away!
Dimitris Doukas
>
>Speaking as one who was raised in the U. S. and cannot spell Greek
>to save his life, I applaud some of Constantine's suggestions.
>
>I wonder, however, if we should not go a bit further. (I *know* I
>am going to get a lot of crap for this suggestion, and I
>probably deserve it. I have mixed feelings about it myself). Should we
Sure you do.
>consider dropping our venerable and prestigious old alphabet and
>simply adopting the Roman one? It should be possible to spell Greek
Anything else? or is that all.
>in a standard way using this alphabet. This would certainly make
>Greek text lose some of its color and uniqueness, but might also
>serve to make Greek easier to deal with in the information age. It would
>be nice to be able to encode Greek as Standard ASCII. Of course I
>realize that using, say, the 8-bit Latin-Greek Alphabet defined in
>ISO 8859 permits easy encoding of Greek, but how many machines support
>all 9 eight-bit sets of ISO 8859? Will they ever? On the other hand,
>as memory and processing power expand, it may be that my concern
>will become moot. It may be that
>all alphabets will be easily encodeable by using a wide-field code
>(e.g. the sixteen-bit Unicode described in last month's _Byte_) that
>may someday be suppored by all machines. So maybe we would end up
>going Roman for nothing. (Still, think of the advantages: We could use
>the same scanner software for OCR...)
>
Nice joke. We should laugh?
>Oh well... Fire away!
Could yoy please make us the favor to think before write. Thank you.
--Dimitris
--
------
Dimitris Doukas (dou...@princeton.edu)
------
Constantinos A. Caroutas
m...@tacos.caltech.edu writes:
>>Anyway, I think we should abolish eta, ypsilo, omega, ksi, psi,
>>and two-lettered vowels and consonants, and invent one character
>>to represent ou and another to represent gg. Additionally, we
>>need a symbol to mark the dipthongs that are pronounced like a
>>single vowel.
>>
>>Constantinos A. Caroutas
>Speaking as one who was raised in the U. S. and cannot spell Greek
>to save his life, I applaud some of Constantine's suggestions.
>
>I wonder, however, if we should not go a bit further.
>I have mixed feelings about it myself). Should we
>consider dropping our venerable and prestigious old alphabet and
>simply adopting the Roman one?
>It would
>be nice to be able to encode Greek as Standard ASCII.
Well, people would, in general, accept my modifications, but I'd be
difficult to accept an entirely new alphabet. Besides, we only need
21 characters while today's Latin has 26. Let's not be like the French
who don't need W but they have it so they can spell foreign words
with it.
A parenthesis here. The Latin alphabet actually only has 23 letters.
It does not have the symbols J, U, and W. Considering that the names
of those symbols seem English, the so-called Latin 26-symbol set
should probably be called English. By the way, V served both as V and
U in old English and it was called U; I served both as I and J; and
W was, off course, VV (double-u).
Of the many countries that use the Latin (English) alphabet, I don't
think there are any that use it unaltered like in English. In Spanish
they have the tilde, in French they have three accents plus a modifier,
and so on. So, virtually no language that uses the Latin alphabet can
be encoded as standard ASCII.
Finally, I'd like to add that computers were meant to serve us and
not the other way.
M. S. Vassiliou
>In article <1991May6.0...@nntp-server.caltech.edu> m...@tacos.caltech.edu writes:
>>
>>Speaking as one who was raised in the U. S. and cannot spell Greek
>>to save his life, I applaud some of Constantine's suggestions.
>>
>>I wonder, however, if we should not go a bit further. (I *know* I
>>am going to get a lot of crap for this suggestion, and I
>>probably deserve it. I have mixed feelings about it myself). Should we
>
>Sure you do.
Well, I do!!
>
>>consider dropping our venerable and prestigious old alphabet and
>>simply adopting the Roman one? It should be possible to spell Greek
>
>Anything else? or is that all.
>
Why the sarcasm?
>>in a standard way using this alphabet. This would certainly make
>>Greek text lose some of its color and uniqueness, but might also
>>serve to make Greek easier to deal with in the information age. It would
>>be nice to be able to encode Greek as Standard ASCII. Of course I
>>realize that using, say, the 8-bit Latin-Greek Alphabet defined in
>>ISO 8859 permits easy encoding of Greek, but how many machines support
>>all 9 eight-bit sets of ISO 8859? Will they ever? On the other hand,
>>as memory and processing power expand, it may be that my concern
>>will become moot. It may be that
>>all alphabets will be easily encodeable by using a wide-field code
>>(e.g. the sixteen-bit Unicode described in last month's _Byte_) that
>>may someday be suppored by all machines. So maybe we would end up
>>going Roman for nothing. (Still, think of the advantages: We could use
>>the same scanner software for OCR...)
>>
>
>Nice joke. We should laugh?
>
>>Oh well... Fire away!
>
>Could yoy please make us the favor to think before write. Thank you.
Look, I don't see the necessity for you to say this. If you don't like the
suggestion, just say so, and give your reasons. I can think of a few
good reasons myself-- I told you I had mixed feelings, even though you
do not appear to believe it. I was just trying to continue what
I thought was a good discussion started by Constantinos, on rationalizing
Greek spelling. Now there is nothing special about the Roman alphabet,
but the world's major western languages (English, Spanish, French, German)
all use it. Doesn't that mean anything to you? Perhaps a *standard*
phonetic spelling of Greek in the roman alphabet is all that is necessary
for information interchange, without Greeks giving up their beautiful and
prestigious alphabet.
M. S. Vassiliou
>m...@tacos.caltech.edu writes:
>
>>>Anyway, I think we should abolish eta, ypsilo, omega, ksi, psi,
>>>and two-lettered vowels and consonants, and invent one character
>>>to represent ou and another to represent gg. Additionally, we
>>>need a symbol to mark the dipthongs that are pronounced like a
>>>single vowel.
>>>
>>>Constantinos A. Caroutas
>
>>Speaking as one who was raised in the U. S. and cannot spell Greek
>>to save his life, I applaud some of Constantine's suggestions.
>>
>>I wonder, however, if we should not go a bit further.
>>I have mixed feelings about it myself). Should we
>>consider dropping our venerable and prestigious old alphabet and
>>simply adopting the Roman one?
>>It would
>>be nice to be able to encode Greek as Standard ASCII.
>
>Well, people would, in general, accept my modifications, but I'd be
>difficult to accept an entirely new alphabet.
Of course.
Besides, we only need
>21 characters while today's Latin has 26. Let's not be like the French
>who don't need W but they have it so they can spell foreign words
>with it.
>
>A parenthesis here. The Latin alphabet actually only has 23 letters.
>It does not have the symbols J, U, and W. Considering that the names
>of those symbols seem English, the so-called Latin 26-symbol set
>should probably be called English. By the way, V served both as V and
>U in old English and it was called U; I served both as I and J; and
>W was, off course, VV (double-u).
>
>Of the many countries that use the Latin (English) alphabet, I don't
>think there are any that use it unaltered like in English. In Spanish
>they have the tilde, in French they have three accents plus a modifier,
>and so on. So, virtually no language that uses the Latin alphabet can
>be encoded as standard ASCII.
Well.. ISO 646 is virtually the same as ASCII, with certain spots
reserved for "national use."-- e.g. for the "n-tilde"
in Spanish. Using the variations in ISO 646
you can come pretty close to encoding languages like French and
Spanish. But I am not a fan of 7-bit codes. It would be convenient,
however, to be able to encode Greek easily using one of the ISO
8-bit Latin Alphabets in ISO 8859, hopefully ISO 8859/1, which is
getting increasingly wide support (Greek does have its own
alphabet in another section of ISO 8859).
>
>Finally, I'd like to add that computers were meant to serve us and
>not the other way.
>
Of course you are right. And that is also why I made the point that
with future wide-field codes the encoding may become a non-issue.
But that still does not address your original issue, which was spelling
rationalization. I agree with you absolutely. The Greek language has
evolved and is no longer served well by its spelling system. It once
was! Seemingly redundant letters like upsilon once had their own
unique sound (evidence indicates that upsilon was probably pronounced
as something close to a u-umlaut).
Naturally, the need for spelling rationalization is by no means limited
to Greek! English could sure use it! George Bernard Shaw once remarked that
you can spell "fish" as "ghoti"-- The "gh" as in "tough", the "o" as in
"women", and the "ti" as in "nation!"
One problem with spelling rationalization is that as a language evolves
and pronunciations change, you may end up having to do it again!
But the speed of language evolution and dialect differentiation may not be
as great as it once was, owing to the steadying and homogenizing
influences of radio, TV, etc.
Mau Napoleon
> Well.. ISO 646 is virtually the same as ASCII, with certain spots
> reserved for "national use."-- e.g. for the "n-tilde"
> in Spanish. Using the variations in ISO 646
> you can come pretty close to encoding languages like French and
> Spanish. But I am not a fan of 7-bit codes. It would be convenient,
> however, to be able to encode Greek easily using one of the ISO
> 8-bit Latin Alphabets in ISO 8859, hopefully ISO 8859/1, which is
> getting increasingly wide support (Greek does have its own
> alphabet in another section of ISO 8859).
>
8 bit or longer character systems will be used eventually since there are
many languages that use alphabets different than the Latin, Greek, Arabic
Russian etc.
Computers in Greece support both Latin and Roman character sets for a long
time.
We should not forget that until 1980 there was not such a big need for 8 bit
character sets since there were very few computers used by a small number of
people.
The creation of the microcomputer created the need for extended character sets.
DOS with the use of code pages allows the coexistence of many character sets.
All GUI systems allows the simultaneous us of many fonts.
I do not see the need for all languages to adapt the same alphabet.
I use Greek and English on my Mac all the time. I even have a Greek mac system
which displays all the menus in Greek using Greek words.
> But that still does not address your original issue, which was spelling
> rationalization. I agree with you absolutely. The Greek language has
> evolved and is no longer served well by its spelling system. It once
> was! Seemingly redundant letters like upsilon once had their own
> unique sound (evidence indicates that upsilon was probably pronounced
> as something close to a u-umlaut).
Been a person who makes hundreds of spelling errors in all alnguages I know
I can say that all you need is a good spelling checker.
Why change the language when there is no need for it. I know many people
who have no problems with spelling.
Napoleon
Constantinos A. Caroutas
(Mau Napoleon) writes:
>Been a person who makes hundreds of spelling errors in all alnguages I know
>I can say that all you need is a good spelling checker.
>Why change the language when there is no need for it. I know many people
>who have no problems with spelling.
I did not say that we should change the language. I said that it'd
be a good idea to drop unnecessary letters like eta, ypsilo, omega,
ksi, and psi, and invent symbols for ou and gg, and also something
to mark dipthongs that are pronounced like a single vowel. Also, I
think a hyphen between an unaccented single syllable word and the
previous one is necessary --"diko-mou" rather than "diko mou".
It is ridiculous to have to buy a sophisticated speller program to
support the illogical spelling we have right now. And, fine, a
program like that could help me (by the way, I seldom have problems
with spelling), but how could it help my father? He only went to
school five years.
Every year, kids ask why we have six ways to write "e". Every year
the teachers sell them a fictitious story. The true story? We want
our spelling to match that of the ancient Greeks (of a certain era
and area). Who cares that they pronounced things differently? Ancient
Greek was a prosodiac language while modern Greek is not.
Constantinos A. Caroutas
za...@athena.mit.edu (Antonios J Zavaliangos) writes:
>Get serious guys... Those of you in favor of the simplification of the
>spelling
>of Greek language, tell me the difference between:
>a) ynlos and yilos (tall - thin)
>b) isws and isos (maybe - equal)
>c) fullo and fulo (leaf - sex)
You tell us the difference between "oros" (term --of an agreement)
and "oros" (tall mountain). How about "syntagi" (prescription) and
"syntagi" (recipe)? "Keri" (candle) and "keri" (wax)?
In spoken Greek, the differences are obvious from the context. The
same is possible in written Greek.
By the way, some of us pronounce "ll" differently (stronger) than "l",
and thus "fyllo" and "fylo" are different.
>IMHO, opinions like your are stemming from incomplete knowledge of Greek
>(which is justified only when Greek is second language for somebody,
>after all I often screw spelling and syntax in English and French -) ).
No, my knowledge of Greek is good. A bit rusty because I've been in
the States for about nine years, but my ideas about changing the
spelling go back to when I was in high school in Cyprus. By the way,
I had a friend in high school that could spell better in English than
in Greek simply because Greek is forgiving.
Antonios J Zavaliangos
of Greek language, tell me the difference between:
a) ynlos and yilos (tall - thin)
b) isws and isos (maybe - equal)
, ,
c) fullo and fulo (leaf - sex)
and on and on it goes.
IMHO, opinions like your are stemming from incomplete knowledge of Greek
(which is justified only when Greek is second language for somebody,
after all I often screw spelling and syntax in English and French -) ).
I would suggest to be like the French and love our language by
trying to learn it better.
Antonis Zavaliangos
Constantinos A. Caroutas
dou...@hart.Princeton.EDU (Dimitris Doukas) writes:
>In article <14...@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
>cc43...@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Constantinos A. Caroutas) writes:
>>In spoken Greek, the differences are obvious from the context. The
>>same is possible in written Greek.
>There is a very big difference between a spoken and a written language.
>It is the same difference between expressing an idea informally and
>write it down as a definition or theorem. I believe that a written language
>should try to avoid ambiguities as much as possible. Given the number
What kind of ambiguity do all those different "i"'s in Mytilini
prevent? By the way, what's the correct spelling? I don't know
that one.
>of cases, genders and the number of "is" "os" and "es" then the use
>of one "i, o and e" will create a large amount of collapsing of different
>words into one. When i read something i do not want to read three sentences
>or more in order to understand the meaning of one word. This is very
>important to my opinion.
I'm not convinced that single "i", "o", and "e" will cause any
problems. After all, we have only one "a" and "ou" and those
don't cause any problems. I think one should try my method of
spelling for a while, test it, and then discuss its problems.
The above is just conjecture. I have tried the spelling and it
works very well.
>Coming back to your examples. First "oros" (term of an agreement) and
>oros (mountain) are of different gender so no ambiguity here. The next
>two words "syntagi" and "keri" have something in common. Syntagi (prescription)
>and syntagi (recipe) denote the same thing but they are applied to
>more than one cases. SImilarly keri (candle) and keri (wax) have something
>in common: the same substance. So the ambiguity here is
>not the same as between "isws" and "isos", or "fyllo" and "fulo"
>("Pes moy to f[yi]lo soy na soy pw ti eisai").
The ambiguity is the same. As much, or as little. "Isws" is an
adverb while "isos" is an adjective --no ambiguity here. Regarding
"fyllo" and "fylo", I don't think anyone would confuse the one
for the other. By the way, "fyllo", besides leaf, also means
(playing) card. Right? Any confusion there?
>>By the way, some of us pronounce "ll" differently (stronger) than "l",
>>and thus "fyllo" and "fylo" are different.
>You cannot use pronunciation in a written language to resolve ambiguity.
Yes you can. Different pronounciation = different spelling.
>By the way i think the large majority of Greeks pronounce "ll" and "l" the same.
Yes, I know that. But it was not like that always. It is a linguistic
change that is taking place right now. So, the question is: Since we
stopped using double consonants, why are we still writing them? Why
write "Ellada" when we say "Elada"? This may not sound too important,
but if we stop acknowledging our linguistic changes in our spelling,
then soon Greek will end up like English. Do we want that?
>>No, my knowledge of Greek is good. A bit rusty because I've been in
>>the States for about nine years, but my ideas about changing the
>>spelling go back to when I was in high school in Cyprus. By the way,
>>I had a friend in high school that could spell better in English than
>>in Greek simply because Greek is forgiving.
>I understand that. When you are at high or elementary school you certainly
>want to avoid the burden of learning how to write correctly because you find it
Actually, I had learned to spell Greek correctly by the end of the
fourth grade. At that time I believed in the lie that there were
all these rules to make the words look pretty. That pretty looking
words contributed to the greatness of our language and nation. At
the eleventh grade I started questioning the bull, however.
>useless (as far as you think that you understand the meaning). Of course we are
>not in high school any more so we can view things from a different perspective now.
I'd like to see spelling from the perspective of the ancient Greeks:
The way they said it determined the way they wrote it.
Constantinos A. Caroutas
za...@athena.mit.edu (Antonios J Zavaliangos) writes:
>But do not get me wrong Constantine, these were just examples. I
>was trying to indicate that "violent" "unnatural" modifications of our
>language can cause a huge amount of confusion. Language evolves, no
>doubt about that, but let it go its own way.
My suggested changes are no more violent than dropping the aspirations
and replacing the three accents by one. And, that was not all that was
done in 1978 (or was it 1979?); "katarevousa" was replaced by "dimotiki".
Nobody got confused.
If we kept our spelling up with our changing language, sudden changes
would not be needed. Spelling should be reevaluated every 50 years.
Tell me why we write "Ellada" when we say "Elada". Until recently, we
spelled "`Ellada". It wasn't too difficult to drop the "daseia". Was it?
>Read the following. It is amusing and has a high educational value:
Yes, I know of Twain's passage on how to fix the spelling of the
English language. Not only the spelling of the English language
is very messed up, but also it is a prosodiac language making its
mapping quite challenging. Then, which version do you map? Standard
American English? Standard English English? Anyway, I believe that
the spelling of English can be fixed if there is resolve. And it'd
be best if done in one step.
You didn't think that my ideas were only about Greek? Did you?
Dimitris Doukas
>za...@athena.mit.edu (Antonios J Zavaliangos) writes:
>
>>Get serious guys... Those of you in favor of the simplification of the
>>spelling
>>of Greek language, tell me the difference between:
>>a) ynlos and yilos (tall - thin)
>>b) isws and isos (maybe - equal)
>>c) fullo and fulo (leaf - sex)
>
>You tell us the difference between "oros" (term --of an agreement)
>and "oros" (tall mountain). How about "syntagi" (prescription) and
>"syntagi" (recipe)? "Keri" (candle) and "keri" (wax)?
>
>In spoken Greek, the differences are obvious from the context. The
>same is possible in written Greek.
>
There is a very big difference between a spoken and a written language.
It is the same difference between expressing an idea informally and
write it down as a definition or theorem. I believe that a written language
should try to avoid ambiguities as much as possible. Given the number
of cases, genders and the number of "is" "os" and "es" then the use
of one "i, o and e" will create a large amount of collapsing of different
words into one. When i read something i do not want to read three sentences
or more in order to understand the meaning of one word. This is very
important to my opinion.
Coming back to your examples. First "oros" (term of an agreement) and
oros (mountain) are of different gender so no ambiguity here. The next
two words "syntagi" and "keri" have something in common. Syntagi (prescription)
and syntagi (recipe) denote the same thing but they are applied to
more than one cases. SImilarly keri (candle) and keri (wax) have something
in common: the same substance. So the ambiguity here is
not the same as between "isws" and "isos", or "fyllo" and "fulo"
("Pes moy to f[yi]lo soy na soy pw ti eisai").
>By the way, some of us pronounce "ll" differently (stronger) than "l",
>and thus "fyllo" and "fylo" are different.
>
You cannot use pronunciation in a written language to resolve ambiguity.
By the way i think the large majority of Greeks pronounce "ll" and "l" the same.
>>IMHO, opinions like your are stemming from incomplete knowledge of Greek
>>(which is justified only when Greek is second language for somebody,
>>after all I often screw spelling and syntax in English and French -) ).
>
>No, my knowledge of Greek is good. A bit rusty because I've been in
>the States for about nine years, but my ideas about changing the
>spelling go back to when I was in high school in Cyprus. By the way,
>I had a friend in high school that could spell better in English than
>in Greek simply because Greek is forgiving.
>
I understand that. When you are at high or elementary school you certainly
want to avoid the burden of learning how to write correctly because you find it
useless (as far as you think that you understand the meaning). Of course we are
not in high school any more so we can view things from a different perspective now.
>Constantinos A. Caroutas
>_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
>You now have a vermilion potion (j)
--Dimitris
Antonios J Zavaliangos
>In article <1991May8.0...@athena.mit.edu>,
>za...@athena.mit.edu (Antonios J Zavaliangos) writes:
>
>>of Greek language, tell me the difference between:
>>a) ynlos and yilos (tall - thin)
>>b) isws and isos (maybe - equal)
>>c) fullo and fulo (leaf - sex)
>
>You tell us the difference between "oros" (term --of an agreement)
>and "oros" (tall mountain). How about "syntagi" (prescription) and
>"syntagi" (recipe)? "Keri" (candle) and "keri" (wax)?
>
Well it is " o oros (masculine) kai to oros (neutral) ", while
prescription and recipe have the same idea in them (how to prepare something
remember that drugs used to be prepared i.e. ground and mixed at the pharmacy)
The same goes for candle and wax (The material properties are the same...)
But do not get me wrong Constantine, these were just examples. I
was trying to indicate that "violent" "unnatural" modifications of our
language can cause a huge amount of confusion. Language evolves, no
doubt about that, but let it go its own way.
Read the following. It is amusing and has a high educational value:
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Chears,
Antonis Zavaliangos
Dimitris Doukas
>In article <1991May8.1...@newross.Princeton.EDU>,
>dou...@hart.Princeton.EDU (Dimitris Doukas) writes:
>
>>In article <14...@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
>>cc43...@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Constantinos A. Caroutas) writes:
>
>>>In spoken Greek, the differences are obvious from the context. The
>>>same is possible in written Greek.
>
>>There is a very big difference between a spoken and a written language.
>>It is the same difference between expressing an idea informally and
>>write it down as a definition or theorem. I believe that a written language
>>should try to avoid ambiguities as much as possible. Given the number
>
>What kind of ambiguity do all those different "i"'s in Mytilini
>prevent? By the way, what's the correct spelling? I don't know
>that one.
>
Let's clear some confusion here. A natural language is by definition
ambiguous in the sense that there are words (or phrases) with more than one
meaning. Furthermore, there are words which are pronounced the same but they
have different spelling. The former kind of ambiguity applies to
both written and spoken languages the latter applies only to spoken.
The former kind usually refers to words with some common theme the
latter usually refers to words with nothing in common.
You can use grammar, syntactic rules and context to resolve them.
Spelling, for example, follows certain grammar rules.
Don't forget that in a spoken language you can use the pitching and quality of
sound to determine the meaning of a certain word or phrase, you can use even
use movement (showing something).
As I said before spelling helps to resolve ambiguities in a written form,
ambiguities which are resolved in a spoken form by means you cannot use in
writing (or else you may need to write more words).
Nobody said that the reverse is true, that is spelling always resolves ambiguities.
In that sense you can come with plenty of examples where spelling doesn't
help. For example in the case of (I think) Mytilhnh the use of different
"i"'s does not prevent any ambiguity because there is none. There is only
one Mytilhnh (we even used a capital "M"). So there is a redundancy here.
You propose to replace the three "i"'s with one. You clearly do not create
any ambiguity here but there may be hidden ambiguities. Because after you do
that you should go back to the etymology of the word and "fix" accordingly all
the ancestors and predecessors of this word. In doing that ambiguities can
be created. Conclusion: a small change you may think is useful may eventually
"destroy" all the structure of the language. As you collapse you will lose
information about the language itself.
>>of cases, genders and the number of "is" "os" and "es" then the use
>>of one "i, o and e" will create a large amount of collapsing of different
>>words into one. When i read something i do not want to read three sentences
>>or more in order to understand the meaning of one word. This is very
>>important to my opinion.
>
>I'm not convinced that single "i", "o", and "e" will cause any
>problems. After all, we have only one "a" and "ou" and those
>don't cause any problems. I think one should try my method of
>spelling for a while, test it, and then discuss its problems.
>The above is just conjecture. I have tried the spelling and it
>works very well.
>
It seems that you don't get the point. Of course "a" and "ou" do not
cause any problems because there are no words written with "a" and "ou"
and consonants whose the intersection of their interpretation sets is
the empty set. That can be, however, the case for words made by "i", "o"
or "e" (this is not a conjecture, the first part can be proved by exhaustive
search (finite) and the second by example).
I agree that it would be interesting to try it because that way we may come
up with certain rules which both simplify the spelling and do not add ambiguity
in the language. However literature and not science would be the best domain
for such a test.
>>Coming back to your examples. First "oros" (term of an agreement) and
>>oros (mountain) are of different gender so no ambiguity here. The next
>>two words "syntagi" and "keri" have something in common. Syntagi (prescription)
>>and syntagi (recipe) denote the same thing but they are applied to
>>more than one cases. SImilarly keri (candle) and keri (wax) have something
>>in common: the same substance. So the ambiguity here is
>>not the same as between "isws" and "isos", or "fyllo" and "fulo"
>>("Pes moy to f[yi]lo soy na soy pw ti eisai").
>
>The ambiguity is the same. As much, or as little. "Isws" is an
>adverb while "isos" is an adjective --no ambiguity here. Regarding
"Is[ow]s einai aytos H o allos?"
>"fyllo" and "fylo", I don't think anyone would confuse the one
>for the other. By the way, "fyllo", besides leaf, also means
>(playing) card. Right? Any confusion there?
"Poio einai to fy[l]lo soy?"
A. Male or Female
B. Ace of Spade
These are ambiguous sentences no matter how silly they sound.
>>>By the way, some of us pronounce "ll" differently (stronger) than "l",
>>>and thus "fyllo" and "fylo" are different.
>
>>You cannot use pronunciation in a written language to resolve ambiguity.
>
>Yes you can. Different pronounciation = different spelling.
>
If the spelling is different then yoy don't need to rely on pronunciation.
If the spelling is the same the it doesn't help.
>>By the way i think the large majority of Greeks pronounce "ll" and "l" the same.
>
>Yes, I know that. But it was not like that always. It is a linguistic
>change that is taking place right now. So, the question is: Since we
By the way what do you mean by right now?
>Constantinos A. Caroutas
>_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
>You now have a vermilion potion (j)
Cheers,
Dimitris Doukas
>za...@athena.mit.edu (Antonios J Zavaliangos) writes:
>
>>But do not get me wrong Constantine, these were just examples. I
>>was trying to indicate that "violent" "unnatural" modifications of our
>>language can cause a huge amount of confusion. Language evolves, no
>>doubt about that, but let it go its own way.
>
>My suggested changes are no more violent than dropping the aspirations
>and replacing the three accents by one. And, that was not all that was
>done in 1978 (or was it 1979?); "katarevousa" was replaced by "dimotiki".
>Nobody got confused.
>
They are because replacing the three accents by one (monotonik'o) did not
introduced any ambiguity since the different accents did not used to differentiate
the meaning of words. However getting rid of all accents (atonik'o) as some
people suggested at that time would be a step closer to your suggestions.
>You didn't think that my ideas were only about Greek? Did you?
>
>Constantinos A. Caroutas
>_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
>You now have a vermilion potion (j)
--Dimitris
V. Digalakis
>In article <1991May8.0...@athena.mit.edu>,
>za...@athena.mit.edu (Antonios J Zavaliangos) writes:
>>Get serious guys... Those of you in favor of the simplification of the
>>spelling
>>of Greek language, tell me the difference between:
>>a) ynlos and yilos (tall - thin)
>>b) isws and isos (maybe - equal)
>>c) fullo and fulo (leaf - sex)
>You tell us the difference between "oros" (term --of an agreement)
>and "oros" (tall mountain). How about "syntagi" (prescription) and
>"syntagi" (recipe)? "Keri" (candle) and "keri" (wax)?
>In spoken Greek, the differences are obvious from the context. The
>same is possible in written Greek.
>By the way, some of us pronounce "ll" differently (stronger) than "l",
>and thus "fyllo" and "fylo" are different.
>>IMHO, opinions like your are stemming from incomplete knowledge of Greek
>>(which is justified only when Greek is second language for somebody,
>>after all I often screw spelling and syntax in English and French -) ).
>No, my knowledge of Greek is good. A bit rusty because I've been in
>the States for about nine years, but my ideas about changing the
>spelling go back to when I was in high school in Cyprus.
>......
Well, I am afraid Antonis was right.
The specific example may not be very important, but "oros" (mountain)
was a word in "kathareuousa" written with "psiln" - it has been
replaced in "dimotikn" with "bouno". The other "oros" (term) was
written with "daseia". And please, dont follow-up with
thousands of counter-examples.
The Greek language was rich - unfortunately it became (and this
still happens) much poorer over the years. Of course, the
decision to replace "kathareuousa" was the right one, since it was
a dead language. But to hear such things about the spelling ...
It wouldn't be worth replying but I've just had the nightmare
that this might be for real one day.
Vassilis
Constantinos A. Caroutas
dou...@hart.Princeton.EDU (Dimitris Doukas) writes:
>They are because replacing the three accents by one (monotonik'o) did not
>introduced any ambiguity since the different accents did not used to differentiate
>the meaning of words. However getting rid of all accents (atonik'o) as some
Probably you forget that "pou" the adverb had a perispomeni, while "pou"
the pronoun had a vareia. Also, "pws" the adverb had a perispomeni while
"pws" the conjunction (?) had a vareia. By the way, nowadays, "pou" and
"pws" the adverbs have accents despite the fact that are single-syllable.
"Pou" and "pws" the nonadverbs do not have accents. It really makes sense
since the adverbs are stressed more.
>people suggested at that time would be a step closer to your suggestions.
No, what I suggest is not in line with atoniko. What I suggest is that
we have a method of spelling where the same sound always maps the same
way. I understand that many people feel that would cause confusion, but
try it before you criticize it. Would you trust an experiment or a
conjecture?
By the way, since accents were mentioned, I think that single-syllable
words that are not accented, like "mou" in "diko mou", should be connected
with a dash with the previous word. I think it makes more sense than
the current rule that says if there is ambiguity then "mou" without
an accent has no accent, but with has.
Bob Ingria
I did not say that we should change the language. I said that it'd
be a good idea to drop unnecessary letters like eta, ypsilo, omega,
ksi, and psi, and invent symbols for ou and gg, and also something
to mark dipthongs that are pronounced like a single vowel. Also, I
think a hyphen between an unaccented single syllable word and the
previous one is necessary --"diko-mou" rather than "diko mou".
Every year, kids ask why we have six ways to write "e". Every year
the teachers sell them a fictitious story. The true story? We want
our spelling to match that of the ancient Greeks (of a certain era
and area). Who cares that they pronounced things differently? Ancient
Greek was a prosodiac language while modern Greek is not.
As someone who learned Ancient Greek before Modern Greek, I,
personally, would be affected by regularization of the spelling. For
instance, I can often figure out the meaning of an MG compound from
its AG roots. A canonicalized spelling would make that harder.
However, (1) people like me are clearly in a minority among
readers/writers of Modern Greek; and (2) it obviously is up to Greeks
to decide how to write their language, and regularizing the spelling
is an obvious thing to do. However, I suspect it might be a bad idea
to get rid of all the various variant spellings of /i/ and /o/
entirely. I've often thought that within the root of a word, only one
letter should be used to represent /i/, say, iota. However, within
endings, it might be useful to maintain the distinction between
ei (epsilon iota) - signals a verbal ending
eta - signals a nominal, typically first declension feminine, ending
iota - signals a nominal, tyically third (?) declension neuter, ending
upsilon - any instances? words like ``varus'', heavy?
Similarly, use one of omicron and omega, say omicron, for /o/ but in
endings preserve:
omega - in verbs: signals a first person singular ending
in second declension nouns, signals the genitive
omicron - a nominal ending: neuter/masculine
That is, even though these variant spellings do not represent
different pronunciations (hell, there are puns in Hesiod that indicate
eta and epsilon-iota were pronounced similarly if not identically in
his time), they do serve a functional purpose in distinguishing
different categories, which can be useful in encountering unknown
words in text. So, it might be useful to preserve them.
Of course, one big obstacle to the regularization of Modern Greek
orthography is the sheer quantity and quality of Ancient and Byzantine
Greek works. Making Modern Greek spelling reasonable for it as a
language would make it diverge greatly from the classical spelling,
and would make it even harder for readers/speakers of Modern Greek to
learn the classical language.
-30-
Bob
Dimitris Doukas
This will be my last posting in this subject, I think that we discussed it
more than enough.
>In article <1991May9.1...@newross.Princeton.EDU>,
>dou...@hart.Princeton.EDU (Dimitris Doukas) writes:
>
>>They are because replacing the three accents by one (monotonik'o) did not
>>introduced any ambiguity since the different accents did not used to differentiate
>>the meaning of words. However getting rid of all accents (atonik'o) as some
>
>Probably you forget that "pou" the adverb had a perispomeni, while "pou"
>the pronoun had a vareia. Also, "pws" the adverb had a perispomeni while
>"pws" the conjunction (?) had a vareia. By the way, nowadays, "pou" and
>"pws" the adverbs have accents despite the fact that are single-syllable.
>"Pou" and "pws" the nonadverbs do not have accents. It really makes sense
>since the adverbs are stressed more.
>
Your problem is that you think in terms of examples rather than trying to
see the whole effect your suggestions will have in the language. You are write,
I forgot it but, as you mention, we still avoid ambiguity in the case of
'monotoniko' since we do not use an accent in both cases (i.e., for the adverb and the
pronoun). So the rule made follows my line of reasoning.
>>people suggested at that time would be a step closer to your suggestions.
>
>No, what I suggest is not in line with atoniko. What I suggest is that
>we have a method of spelling where the same sound always maps the same
>way. I understand that many people feel that would cause confusion, but
>try it before you criticize it. Would you trust an experiment or a
>conjecture?
>
Both suggestions lead to the same outcome. They may collapse more than one
words (with different meaning) into one, introducing more ambiguity into
the language. As I said before this is not a conjecture because it is provable
(i.e., look a dictionary) that this collapsing will occur.
I find the amount of information loss due to collapsing significant (this is a conjecture).
I don't trust an experiment because it will always be small in size compared with
the size of the language (and the number of the possible logical sentences).
You cannot "prove" using simulation.
Things are fine the way they are; I think that there are much more important things to
worry about education in Greece now than trying experiments which we know from the
beginning that they will add more confusion in a matter already complicated enough.
>
>Constantinos A. Caroutas
>_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
>You now have a vermilion potion (j)
--Dimitris
Constantinos A. Caroutas
dou...@hart.Princeton.EDU (Dimitris Doukas) writes:
>Spelling, for example, follows certain grammar rules.
Grammar only controls the endings.
Anyway, it is true that spelling can resolve ambiguities in written
language. But so can good writing skills. The latter require thinking,
while the former only memory. But, spelling cannot resolve everything,
and so one has to resort to the writting skills. Here's an example where
spelling failed to help, and the writer demontrated their lack of
writing skills: This title appeared in the student paper several years
ago: "David the giant killer". It is in English (where ambiguity in
written language --and spoken-- is more probable than in Greek) but
it makes the point. Is it David who is a giant and who is a killer, or
is it David who kills giants? (And don't tell me I should be reading the
Bible.)
>one Mytilhnh (we even used a capital "M"). So there is a redundancy here.
>You propose to replace the three "i"'s with one. You clearly do not create
>any ambiguity here but there may be hidden ambiguities. Because after you do
>that you should go back to the etymology of the word and "fix" accordingly all
>the ancestors and predecessors of this word. In doing that ambiguities can
>be created. Conclusion: a small change you may think is useful may eventually
>"destroy" all the structure of the language. As you collapse you will lose
>information about the language itself.
Preserving the etymology is what made Greeks keep the accents and the
aspirations after Greeks stopped using them in the first centuries AD.
Was it worth it?
In about 500BC (I think), Greeks started avoiding the use of dual number.
There was an effort by some to preserve it, but it failed. Languages are
dynamic and change with time. We refuse to accept that. It is against
their very nature to preserve their old forms. This effort in English
has generated disasters like "between you and I" (rather than me) and
"applies to you and I" (rather than me).
>I agree that it would be interesting to try it because that way we may come
>up with certain rules which both simplify the spelling and do not add ambiguity
>in the language. However literature and not science would be the best domain
>for such a test.
>"Is[ow]s einai aytos H o allos?"
>"Poio einai to fy[l]lo soy?"
>A. Male or Female
>B. Ace of Spade
>These are ambiguous sentences no matter how silly they sound.
Yes, but could you oblige me with nonsilly sentences? The first I
cannot imagine being spoken, let alone written. The other's meaning
should be very obvious from the context. Besides, we don't ask
someone to tell us their sex.
>>>By the way i think the large majority of Greeks pronounce "ll" and "l" the same.
>>
>>Yes, I know that. But it was not like that always. It is a linguistic
>>change that is taking place right now. So, the question is: Since we
>
>By the way what do you mean by right now?
Well, every day that passes (or so), another Cypriot "decides" to stop
pronouncing the double consonants as such, and embrace the linguistic
change of pronouncing them as single: "gramma" -> "grama" and so on.
Get what "right now" means?
Antonios J Zavaliangos
postings on the subject but I guess I was not clear enough.
The real question is what is a language. Maybe we should ask somebody more
close to the subject such as a "philologos" but this is my simple definition.
The language in both the spoken and writen form, is not only a means
for communication/exchange of information etc.
It is a form of civilization, the expression of continuity of a nation
and the vehicle of its culture and tradition. As a form of culture and
tradition, it is a dynamically evolving entity. The element of continuity is
a key feature. Etymology and literature are two fields that would be
severely hurt by the changes proposed by Constantinos. After all beauty is not
always implied by the simplicity but most of the times by the "polymorphia".
Antonis Zavaliangos
PS1> I am tempted to use examples again. Try to expain why it is
"anthellhnikos" and not "antellhnikos" without the "daseia".
PS2> Do not quaff that potion, it is a potion of confusion :-)
Constantinos A. Caroutas
(V. Digalakis) writes:
>The specific example may not be very important, but "oros" (mountain)
>was a word in "kathareuousa" written with "psiln" - it has been
Psili = no daseia :-) Really. It represented no sound, ever.
>replaced in "dimotikn" with "bouno". The other "oros" (term) was
Oros is still used. Not as much, admittedly, as words derived
from it.
>The Greek language was rich - unfortunately it became (and this
>still happens) much poorer over the years. Of course, the
The Greek language has lost some endings, infixes, and other such
devices. This has also happened to English and I know for sure
that it has compensated by adding words. I'd imagine Greek has
added words too. (Roots, actually.)
By the way, it is believed that the Indoeuropean language had
only 12,000 words (roots) but many, many endings, and infixes,
and the likes.
I don't think Greek has gotten poorer. But, I'm open to arguments
and examples.
Constantinos A. Caroutas
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You now have a vermilion potion (k)