|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
 Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 8:18 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| lichtarbeiter wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| One thing I would like to see, though, is the entire Western world switching to a more phonetic alphabet system than the Roman alphabet. I think this would make learning one another's languages go from easy to very easy. One of the reasons it's been so easy to pick up Korean is because their alphabet system is so effective. |
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is primarily based on the Roman alphabet and is 100% phonetic, phoneme-for-phoneme. So it's not really the alphabet itself that's the problem. |
I apologize, I should have been clearer: the Roman alphabet as we currently use it. I don't care what the specific shapes of the letters are. We could even use the IPA for all I care.
| lichtarbeiter wrote: |
| I don't know much Korean, but I have noticed it isn't always consistent phoneme-for-phoneme either. I was in Seolleung Station one day when I saw that the Hangeul spelling was "선릉역". If you transliterated the characters individually, you would expect to get "Seonreung." When Hangeul was created, it probably was pronounced "Seonreung." But somewhere in time the language underwent a phonological change and [nr] sequences were fused into [l] for ease of articulation. Meanwhile, the orthography did not change to capture this discrepency. |
Hangeul has similar rules to the Spanish ones you mentioned. ㄴs followed by ㄹs for example make ㄹ noises. Not perfect, but far better than what we're stuck with in English. I believe these pronunciation features existed in the Korean language before 한글 and were simply incorporated, though it's worth noting that 한글 itself has changed to some extent since its creation, so I'm not sure. I use it purely as an example of an alphabet that does far better than our own at modelling its language. Perhaps Spanish does make use of the Roman alphabet sufficiently well to achieve a similar effect, but English certainly doesn't, and French doesn't seem to either. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 8:24 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| nautilus wrote: |
There already is such a system as you envision though- its called the phonetic alphabet.
However it would be too much trouble to start spelling everything with phonemes now....
No country could afford the transition. |
We could if we started now and phased it in slowly. Start teaching it in school, start including it on new signs alongside previous English, and move on from there. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 9:58 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Fox wrote: |
| nautilus wrote: |
There already is such a system as you envision though- its called the phonetic alphabet.
However it would be too much trouble to start spelling everything with phonemes now....
No country could afford the transition. |
We could if we started now and phased it in slowly. Start teaching it in school, start including it on new signs alongside previous English, and move on from there. |
Impracticable. It's often been suggested and always rejected because then every accent would result in a different spelling, not to mention what a confusion it would make of all the many languages using the Roman alphabet. As someone pointed out, 'wee' /= 'oui'. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
banjois
Joined: 14 Nov 2009
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 10:25 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I studied French in school for six years, then moved to Montreal, confidant that I'd at least be able to get by. Not so much. It was actually VERY confusing my first couple of nights there, sitting in my back yard listening to my neighbours talk to each other. I didn't realize until the third night that I'd moved into a Portuguese neighbourhood  But yeah, book-learning French didn't do much for me out on the street.
I finally brought my spoken French up to par a few years later, working in a kitchen in the Yukon, of all places. Everybody else was Quebecois. You pick up a practical vocabulary pretty quickly listening and repeating what people say when they burn or cut themselves. Beer helps the process too. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
crescent
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: yes.
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 10:37 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| banjois wrote: |
I studied French in school for six years, then moved to Montreal, confidant that I'd at least be able to get by. Not so much. It was actually VERY confusing my first couple of nights there, sitting in my back yard listening to my neighbours talk to each other. I didn't realize until the third night that I'd moved into a Portuguese neighbourhood But yeah, book-learning French didn't do much for me out on the street.
I finally brought my spoken French up to par a few years later, working in a kitchen in the Yukon, of all places. Everybody else was Quebecois. You pick up a practical vocabulary pretty quickly listening and repeating what people say when they burn or cut themselves. Beer helps the process too. |
French learned in school is real French. French spoken in Quebec is bastardized.
J�ai vu neiger. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 12:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Privateer wrote: |
every accent would result in a different spelling. |
The IPA can clearly indicate local differences in accent depending on how you write it.
| Quote: |
| For example, the English word little may be transcribed broadly using the IPA as [ˈlɪtəl], and this broad (imprecise) transcription is an accurate (approximately correct) description of many pronunciations. A more narrow transcription may focus on individual or dialectical details: [ˈlɪɾɫ] in General American, [ˈlɪʔo] in Cockney, or [ˈlɪːɫ] in Southern US English. |
I hope the IPA grows in usage and popularity. As an EFL teacher it should probably be one of the first things you learn because certain countries are already using it widely to study other languages (although obviously its not big in Korea). I was introduced to it and encouraged to learn it at the CELTA.
| Quote: |
| As of 2008, there are 107 distinct letters, 52 diacritics, and four prosody marks in the IPA proper. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Dixon
Joined: 30 Dec 2009
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 2:33 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Fox wrote: |
| One thing I would like to see, though, is the entire Western world switching to a more phonetic alphabet system than the Roman alphabet. I think this would make learning one another's languages go from easy to very easy. One of the reasons it's been so easy to pick up Korean is because their alphabet system is so effective. |
There's nothing necessarily non-phonetic about using the roman alphabet. The way it is used in English isn't 100% phonetic, but that does not mean there is a problem with the Roman characters when used completely phonetically in other languages (you mentioned the entire Western world, which is not composed solely of English speakers). Take a look at Esperanto, which uses Roman characters, and is certainly 100% phonetic with one symbol equalling one specific sound only. Korean doesn't even touch that. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rusty1983
Joined: 30 Jan 2007
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 5:49 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Dont introduce a phonetic alphabet! We'd all be out of a job! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Globutron
Joined: 13 Feb 2010
Location: England/Anyang
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 7:52 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I heard recently that a group of Korean scholars created and published the idea of the Korean language, rewritten so each character is laid out side-by-side like English. They claimed it worked out better but it basically received no popularity and thus failed.
I prefer the freedom of the English language over the Korean way, though. Sure it's more 'mathematical' and logical to pick up, but it feels so restrictive, like I'm suffocating. That could easily be the CO I inhale as I learn, mind. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Cerberus
Joined: 29 Oct 2009
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 2:09 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Fox wrote: |
| One thing I would like to see, though, is the entire Western world switching to a more phonetic alphabet system than the Roman alphabet. I think this would make learning one another's languages go from easy to very easy. One of the reasons it's been so easy to pick up Korean is because their alphabet system is so effective. |
the issue isn't with the Roman alphabet. It's with the language that utilizes it.
Spanish, and many others use the Roman alphabet (with minor additions) and are completely phonetic, unlike completely [Mod Edit] -ed English. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 6:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Cerberus wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| One thing I would like to see, though, is the entire Western world switching to a more phonetic alphabet system than the Roman alphabet. I think this would make learning one another's languages go from easy to very easy. One of the reasons it's been so easy to pick up Korean is because their alphabet system is so effective. |
the issue isn't with the Roman alphabet. It's with the language that utilizes it.
Spanish, and many others use the Roman alphabet (with minor additions) and are completely phonetic, unlike completely [Mod Edit] -ed English. |
Different languages using the same character to represent different sounds is confusing. Yes, Spanish is more phonetic than English; that doesn't change the fact that they both use the same characters for different sounds.
One character : one sound, across linguistic barriers, would be ideal. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 6:49 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Globutron wrote: |
I heard recently that a group of Korean scholars created and published the idea of the Korean language, rewritten so each character is laid out side-by-side like English. They claimed it worked out better but it basically received no popularity and thus failed.
I prefer the freedom of the English language over the Korean way, though. Sure it's more 'mathematical' and logical to pick up, but it feels so restrictive, like I'm suffocating. That could easily be the CO I inhale as I learn, mind. |
I think reading Korean would be much more painful if the language was written like English. The Korean system for writing out syllables works really well for the language in question. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Dixon
Joined: 30 Dec 2009
|
| Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 3:03 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Fox wrote: |
One character : one sound, across linguistic barriers, would be ideal. |
Some languages would have a multitude more characters than others still. There's probably also a reason that the Chinese don't use their official romanization systems instead of characters, and the Japanese use Kanji rather than their native phonetic alphabet. I think it has to do with distinguishing same sounding words.
I don't think it's very hard to learn a perfectly phonetic alphabet. Most people who already use roman characters can learn the Esperanto pronounciaton of the characters in a few minutes and remember them. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
