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rocket_scientist
Joined: 23 Nov 2009
Location: Prague
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 Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:46 am Post subject: To learn French, put down the book. |
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I took French in college and did poorly. Last night I chatted with a gabby French speaker and I'm certain it was a good learning experience. I think French does not transliterate well to English speakers or perhaps just to me.
vous, hiut, and more I care not to remember didn't go over well. I'd like to see Polish written in Cyrillic. I think it'd really help. |
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andrewchon
Joined: 16 Nov 2008
Location: Back in Oz. Living in ISIS Aust.
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| Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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Mai oui, aprendre est le franciaise me etre.
Je parle francaise du comique.
Franglish est la joie, non? |
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.38 Special
Joined: 08 Jul 2009
Location: Pennsylvania
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| Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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Ehhh... French is probably among the easiest languages for native English speakers. The grammar is relatively simple, the number of cognates are through the roof, and most of the language is quite similar.
After all, what is English but Francophone Saxon? That's an over-simplification, of course, but the two languages truly are step sisters. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 4:07 pm Post subject: |
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| 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. |
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djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
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| Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 5:54 pm Post subject: |
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| I think we should go back to pictographs and have a system of grunts |
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GreenlightmeansGO
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 6:14 pm Post subject: |
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| 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. |
That would be quite a large alphabet. Anyway, when you look in a dictionary, you can check the pronunciation with the phonemes. |
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Juregen
Joined: 30 May 2006
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| Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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| 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. |
Jamais |
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rocket_scientist
Joined: 23 Nov 2009
Location: Prague
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| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 5:50 am Post subject: |
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| andrewchon wrote: |
Mai oui, aprendre est le franciaise me etre.
Je parle francaise du comique.
Franglish est la joie, non? |
Example oui = "wee", like "Wee, I'm having a good time on the roller coaster". "oui" does not look like "wee" to hence my transfer to audit status to avoid a bad grade. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong, I'm saying I had a hard time.
"Oui" is the name of a porn book my dad tried to hide in the basement workshop, under a saw. |
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rocket_scientist
Joined: 23 Nov 2009
Location: Prague
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| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 5:55 am Post subject: |
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| djsmnc wrote: |
| I think we should go back to pictographs and have a system of grunts |
You'd be happy in my ESL classes. |
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tzechuk
Joined: 20 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 6:51 am Post subject: |
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Je ne parle pas Francais.
Pouvons-nous parler en anglais, s'il vous pla�t? |
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Fishead soup
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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| rocket_scientist wrote: |
| andrewchon wrote: |
Mai oui, aprendre est le franciaise me etre.
Je parle francaise du comique.
Franglish est la joie, non? |
Example oui = "wee", like "Wee, I'm having a good time on the roller coaster". "oui" does not look like "wee" to hence my transfer to audit status to avoid a bad grade. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong, I'm saying I had a hard time.
"Oui" is the name of a porn book my dad tried to hide in the basement workshop, under a saw. |
Not really porn more of a girly skin magazine like Playboy. They tended to show more Europian girls who had more of a natural beauty. Popular in the late seventies and early eighties. Virtually disappeared in the ninties.
A good magazine great articles. First heard of Charles Bukowski from this mag and I was only fourteen
When I came to Korea my mom threw away my vintage skin mag collection which included the Sharron Tate wife of Roman Palanski killed by the Manson family. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 4:19 pm Post subject: |
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| GreenlightmeansGO 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. |
That would be quite a large alphabet. |
So? If the Japanese can memorize over 90 syllabic letters plus over a thousand Kanji, I think we can memorize a few more letters ourselves for the sake of a more consistent, cleaner, better written language. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Juregen 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. |
Jamais |
Don't be an enemy of civilization. Give up your confusing, ineffectual, primitive lettering system and embrace the cause. You can do it. |
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lichtarbeiter
Joined: 15 Nov 2006
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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| 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. In English it's simply the fact that words have been derived from several different languages and the orthography has not been standardized.
Most languages in the West don't really have that problem though. Spanish is almost completely phonetic, but you need to know some rules of the orthography to get the correct pronunciation every time. For example the /c/ is pronounced like /s/ in front of /e/ and /i/, and pronounced like /k/ in front of /a/, /o/, and /u/. So /c/ isn't pronounced the same every time, but you can get it right if you know the rules.
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.
So in essence, even if we were to encode our languages into completely phonetic spellings, they would still lose consistency over time unless we were to constantly change the spellings. And even that doesn't take into account dialect difference. However you choose to spell the word "day" in the US, it's going to involve either a different spelling or a violation of the spelling's phonetics in Australia. |
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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| GreenlightmeansGO 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. |
That would be quite a large alphabet. |
So? If the Japanese can memorize over 90 syllabic letters plus over a thousand Kanji, I think we can memorize a few more letters ourselves for the sake of a more consistent, cleaner, better written language. |
I agree a lot of english spelling must be quite confusing for foreign learners. Its a legacy of history however.
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. |
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