Re: Open source dmd on Reddit!

2009-03-13 Thread Derek Parnell
On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:59:08 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:


 If you work with kids teaching them to read phonetically (rather than 
 look-say), you'll discover that by and large, the phonetic rules work 
 very well. They'll pronounce about 80% of the unfamiliar words 
 reasonably correctly.

I wound the bandage around the wound.

Wind up the window to stop the wind coming in.

And of course there's ghoti ;-)

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
skype: derek.j.parnell


Re: Open source dmd on Reddit!

2009-03-13 Thread Christopher Wright

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:gpc2ik$2t8...@digitalmars.com...

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
That's one thing that's kind of nice about Japanese. Native words and 
loanwords are written in different alphabets (sort of like uppercase vs 
lowercase), so unlike English, you generally know if a word is a 
properly-pronounced native word or a potentially-differently-pronounced 
loanword. (Not that this is necessarily the original reason for the 
separate native/foreign alphabets, but it's at least a nice benefit.)
I don't see having 3 alphabets as having some sort of compelling advantage 
that remotely compares with the cost of learning 3 alphabets and 3 
spellings for everything.


Native Japanese words never use the Katakana alphabet, and loanwords never 
use the Hiragana alphabet (those are the two phonetic alphabets).


There are situations in Japanese where you use katakana natively. 
Onomatopoeia, for instance, and company names.


I know that, when introducing someone's name in writing, an author will 
sometimes follow the kanji version of the name with a phonological 
representation of the name. Does this typically use hiragana, or would 
you use katakana for that as well?


Re: Open source dmd on Reddit!

2009-03-13 Thread Sean Kelly

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:gpbpib$2ee...@digitalmars.com...

Ary Borenszweig wrote:

What do you mean with pseudo-phonetic?

How do you pronounce the first letter of I? And the first letter of 
Incredible? That doesn't seem to have any logic! :-P


Yea, that's exactly what I mean. English pretends to be phonetic but really 
isn't (at least not anymore). But I never truly saw just how non-phonetic it 
was until I learned the Japanese -kana alphabets. Those alphabets really 
make English's claim of being phonetic look ridiculous.


To be fair, English stems from Germanic, and pronunciation has changed 
tremendously over the years.  Chaucer is nearly incomprehensible to most 
people, and it's just in Middle English.