johnloony
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Post by johnloony on Feb 26, 2018 13:33:50 GMT
I think that Irish had a substantial spelling reform in the 1930s, so it used to be more squigglious than it is now. The problem with Manx is that its spelling system was invented by missionaries instead of linguists, so (for example) it used "ie" instead of "ai", and "oo" instead of "u" or "w".
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obsie
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Post by obsie on Feb 26, 2018 13:34:17 GMT
And there in four letters do we see the Darwinian reason why Irish is a language dying back to hobby usage. There are a lot of reasons why Irish is a minority language. The fact that the orthographic system is centuries out of date isn't one of them, because most of the people who've stopped speaking it in the past century never wrote in it much to begin with. The orthographic system is a good deal more logical than that of English. Órfhlaith is an etymologically correct but old-fashioned spelling; the digraph "fh" is silent in Irish and the more common spelling is Órlaith. |
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Post by therealriga on Feb 26, 2018 13:35:05 GMT
There are much bigger barriers than the orthography - the mutations, for a start, and the fact that the ending of one word can affect the beginning of the next. It's undoubtedly a difficult language to learn ex nihilo as an adult, but I don't think that's the reason first-language speakers stopped using it or passing it on to their children. Polish is also a pretty difficult language to pick up ( perhaps not as difficult, but certainly not too simple) and that hasn't seem the same issues. Having done Irish at school for 2 non-consecutive years and some courses of both Russian and Latvian, I'd definitely say Irish is relatively easier for a native English speaker. The sounds are a bit easier and there are fewer noun cases to memorise. Latvian does have the advantage of being one of the easiest European languages to read, since the alphabet was developed quite late and was developed for a relatively small geographically concentrated group of speakers, so there are relatively few digraphs, no silent letters and most letters represent a single phoneme. Compare that to the c in English in cold, hi-tech, politician, change, machine etc. I'd never seen the spelling Órfhlaith before. Órlaith is the more common variant. |
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Chris from Brum
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Post by Chris from Brum on Feb 26, 2018 13:45:25 GMT
I'd never seen the spelling Órfhlaith before. Órlaith is the more common variant. It does look like someone is trying just a *bit* too hard with the Irish identity schtick. |
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obsie
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Post by obsie on Feb 26, 2018 13:52:45 GMT
I think that Irish had a substantial spelling reform in the 1930s, so it used to be more squigglious than it is now. The problem with Manx is that its spelling system was invented by missionaries instead of linguists, so (for example) it used "ie" instead of "ai", and "oo" instead of "u" or "w". The spelling reform simplified the spelling at the cost of increasing the difference in spelling with Scottish Gaelic (there's also the issue of the divergence between the standard spelling/pronunciation and that of the living dialects). Manx spelling is a barbarism. |
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obsie
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Post by obsie on Feb 26, 2018 13:58:16 GMT
I'd never seen the spelling Órfhlaith before. Órlaith is the more common variant. It does look like someone is trying just a *bit* too hard with the Irish identity schtick. is "gold/golden", flaith is "prince/princess", so it's the correct original form. The one variant that struck me as strange when I came across it was Órlaithí. |
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Post by therealriga on Feb 26, 2018 13:59:49 GMT
I'd never seen the spelling Órfhlaith before. Órlaith is the more common variant. It does look like someone is trying just a *bit* too hard with the Irish identity schtick. I blame it on middle age. And Brexit.  |
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Post by Merseymike on Feb 26, 2018 14:29:29 GMT
I think Magyar is supposed to be one of the hardest languages to learn. The Serbo-Croat language has now been renamed according to which state you hapoen to be in. So it's Bosnian in Bosnia, Croatian in Croatia etc. Same language but different alphabet.
My other half used to have a Hungarian colleague. Apparently the dame words are used for hello and goodbye in Magyar. He both greeted and bade farewell to the patients with a cheery "Hello"
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CatholicLeft
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Post by CatholicLeft on Feb 26, 2018 14:40:25 GMT
It does look like someone is trying just a *bit* too hard with the Irish identity schtick. I blame it on middle age. And Brexit. She's only 26. |
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Post by therealriga on Feb 26, 2018 14:51:18 GMT
I think Magyar is supposed to be one of the hardest languages to learn. The Serbo-Croat language has now been renamed according to which state you hapoen to be in. So it's Bosnian in Bosnia, Croatian in Croatia etc. Same language but different alphabet. My other half used to have a Hungarian colleague. Apparently the dame words are used for hello and goodbye in Magyar. He both greeted and bade farewell to the patients with a cheery "Hello" That happens in Latvian too. Chau (from Italian ciao) can be used to say hello or bye. You're right Hungarian is tricky, but it's mostly down to the noun cases, which we don't have in English. Most of them correspond to prepositions in English: in, at, on, towards etc. But then again, English and other European languages are a pain from the point of view of prepositions. In English it "depends on", in Spanish "depends of", in Latvian "depends from." No real logic. Why is it "on a bus" but "in a taxi" when talking about transport? Ultimately, it's hard to codify languages according to difficulty. Hungarian still resembles English more than a lot of Asian or African languages would. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2018 15:02:04 GMT
I think Magyar is supposed to be one of the hardest languages to learn. The Serbo-Croat language has now been renamed according to which state you hapoen to be in. So it's Bosnian in Bosnia, Croatian in Croatia etc. Same language but different alphabet. My other half used to have a Hungarian colleague. Apparently the dame words are used for hello and goodbye in Magyar. He both greeted and bade farewell to the patients with a cheery "Hello" That happens in Latvian too. Chau (from Italian ciao) can be used to say hello or bye. You're right Hungarian is tricky, but it's mostly down to the noun cases, which we don't have in English. Most of them correspond to prepositions in English: in, at, on, towards etc. But then again, English and other European languages are a pain from the point of view of prepositions. In English it "depends on", in Spanish "depends of", in Latvian "depends from." No real logic. Why is it "on a bus" but "in a taxi" when talking about transport? Ultimately, it's hard to codify languages according to difficulty. Hungarian still resembles English more than a lot of Asian or African languages would. Really? Hungarian is not (at all) linguistically related to Indo-European languages. |
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YL
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Post by YL on Feb 26, 2018 16:18:59 GMT
I think that Irish had a substantial spelling reform in the 1930s, so it used to be more squigglious than it is now. The problem with Manx is that its spelling system was invented by missionaries instead of linguists, so (for example) it used "ie" instead of "ai", and "oo" instead of "u" or "w". The spelling reform simplified the spelling at the cost of increasing the difference in spelling with Scottish Gaelic (there's also the issue of the divergence between the standard spelling/pronunciation and that of the living dialects). Manx spelling is a barbarism. Anybody who has actually tried to work out how a few Manx words and names are pronounced will realise that, although it may look easier than Irish or Scottish Gaelic, the system is hopelessly badly adapted to the sounds of the language and in fact the Manx pronunciation can be surprisingly different from what English spelling conventions would lead you to expect. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2018 16:25:10 GMT
I think Magyar is supposed to be one of the hardest languages to learn. The Serbo-Croat language has now been renamed according to which state you hapoen to be in. So it's Bosnian in Bosnia, Croatian in Croatia etc. Same language but different alphabet. My other half used to have a Hungarian colleague. Apparently the dame words are used for hello and goodbye in Magyar. He both greeted and bade farewell to the patients with a cheery "Hello" That happens in Latvian too. Chau (from Italian ciao) can be used to say hello or bye. You're right Hungarian is tricky, but it's mostly down to the noun cases, which we don't have in English. Most of them correspond to prepositions in English: in, at, on, towards etc. But then again, English and other European languages are a pain from the point of view of prepositions. In English it "depends on", in Spanish "depends of", in Latvian "depends from." No real logic. Why is it "on a bus" but "in a taxi" when talking about transport? Ultimately, it's hard to codify languages according to difficulty. Hungarian still resembles English more than a lot of Asian or African languages would. And then there's another factor that often seems to get overlooked in discussions like this, which is that languages of former British colonies tend to have additional advantages to English speakers. For instance, it is perfectly acceptable at least amongst middle-class Calcuttans to incorporate almost any English lexical content word into Bengali, or even use whole English phrases, and they tend to do so rather a lot. It doesn't please the purists, and it's also a rather complex class/education indicator, but it's the reality of much of the spoken language, and does mean that it's possible to appear reasonably fluent with a fairly limited Bengali vocabulary. It's not hard to see the parallels with Scottish Gaelic, Irish or Welsh as far as this is concerned. (Heck, there are even parallels with BSL after a fashion). |
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Post by therealriga on Feb 26, 2018 17:41:11 GMT
That happens in Latvian too. Chau (from Italian ciao) can be used to say hello or bye. You're right Hungarian is tricky, but it's mostly down to the noun cases, which we don't have in English. Most of them correspond to prepositions in English: in, at, on, towards etc. But then again, English and other European languages are a pain from the point of view of prepositions. In English it "depends on", in Spanish "depends of", in Latvian "depends from." No real logic. Why is it "on a bus" but "in a taxi" when talking about transport? Ultimately, it's hard to codify languages according to difficulty. Hungarian still resembles English more than a lot of Asian or African languages would. Really? Hungarian is not (at all) linguistically related to Indo-European languages. And neither are a significant number of African and Asian languages which have features like tones, evidentiality, multiple noun classes and so on which don't exist in Hungarian or English. In relative terms, Hungarian is easier than them. |
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Post by gwynthegriff on Feb 26, 2018 18:04:50 GMT
No real logic. Why is it "on a bus" but "in a taxi" when talking about transport? Ultimately, it's hard to codify languages according to difficulty. Taxis had doors and buses didn't when the term evolved?  (Including in Tyrone.) [Anyone know what the terms would be in Irish Gaelic. Could be an election issue.] |
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Post by Ghyl Tarvoke on Feb 26, 2018 18:25:49 GMT
That happens in Latvian too. Chau (from Italian ciao) can be used to say hello or bye. You're right Hungarian is tricky, but it's mostly down to the noun cases, which we don't have in English. Most of them correspond to prepositions in English: in, at, on, towards etc. But then again, English and other European languages are a pain from the point of view of prepositions. In English it "depends on", in Spanish "depends of", in Latvian "depends from." No real logic. Why is it "on a bus" but "in a taxi" when talking about transport? Ultimately, it's hard to codify languages according to difficulty. Hungarian still resembles English more than a lot of Asian or African languages would. And then there's another factor that often seems to get overlooked in discussions like this, which is that languages of former British colonies tend to have additional advantages to English speakers. For instance, it is perfectly acceptable at least amongst middle-class Calcuttans to incorporate almost any English lexical content word into Bengali, or even use whole English phrases, and they tend to do so rather a lot. It doesn't please the purists, and it's also a rather complex class/education indicator, but it's the reality of much of the spoken language, and does mean that it's possible to appear reasonably fluent with a fairly limited Bengali vocabulary. It's not hard to see the parallels with Scottish Gaelic, Irish or Welsh as far as this is concerned. (Heck, there are even parallels with BSL after a fashion). I think this is a South Asian thing in General, or at least a North South Asian thing. I lived with a Sindhi speaker once who did the same, it was very jarring to me. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 26, 2018 21:29:24 GMT
I think that Irish had a substantial spelling reform in the 1930s, so it used to be more squigglious than it is now. The problem with Manx is that its spelling system was invented by missionaries instead of linguists, so (for example) it used "ie" instead of "ai", and "oo" instead of "u" or "w". To be fair, the Irish spelling system was also invented by missionaries. Some of the oddest bits of Irish spelling for an English speaker are incredibly old, and are basically down to the fact that 5th century British Latin seems to have been spoken with a truly bizarre accent. There are a lot of reasons why Irish is a minority language. The fact that the orthographic system is centuries out of date isn't one of them, because most of the people who've stopped speaking it in the past century never wrote in it much to begin with. The orthographic system is a good deal more logical than that of English. Órfhlaith is an etymologically correct but old-fashioned spelling; the digraph "fh" is silent in Irish and the more common spelling is Órlaith. Being logical isn't necessarily an advantage, because languages don't tend to be completely logical - if they are, it's hardly a sign of health. The orthography is in any case fairly conservative, particularly in terms of the tendency not to acknowledge fairly substantial dialectal variation. |
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obsie
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Post by obsie on Feb 26, 2018 22:20:58 GMT
I think that Irish had a substantial spelling reform in the 1930s, so it used to be more squigglious than it is now. The problem with Manx is that its spelling system was invented by missionaries instead of linguists, so (for example) it used "ie" instead of "ai", and "oo" instead of "u" or "w". To be fair, the Irish spelling system was also invented by missionaries. Some of the oddest bits of Irish spelling for an English speaker are incredibly old, and are basically down to the fact that 5th century British Latin seems to have been spoken with a truly bizarre accent. I would have thought it's mainly about trying to get a language with parallel sets of palatalised and velarised consonants (including lenited consonants) to fit into the constraints of a 18-letter alphabet while allowing mutated words to still be recognisable as their original forms. The weirdest thing for an English speaker might be "c" = /k/ in all circumstances although that seems to have been an original feature of Latin (c.f. Albanian qytet, city) rather than a Britannic innovation, but then I'm so accustomed to Irish spelling at this stage that I'm not going to see the coill for the crainn. I was more getting at Anglophone monoglots sneering at funny spelling *cough* *dough* *bough* *trough* *rough*. Even in Irish there are very common words ( is, ar, ag, an) that don't abide by the rules but it's generally more straightforward - even accounting for dialect differences - than English. |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Feb 26, 2018 22:24:15 GMT
I saw something the other day that claimed that French has 26 letters, of which 17 are silent. Several words are entirely silent and are pronounced by pursing one's lips and looking insouciant.
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obsie
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Post by obsie on Feb 26, 2018 22:37:37 GMT
No real logic. Why is it "on a bus" but "in a taxi" when talking about transport? Ultimately, it's hard to codify languages according to difficulty. Taxis had doors and buses didn't when the term evolved? (Including in Tyrone.) [Anyone know what the terms would be in Irish Gaelic. Could be an election issue.]
Prepositions are their English equivalents |
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