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 | | From: | Michilín | | Subject: | Re: Not John Lawler [was; Re: "English English" vs "Angloid" [was: Re: Most Contributors [was Re: ScotsGate Scots Language Portal]]] | | Date: | Fri, 17 Dec 2004 16:16:51 GMT |
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 | On 16 Dec 2004 10:25:18 -0800, jwlawler@yahoo.com wrote:
>In the context, a pseudonym for the groups, the accents in my name are
>not very important. I retain them for the perverse reason that they
>make the name even more exotic.
I was raised in a different society and I was taught to regard a
missing accent as a misspelling or the sign of an illiterate. I think
most cultures feel that way, as witness your French friend who uses
them meticulously. However, I notice that in the French groups, some
French people use them, some don't and the same is true for the Quebec
groups where accents are used even less. Again, this seems to indicate
a lower level (or lack of) education.
>I am reasonably used to French without accents. I sometimes e-mail a
>French friend in French and it is not easy to type the accents so I
>just omit them. Usually she replies in proper French since she is
>normally in France with a French keyboard but she does the same when
>she does not have a French keyboard. If I must type proper French on
>an English keyboard, I use Word and run the French spelling and grammar
>checker which inserts most (but not all) accents correctly.
>
>I am not familiar with Scots Gaelic but I don't find Irish spelling
>easy. Ingenious possibly but not easy.
It really isn't difficult; like English it looks more daunting than it
actually is. My God, if culchies can learn it, surely you can!
>
>English is a mess but I don't think that it is as bad as often
>portrayed. There are more spelling rules then most people realise and
>most of the really silly spellings are among common words. How often
>can you not pronounce an unfamiliar English word? If the answer is
>seldom or never, then English must be reasonably phonetic.
Hmm. I remember sitting one day with a man who was reading an English
newspaper but who was not a native English speaker. Suddenly he said,
"There's been a murder of a girl in Epping Forest." (a wooded area
outside London, England). A moment later he said, "She was naykt!"
I tore the paper from his hands - a new vice I had not yet tried!
It said "naked".
I must confess that I used to say "pee-lot" for pilot and pewmonia for
pneumonia and mispronounced many other English words I learned from
newspapers, so I don't persoinally think that English is very
phonetic.
In fact I didn't think it was phonetic at all after being laughed at
in Anglistan for pronouncing Slough, as Sluff. (By the way, it's
pronounced "Slew" here in Western Canada.)
>
>I am not an expert but I expect that English could be described as a
>creole (*) since its modern form is a blend of the original
>Anglo-Saxon, French and various other things.
>
>(*) I say creole rather than pidgin since some speakers have grown up
>with it as their native tongue.
>
>Anyway, are creoles and pidgins necessarily bad? The same could be
>said of other languages and some may only escape because records don't
>go far enough back to answer the question. Which languages are pure
>and why does it matter?
No, of course it doesn't matter - in my case, any anti-English
statements stem from my upbringing - the Highland attitude towards
England and all its works.
>Another language which should have accents but rarely does is Tagalog.
>The official spelling has three accents which look like the French
>acute, grave and circumflex except any of them may appear on any vowel
>and their meanings are quite different. Acute indicates stress (in
>Spanish style, only where it is not standard), grave indicates a
>following glottal stop (if it is not automatic for other reasons), and
>circumflex means both of these. However they are rarely used. There
>are some ambiguities as a result but they don't cause significant
>problems to natives. =20
>
>Se=E1n O'Leathl=F3bhair
>
Michilín
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