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From: sra@oddjob.UChicago.UUCP (Scott Anderson)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Phonetic spelling isn't practical
Message-ID: <525@oddjob.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Nov-84 08:39:41 EST
Article-I.D.: oddjob.525
Posted: Wed Nov  7 08:39:41 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Nov-84 06:18:23 EST
References: <4147@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: U. Chicago: Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lines: 16

>Perhaps conditions are different for "small" languages (I understand that
>Hungarian is actually written phonetically), but it seems unlikely to me that
>any old, widespread, culturally diverse language like English, Spanish, French,
>Chinese, Portuguese or Russian can possibly be accurately described in a static
>form.

Actually, Spanish *is* a phonetically written language (at least the way they
teach it in the US).  It is always possible to look at the written form of a
word and pronounce it correctly -- provided one remembers where one is, as
there are regional differences in how some of the letters are pronounced.  For
example, in Spain the letter 'z' is pronounced like a soft 'th', while in most
of Latin America, it is pronounced like 's'.  But this is consistently done, in
every word which contains a 'z'.

                                Scott  Anderson
                                ...ihnp4!oddjob