Comment by albert_e

Comment by albert_e 9 hours ago

2 replies

Many Indian languages are written in scripts that mirror what is spoken. Silent letters don't exist and pronunciations that don't match the spelling are very rare. This does npt preclude the existence of rich dialects and accents.

This increases the complexity of learning to write the language -- 56 letters in alphabet and each combination of consonant+vowel and consonant+consonant takes on a different letter form instead of just being a string of independent letters like English.

But reading / pronunciation is straightforward. (No we don't have spelling bees :) )

int_19h an hour ago

Phonemic spelling does not require a syllabary, though. Several European languages are also written "as spoken" using the Latin alphabet, usually with a few extra digraphs or letter variants. Or you can make the syllabary itself compose regularly, like in Hangul.

Indian languages are generally rich in phonemes though. My mind boggles at the notion of [n] [ɳ] [ɲ] [ŋ] all being distinct. I mean, I can reproduce each one of them on its own, but doing that in rapid speech, and worse yet, recognizing the same in others' speech...

inkyoto 2 hours ago

Indian languages, yes, but the story is more complicated with languages that use Indic scripts.

Tibetan, Mon-Burmese and Thai scripts, as an example, all derive from the Brahmi script (through a long and sometimes windy ancestry), but neither reflects the modern pronunciation, hence mind numbing transcription systems.

Tibetan and Burmese languages are particularly notorious for codifying the archaic pronunciation of respective languages that has been frozen in time for centuries. It is a treasure trove for linguists that have got a time machine for free, but I don't think that the same can't be said modern speakers of both languages.