Question - Languages with inconsistent spelling systems?

[GrinningManiac]

Hindi is nigh-on universally consistent when spelled in Devangari but many people, especially online, can't be bothered to type up the ol' script so they just phonetically render their words with the Latin alphabet.

This does lead, as you can imagine, to some strange arguments.

हूँ can be spelled as "Hu", "Huu", "Hun", "HuuN", "Hoon" and so on.

But this probably isn't what you're looking for.

[----]

or learns the Thai script.

Which has some 10 odd ways of writing final /t/. D:

Speaking of Southeastern Asian languages, Khmer is pretty bad with this stuff, as I've discovered. Since there's trouble afoot in Cambodia, there's not really political centralization to the point where a standard of Khmer could effectively form. This results in several different ways of spelling the same word, to the point where it's difficult to understand other people in writing. This bleeds out into the language's speech, where the vowels are especially affected. People even in the same community can have different vowel inventories.

[Shihali]

Even in Arabic script, there's the hamza. I understand a lot of authors dropping initial hamza's, but for a class I read a few tales from the 1001 Nights from a reprint of an early 1800s Egyptian edition and the printers must have been out of hamza's that month because they didn't include a single one. I know they're easy to read without if you already know what the root is, but if you don't it makes the already annoying process of looking up words with weak roots that much harder.

Also, the Egyptian dotless final ya'. What's up with that? Sure it was a stupid decision all those centuries ago to require dots on the more common final curvy shape and omit them on alif maqsura, but writing the two exactly the same is the problem the dots solved in the first place!

[Ser]

Even in Arabic script, there's the hamza. I understand a lot of authors dropping initial hamza's, but for a class I read a few tales from the 1001 Nights from a reprint of an early 1800s Egyptian edition and the printers must have been out of hamza's that month because they didn't include a single one. I know they're easy to read without if you already know what the root is, but if you don't it makes the already annoying process of looking up words with weak roots that much harder.

A lot of people write, regardless of geographical origin, write like that too, as well as omit the distinction between final haa2 and taa2 marbuuTa. Much stuff gets printed this way too.

I also find it interesting that it's common to add a hamza where you wouldn't normally expect it in many cases, especially the perfect and verbal nouns of forms VII-XV, and some nouns like ism or imra2a, very often written with an initial hamza below. The Arabic academies hate this, but I even have an Arabic-English English-Arabic dictionary that does this (Awde and Smith's).

[Skomakar'n]

German orthography. Sometimes vowel + ‹h› for long vowel, sometimes double vowel and sometimes other digraphs, such as ‹ie› for long /i/. Both ‹ü› and ‹y› are used for /y/. Decorative spellings such as ‹ck› remain, but I've seen ‹kk› used in a few non-compounds too.

[Pole, the]

German orthography. Sometimes vowel + ‹h› for long vowel, sometimes double vowel and sometimes other digraphs, such as ‹ie› for long /i/.

And sometimes it remains unmarked: wir, lesen &c.
Also, final /o:/ is written as ‹ow› in some names.

[Wattmann]

German orthography. Sometimes vowel + ‹h› for long vowel, sometimes double vowel and sometimes other digraphs, such as ‹ie› for long /i/. Both ‹ü› and ‹y› are used for /y/. Decorative spellings such as ‹ck› remain, but I've seen ‹kk› used in a few non-compounds too.

German spelling is fairly logical, though - one-to-one most of the time.

You forgot double consonants: Wattmann

[finlay]

German orthography. Sometimes vowel + ‹h› for long vowel, sometimes double vowel and sometimes other digraphs, such as ‹ie› for long /i/. Both ‹ü› and ‹y› are used for /y/. Decorative spellings such as ‹ck› remain, but I've seen ‹kk› used in a few non-compounds too.

German spelling is fairly logical, though - one-to-one most of the time.

You forgot double consonants: Wattmann

In the sense that there aren't any silent letters, perhaps. But spelling isn't necessarily predictable from pronunciation in German, only the other way around: what's to stop it being "Watman", for instance? German also has a presumably increasing number of loanwords from French and English with irregular spellings.

[linguoboy]

In the sense that there aren't any silent letters, perhaps. But spelling isn't necessarily predictable from pronunciation in German, only the other way around: what's to stop it being "Watman", for instance?

Vowel length. Cf. wat /'waːt/ "wade.IMP.2SG" vs Watt /'wat/ "tidal flat; watt". If a word has only short vowels, there's pretty much only one way to spell it.

[Wattmann]

In the sense that there aren't any silent letters, perhaps. But spelling isn't necessarily predictable from pronunciation in German, only the other way around: what's to stop it being "Watman", for instance?

There are no long vowels in "Wattmann" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_ort ... n_spelling
So, it's not /va:tma:n/ but /vatman/

[finlay]

But <man> is /man/, not /maːn/.

[Rui]

English has accepted inconsistencies, of a geographical or social nature (jail/gaol, color/colour, -ise/-ize).

Well, Mandarin has two standard romanizations. Pinyin is used on the Mainland, Wade-Giles is used on Taiwan. In English loans, usually Wade-Giles is used (though in romanizing names, obviously it depends on where the family is originally from): Taoism, Mao Tse-tung, Sun Tzu, etc. rather than Daoism, Mao Zedong, Sunzi, etc. I would say Wade-Giles is more English-friendly than Pinyin (representing the palatal series as <Chi, Ch'i Hs> rather than the foreign <J Q X>), but Pinyin makes more sense to me, just because I've learned Mandarin using Pinyin.

One thing I'm not sure about is how English adapts /y/-rimes...I know Pinyin has ü, and v when ü is inaccessible (IME inputs on the computer, for example).

It would be downright bizarre to see both in the same sentence (addressing your question a few posts down).

This might not be exactly what you're looking for, but yeah...

[linguoboy]

English has accepted inconsistencies, of a geographical or social nature (jail/gaol, color/colour, -ise/-ize).

Well, Mandarin has two standard romanizations. Pinyin is used on the Mainland, Wade-Giles is used on Taiwan.

Taiwan official switched to Hanyu Pinyin four years ago. I see very little Wade-Giles any more these days.

In English loans, usually Wade-Giles is used (though in romanizing names, obviously it depends on where the family is originally from): Taoism, Mao Tse-tung, Sun Tzu, etc. rather than Daoism, Mao Zedong, Sunzi, etc.

Again, I seldom see the Wade-Giles form any more. The eponymous Wikipedia article uses Taoism and Tao Te Ching, but Laozi and Zhuangzi; Sun Tzu but Mao Zedong. Modern academic publications use Pinyin pretty much exclusively.

I think both systems are fairly unfriendly to English-speakers, just in different ways. Wade-Giles makes it easier to recognise the palatal series, but at the expense of merging aspirated and unaspirated stops. And romanising initial [ɻ] as j is just bizarre. The friendliest system is the one designed especially for English-speakers, Yale. Unfortunately, it's seldom encountred outside of Yale University publications.

[Rui]

English has accepted inconsistencies, of a geographical or social nature (jail/gaol, color/colour, -ise/-ize).

Well, Mandarin has two standard romanizations. Pinyin is used on the Mainland, Wade-Giles is used on Taiwan.

Taiwan official switched to Hanyu Pinyin four years ago. I see very little Wade-Giles any more these days.

Huh, did not know that Very interesting. I'm certainly glad about that, that means I don't have to worry about Wade-Giles...just the traditional characters.

I think both systems are fairly unfriendly to English-speakers, just in different ways. Wade-Giles makes it easier to recognise the palatal series, but at the expense of merging aspirated and unaspirated stops. And romanising initial [ɻ] as j is just bizarre. The friendliest system is the one designed especially for English-speakers, Yale. Unfortunately, it's seldom encountred outside of Yale University publications.

Hm, yeah, forgot about the stops. I guess I forgot about how strange it was because I'm so used to pinyin or something.

[Wattmann]

But <man> is /man/, not /maːn/.

I might be wrong, and do correct me if I am, but that is a Wiktionary fail.

[finlay]

But <man> is /man/, not /maːn/.

I might be wrong, and do correct me if I am, but that is a Wiktionary fail.

Isn't it? The pronoun "man" doesn't have a long vowel IME; I've certainly never heard it with a long vowel – with the obvious caveat that I may just not be able to remember, since it's been a few years since I've encountered any German (and the last time I did, it was Swiss German anyway. Not that I spoke any Swiss German when I was in Switzerland, or even bothered to attempt to understand anything. Most announcements on the trains (for instance) were in Standard German, anyway, so that's what I heard and understood there).

[Pole, the]

But <man> is /man/, not /maːn/.

I might be wrong, and do correct me if I am, but that is a Wiktionary fail.

Wiktionary sometimes fails with vowel length in German.
(Also evidence that it's not totally predictable from the orthography.)

[linguoboy]

But <man> is /man/, not /maːn/.

I might be wrong, and do correct me if I am, but that is a Wiktionary fail.

You're wrong; Duden has ['man], not *[maːn]. This is a deliberate orthographic choice in order to keep the pronoun from being confused with common noun. (Cf te vs té in Spanish. But of course in that case, there's no historical connexion between the two words.)

Of course, a lot of German-speakers merge /a/ and /aː/ in any case, so for them wat vs Watt is an inconsistency. (I remember my ex mocking one of them for writing his address as "Sallestraße"--which is particularly amusing since "Halle an der Saale" is a classic shibboleth for vowel length in German.)

[Wattmann]

But <man> is /man/, not /maːn/.

I might be wrong, and do correct me if I am, but that is a Wiktionary fail.

You're wrong; Duden has ['man], not *[maːn]. This is a deliberate orthographic choice in order to keep the pronoun from being confused with common noun. (Cf te vs té in Spanish. But of course in that case, there's no historical connexion between the two words.)

Of course, a lot of German-speakers merge /a/ and /aː/ in any case, so for them wat vs Watt is an inconsistency. (I remember my ex mocking one of them for writing his address as "Sallestraße"--which is particularly amusing since "Halle an der Saale" is a classic shibboleth for vowel length in German.)

I wouldn't actually know. Having a German last name doesn't make one a Germana automatically...

[Chagen]

And sometimes it remains unmarked: wir, lesen &c.

Wait, <wir> doesn't have a rhotic /i/?

Wierd, my teacher is a native German and pronounces it as [vi`].

[linguoboy]

Wait, <wir> doesn't have a rhotic /i/?

Wierd, my teacher is a native German and pronounces it as [vi`].

For serious? The normative pronunciation is [viːɐ̯]. Using a rhoticised vowel sounds totally wrong to me. Sure you're hearing it correctly?

(And I wouldn't call the vowel length "unmarked"; it's simply marked in the following consonant, not on the vowel itself.)

[Pole, the]

Then, in "ihr" it would be double marked.

[Chagen]

For serious? The normative pronunciation is [viːɐ̯]. Using a rhoticised vowel sounds totally wrong to me. Sure you're hearing it correctly?

I'm probably hearing it incorrectly, unless she's letting English seep into her German.

I NEVER hear a second vowel in it at all, though.

[linguoboy]

Then, in "ihr" it would be double marked.

So zu sagen.

[Zontas]

Greek, both in original Greek and it's latinizations.