5 Point Languages

[pestigor]

To the OP, most games ignore language differences because (as you can see from the thread) it gets complicated.
If language is a factor/focus in your game and you want to "feel realistic" then I wouldn't change the rules.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

And of course, with a non-phonetic language like Chinese, your ability to read it and your ability to speak it can be completely unrelated.

Funny that you need to bring in Chinese into it when we're currently writing this discussion in a language that is almost completely unphonetic.

Originally Posted by Varyon

From the posts I've read of yours, I'd say Native, at least for writing - those who have writing comprehension at Accented tend to have slightly "off" (but typically not technically incorrect) writing syntax, while your posts read like a native writer.

Well, people do spot things that are off now and then, and of course I am worse at communicating in real time, as that doesn't let me look into a dictionary mid-sentence.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Funny that you need to bring in Chinese into it when we're currently writing this discussion in a language that is almost completely unphonetic.

This alphabet is quite phonetic - it's just that it was never well suited to English and has been in use long enough for sounds that were consistently matched to have shifted, without getting a spelling reform. For lack of a formal regulatory body I suppose. Hey even the languages that use Chinese characters have tried something like a spelling reforms in the last century or so.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by malloyd

This alphabet is quite phonetic - it's just that it was never well suited to English and has been in use long enough for sounds that were consistently matched to have shifted, without getting a spelling reform. For lack of a formal regulatory body I suppose. Hey even the languages that use Chinese characters have tried something like a spelling reforms in the last century or so.

Somehow I doubt that old English (or Latin for that matter) had 26 phonemes. But even presuming that at the time the English variant of the Latin alphabet was formed it was approximately phonetic, it certainly isn't even remotely phonetic today. For instance, there is no c-specific phoneme in English; instead, c can form very different phonemes with no reliable way of predicting which one by looking at the letters of a word. Same with a, u, x, i etc.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

For instance, there is no c-specific phoneme in English; instead, c can form very different phonemes with no reliable way of predicting which one by looking at the letters of a word. Same with a, u, x, i etc.

'C' is very reliable in English. You just have to look at all the letters of the word... :P

If we're going to be frank about [it], I blame the Germans. ;)

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by malloyd

This is true but misses my point. Chinese characters are (typically) composed of a radical (a non-phonetic bit that hints at the category of meaning) and a phonetic bit, that actually does express the "approximate" sound of the word. The radicals are necessary because Chinese has so *many* homophones, especially when you are only approximating them. But in literary Chinese (wenyan) the phonetic bits typically encode sounds in late Old or Early Middle Chinese, a language that isn't spoken anymore. Many people learning to read "Chinese" characters do learn what sounds those bit of the characters mean, they just aren't the sounds in any language they speak themselves - in Japanese these are the various on'yomi "sound-reading" ways of pronouncing the characters. Essentially learning to read these characters involves learning a bit of a language nobody speaks anymore.

I don't know Chinese enough to be sure but, from what I learnt, there is no phonetic bits in Chinese ideograms.

好 hǎo (good) for instance, is made with two key-ideograms, 女 Nǚ (women) and 子 zi (child). And as we can see, there is absolutely no common phonetic between Nǚzi and hǎo.

In modern Chinese, "thank you" is translated 谢谢 xièxiè (approximately read sheeshee). In Shanghaiing, it is pronounced ʒaʒa. We can see some common phonetic (sh and j), but it is still impossible to guess the good pronunciation if you don't know it, even if you speak hànyǔ.

Ancient Egyptian has some phonetic in their hieroglyphs because they can be used as words as well as letters. Katakana and Hiragana are phonetics (syllabic) writing. They look like ideograms but are not. True ideograms (Chinese, Kanji) are really impossible to read if you don't know how to read them by heart, and can be read very differently from one language to the other.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Gollum

I don't know Chinese enough to be sure but, from what I learnt, there is no phonetic bits in Chinese ideograms.

There often are, though. You'll find many characters made partly of components that suggest meaning, and partly of components that suggest pronunciation. Where "suggest" may be as simple as "many other characters containing this component are pronounced [whatever]", or even "this component, if a character on its own, would be pronounced [whatever]". Which doesn't mean the character in question necessarily is pronounced [whatever]. It's not even necessarily clear that the character contains a component suggesting pronunciation, or if so, which component that is (it's not like these things are marked).

But, with experience, and with a bunch of known characters under your belt, you can often take a good educated guess at the pronunciation of a newly encountered character, and even get it right much of the time.

(That word "guess" is key, though, so you're not entirely off the mark!)

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Funny that you need to bring in Chinese into it when we're currently writing this discussion in a language that is almost completely unphonetic.

With English, you can generally spell a word as it is pronounced, or pronounce a word phonetically, and be eventually understood, albeit at the cost of being perceived as uneducated, whereas, as mentioned, many Chinese characters provide no hint as to their pronunciation.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by tbone

There often are, though. You'll find many characters made partly of components that suggest meaning, and partly of components that suggest pronunciation. Where "suggest" may be as simple as "many other characters containing this component are pronounced [whatever]", or even "this component, if a character on its own, would be pronounced [whatever]". Which doesn't mean the character in question necessarily is pronounced [whatever]. It's not even necessarily clear that the character contains a component suggesting pronunciation, or if so, which component that is (it's not like these things are marked).

But, with experience, and with a bunch of known characters under your belt, you can often take a good educated guess at the pronunciation of a newly encountered character, and even get it right much of the time.

(That word "guess" is key, though, so you're not entirely off the mark!)

That seems so strange to me ... And it also sounds to contradict the fact that the same ideogram can be pronounced so differently depending on the language (Hànyǔ, Wúyǔ, Japanese and so on) ...

Have you got some examples, please, or, at least some bibliography to help me improve my general knowledge about that topic?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Somehow I doubt that old English (or Latin for that matter) had 26 phonemes. But even presuming that at the time the English variant of the Latin alphabet was formed it was approximately phonetic, it certainly isn't even remotely phonetic today. For instance, there is no c-specific phoneme in English; instead, c can form very different phonemes with no reliable way of predicting which one by looking at the letters of a word. Same with a, u, x, i etc.

Yeah, the only sound unique to c is actually the one for ch (actually, just the soft version of ch, as the hard one is pronounced like a k). That said, while the Roman script is hardly syllabic, one can at least get a close approximation of the correct pronunciation just from the way the word is written; indeed, a not-uncommon teaching method (or at least it used to be fairly common; I remember a lot of "Hooked on Phonics, Works for Me!" commercials from the 90's) for reading and writing is Phonics. I don't know enough about the various Chinese languages to comment on them, but I do know that Japanese when you're just relying on the kanji has a large variety of potential pronunciations (you can see a humorous instance of this in the original Dragon Ball show - Son Goku (孫悟空) writes his name in kanji for his entry to the tournament, and the announcer calls for "Mago Gosora" (孫悟空) to step up; Dragon Ball Z Abridged kind of did it as well, with Trunks slipping up and accidentally addressing Goku as Sun Wukong (孫悟空)).