Is englis a phonetic language?

Gabe   Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:21 pm GMT
is northen american english a phonetic language? i ahve been arguing with my friends that english is NOT a phonetic language. but they say it is. can someone tell me the answer?
Gabe   Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:23 pm GMT
Sorry number one I meant to write is English a phonetic language and I wrote "ahve" instead of have.
eito(jpn)   Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:33 pm GMT
Is English a phonetic language? I don't think so.
Kirk   Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:41 pm GMT
All spoken languages are "phonetic" languages because that simply means they have sounds. Maybe what you mean to ask is "is written English phonemically (not phonetically) accurate?" The answer would be sometimes yes, sometimes no. It's also worth mentioning that no written language is 100% phonemically accurate but some written systems come closer to that ideal than others do.
Guest   Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:47 pm GMT
<<is northen american english a phonetic language?>>

My 1st grade Phonics workbook says "yes" ;)
Uriel   Fri Apr 28, 2006 10:24 am GMT
Good lord, no! Have you looked at the spelling of some of our words?!!!
Guest   Fri Apr 28, 2006 3:07 pm GMT
Yes it is. When I was teaching my younger brother to read we used a book that had all of the sounds and their written equivelant. It was pretty darn accurate and, although there are a number of anomalies (I know I've spelt that wrong), English is mostly written as it sounds.
Jim   Fri Apr 28, 2006 3:16 pm GMT
Has nobody read Kirk's answer? As a spoken language, of course, English is phonetic. Does it have a phonemic orthography? Again I second Kirk: sometimes. Yes, English is mostly written as it sounds but the exceptions to this abound.
Easterner   Sun Apr 30, 2006 8:09 pm GMT
I second Kirk and Jim about English orthography being "sometimes" phonemic. This "sometimes" mainly concerns the representation of long vowels. It is in this field that there is the highest possibility of making a wrong guess if, for example, a person not knowing English, after seeing a a word as it is written with the normal orthography (as opposed to, say, IPA) and hearing it pronounced, were asked to write down a different word containing the same wovel (like writing down "speak" after having seen and heard "cheek", or "pie" or "buy" after "cry"). In some cases, it is impossible to make a wrong guess, since all possible forms result in acceptable words, like in the case of "leak" and "leek" - the trick is that they are completely different words.

The practical implication of this is whether it is more difficult to learn English spelling than those in which a given sound is always spelt the same. In my personal experience, it isn't, because one automatically learns the spellings of homophones (or the different pronunciations of homographs like "lead" the verb and "lead" the metal) as one encounters them, and there are only relatively few (less frequent) words whose pronunciation may pose problems (for example, I had to make efforts to get over the habit of pronouncing "linen" as LIE-nen). However, without any bias towards English speakers, I see that non-natives often have a better ability to make a distinction between such forms as "your" and "you're" than do some native speakers. The evidence is that too often I encounter "you're" written as "your" by native speakers, e.g. in internet forums, or sometimes even in compositions. The reason for this may be that non-natives invest more effort into learning English spelling than do many native speakers who don't bother too much, since they get it "ready-made" and sometimes use it without much thought. Of course, there are many exceptions both ways.
Easterner   Sun Apr 30, 2006 8:12 pm GMT
Me: "the representation of long vowels"

It is more exact like this: "the representation of long vowels AND diphthongs".
Ed   Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:19 pm GMT
One of the problems I think is that English tends to have short vowels in closed syllables (syllables ending with a consonant) and long vowels in open syllables (those ending in a vowel) but there are so many exceptions that the rule breaks down. Afrikaans has the same rule, but it is much stricter. Eg:

BOOM (tree), BO-ME (trees), BOM (bomb), BOM-ME (bombs)

In English linen would be written as 'linnen' if the open/closed syllable rule was followed strictly.
eito(jpn)   Mon May 01, 2006 2:13 pm GMT
>>In English linen would be written as 'linnen' if the open/closed syllable rule was followed strictly.<<

Undoutedly, "linnen" is easier than "linen" in terms of lerning pronunciation.

Should we spell "boddy", "cammel", "finnish", "lemmon", "moddest", "peddal", "seccond", and so on, for the sake of consistency, then?
Guest   Mon May 01, 2006 2:36 pm GMT
> Should we spell "boddy", "cammel", "finnish", "lemmon", "moddest", "peddal", "seccond", and so on, for the sake of consistency, then?

We would if the open/closed syllable rule was followed consistently. The corrollary would be the elimination of redundant double consonants.
eito(jpn)   Mon May 01, 2006 2:59 pm GMT
>>We would if the open/closed syllable rule was followed consistently. The corrollary would be the elimination of redundant double consonants.<<

Now I agree with you, Guest(Mon May 01, 2006 2:36 pm GMT)! I used to dream of consistent consonant dubbling rules. Ideally, dubblings should ocur after any short and stressed vowel. But it is pritty hard to make this golden rule absolute, so I changed my mind. The elimination of redundant double consonants must be a feasible and practical idea, I'm sure.
Guest   Mon May 01, 2006 5:54 pm GMT
>>I used to dream of consistent consonant dubbling rules<<

It's spelt DOUBLING.