phonetic=uniform? pictographic=diverse?

Johnathan Mark   Tue Aug 08, 2006 12:04 am GMT
Some languages, such as Spanish, have transcriptions in writing that correspond very closely to their actual pronunciations. Others, such as English, have some correspendence but the representations in writing are very inconsistent. Still others, such as Chinese, have representations that have nothing to do with the pronunciation of the word.

I have observed that Spanish is a language that, although spoken over a vast amount of territory, has relatively small amounts of dialectical variation when compared with English, and that most of the regional variation in Spanish is very consistent ([s] is always aspirated in a implosive position in some dialects, etc.) whereas English variation does not always follow any rules (especially those dealing with vowels). I have also heard that Chinese pronunciation is so varied that there exist multiple words for the same symbol.

My question is this--can we say that the more phonetically consistent the writing in a language, the less pronunciation variation there will be, and vice versa?

I look forward to your opinions.
Johnathan Mark   Tue Aug 08, 2006 10:59 am GMT
"My question is this--can we say that the more phonetically consistent the writing in a language, the less pronunciation variation there will be, and vice versa?"

By this I refer to regional pronunciation variation.
greg   Tue Aug 08, 2006 11:41 am GMT
Johnathan Mark : « My question is this--can we say that the more phonetically consistent the writing in a language, the less pronunciation variation there will be, and vice versa? »

Très bonne question : difficile d'y répondre.

Je pensais au cas des aveugles qui utilisent le braille comme représentation écrite (mais avisuelle) de la langue qu'ils parlent et dont l'oralité est bel et bien commune avec celle des voyants.

Il faudrait vérifier si le braille est soumis aux mêmes contingences que les systèmes visuels de représentation écrite. Si tel n'était pas le cas, alors, non, la graphie visuelle, même très "éloignée" de la réalisation phonétique, n'aurait a priori aucune influence sur l'oralité puisqu'une graphie avisuelle très "proche" de l'oral ne suffirait pas à différencier les locuteurs aveugles des voyants.
Nightingale   Tue Aug 08, 2006 2:42 pm GMT
"I have also heard that Chinese pronunciation is so varied that there exist multiple words for the same symbol."

Since you're focusing on "regional variation", I assume you're referring to different dialects/languages (status if fuzzy) of Chinese such as Mandarin, Cantonese, and Shanghainese?

Actually, because Chinese is written pictographically, a problem arose with all those dialects: Over the past few thousand years, there evolved GREAT divergence between written and spoken Chinese.

Until the 20th century, Written Chinese remained the same, pretty much like Classical Latin; only problem was, it sounded odd and unnatural when read in any dialect because it was - well - try reading Latin just as you'd read French (pronunciation-wise), and you get my idea. In a way, the pictographs were an IMPEDIMENT to the evolution of a written language that could faithfully represent the language as it is actually spoken and used in daily life.

In the 20th century, scholars tried to modernise Written Chinese during the so-called May Fourth movement. So, they decided to base the new form of written Chinese on Mandarin, since it's the form of Chinese with the most speakers (almost all of Northern China speak some dialect of Mandarin). Problem being that... it's still impossible for any formal piece of Chinese writing to be read naturally in a southern dialect, because their spoken forms are still essentially completely different languages! =p

For instance, the Chinese equivalent of the English possessive pronoun "his" is: 他的
This is natural in Mandarin, in which it would be read "ta de".
If this is read in Cantonese, it would be "ta dik".
HOWEVER, in true Cantonese, as it is spoken in daily life, "his" would be "kui ge".

Therefore, pronouncing written Chinese in Cantonese is almost like using French words in English, but pronouncing "très bien" as "tress byenn"!

(Source: I'm Chinese and speak three dialects: Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese.)
Nightingale   Tue Aug 08, 2006 2:45 pm GMT
Um, so to write a more concise response to your question...

Pictographic = diverse, yes, but resulting in crazy diglossia ;p
Johnathan Mark   Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:28 pm GMT
greg--Interesting scenario with the braille--although I'm not sure I understand it perfectly. I know you won't write in English, but how about Spanish? We would able to communicate better in that way.

Nightingale--Thank you for your input. Are there other examples of diglossia of languages with pictographic writing?

Also, in trying to create a continuum, I am missing quite a few levels, as Spanish is very close to the phonetic side, English is fairly close, but Chinese is (to my knowledge) completely on the pictographic side. Are there any examples in between English and Chinese? How about some of the Semitic languages, whose writing lacks vowels? Has there been great dialectical variation in these languages?
Nightingale   Wed Aug 09, 2006 12:37 am GMT
"Are there any examples in between English and Chinese?"

How about Japanese? It's essentially half phonetic and half pictographic. They have three scripts: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are phonetic alphabets (or "syllabaries" to be exact). Kanji are Chinese characters.

All three scripts are used in conjunction. In other words, the average Japanese sentence has both hiragana and kanji (and often katakana too). What I'm trying to say is that they use phonetic and pictographic elements together in writing, not one or the other exclusively.

As for dialectal variation, yes, they DO exist in Japanese, to a very large extent. As you might guess, the kanji (Chinese characters) used do not vary, but the hiragana (phonetic representation) do indeed vary from dialect to dialect.

For instance, in Kansai-ben (a dialect of Japanese), "said", the past tense of "say", is YUUTA, whereas it is ITTA in Standard Japanese. The first syllable of this word is written in kanji (Chinese character), so the written form for this syllable is unchanged regardless of pronunciation: 言.

Indeed, all kanji used in Japanese seem to have at least two or three variant pronunciations, even in Standard Japanese. One or more of these is "native pronunciation" and one or more has been "borrowed" from Classical Chinese.

The informal copula in Kansai-ben is YA whereas it is DA in Standard Japanese. Since this word is written using hiragana, it is indeed written differently: や for YA and だ for DA.
Nightingale   Wed Aug 09, 2006 12:49 am GMT
Oh, and as far as I'm aware, there's not too much diglossia in Japanese.

Surely, written and spoken Japanese are different, but that's true for almost all languages! And of course, Heian-period poetry is very different from Modern Japanese, but we all know that Old English looks nothing like Modern English.

Hiragana and katakana were developed for a reason: To represent the Japanese language as it is actually used and spoken =)
Johnathan Mark   Wed Aug 09, 2006 12:52 am GMT
Thanks, Nightingale. Anyone else of analysis/examples of any sort? Or counterexamples?
greg   Wed Aug 09, 2006 11:04 am GMT
Johnathan Mark : no es prohibido pensar que los ciegos de nacimiento se expresan con la lengua materna oralmente transmitida por el entorno sociofamiliar. Pero todavía los ciegos no utilizan el mismo sistema de representación escrita que los videntes : su sistema es avisual. Este fenómeno refleja que la oralidad puede exístir independientemente de todos los sistemas de representación, sean cuales sean sus maneras de representar : visual o avisual, como el braille que es un medio táctil de lectura y escritura que no necesita la visión. Desde entonces, ¿ como se podría ser que dos sistemas distintos A y B para videntes influyeren mucho en la evolución de la oralidad ? que de todo formos es compartida con un tercero sistema C — el de los ciegos —, cuya alteridad es contituyente.

NB : no sé si el braille es un copiar-pegar íntegro del sistema alfabético propio a cada lengua o al contrario una remodelación/reordenación de éstes.
lu   Wed Aug 09, 2006 11:51 am GMT
The main reason of the diversity of a language is not the language itself but historic reason like immigration and war.

French, Spanish and Italian all derived from Latin just like Cantonese and Beijingnese from ancient chinese.
Nightingale   Wed Aug 09, 2006 1:16 pm GMT
Indeed, Lu! The relationship between Cantonese and Putonghua (Beijingnese) is just like that between French and Spanish. But because we use pictographs, it's hard to represent Cantonese in written language unless we use some non-standard characters that would be considered informal writing, haha. Don't you agree?
Johnathan Mark   Wed Aug 09, 2006 11:25 pm GMT
Greg--

Its not a question of the system being audio, visual, or otherwise, but rather the nature of the correspendence of the code we call writing with the oral words the represent. In Spanish, the correspondence is very close--a letter (or pattern of dots) in a certain position will be pronounced the same way almost every time. In English, although each letter has a typical value, this value is only sometimes observed when the written word is pronounced. In Chinese, the symbol used to represent a word has nothing to do with the pronunciation. In braille, I'm pretty sure that each group of dots represents a letter, and that groups of these groups forms a word in whatever language.

To illustrate this better imagine if in English we changed the spelling of the following words as follows (the changes would be the same in braille):

bird=agkt
apple=qakgt
house=mmm

Now, the written word does not in any way reflect the pronunciation. Would this encourage the pronunciation to evolve differently in different places?

Lu--what then of dialectical variation within a country? Dialects develop with or without war or migration. My question is whether the nature of the written representation affects dialect development
lu   Thu Aug 10, 2006 1:09 am GMT
Within a country?
Well take British English as an example, there're so many different accents on that island. The diversity is no less than the one in China.

Anyway I still don't think the written form can affect the dialect as much as historical reasons do.
Nightingale   Thu Aug 10, 2006 9:04 am GMT
Lu wrote: "Well take British English as an example, there're so many different accents on that island. The diversity is no less than the one in China."

I have to disagree.

The difference between Mandarin (Putonghua) and Cantonese is comparable to the difference between French and Spanish.

We call these "dialects" (fangyan) in Chinese, but from the linguistic point of view, the spoken forms of Mandarin, Shanghainese (Wu), Cantonese (Yue), Fujiannese (Min), and Hakka (Kejia) are almost like different LANGUGES. These differences are much greater than the difference between, say, London and Edinburgh accents of English.