Re: Western scripts

From: Donald R. Oddy <donald_at_grove.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 15:35:39 GMT


>From: Chris Lemens <chrislemens_at_yahoo.com>

>True (mostly) also of English today. It took me weeks
>to understand more than three fourths of what my Irish
>in-laws were saying. My limited exposure to English
>cockney indicates it was incomprehensible to me.
>African-American dialects in America are often
>intentionally obscure. And if you want me whip out my
>east Texas dialect, the non-Americans on the list will
>probably understand little.

If you have trouble with Cockney and Irish English you'd be really stumped by Glaswegian and especially Geordie. As you say a lot of it is just different pronunciation but there are also dialect words which don't necessarily have a direct translation and phrases which have a meaning unrelated to the words usual meaning.

It is not restricted to English either, the German spoken in Bavaria is quite different from that spoken in the north.

In Glorantha it will be far worse because the population mixing that has ocurred in the modern world hasn't happened and in some places social status will also influence the language spoken.

>Nonetheless, you still understood what I just wrote.

That's because you're not writing in dialect. I have seen some dialect writing, Lancashire and Yorkshire mostly, and it is quite difficult to read. More difficult than the spoken is to listen to because the writers have had to modify normal spelling to reflect the way the words are spoken. That's on top of unusual words and phrases.

>The only big difference I see with Peter's statement
>about Arabic is that English is decent at symbolizing
>dialects. Not great, because of its limited notations
>for vowel sounds (Boston a vs. Texas a, for example),
>but decent.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/


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