Englophone
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- čas přidán 14. 05. 2024
- Have you ever thought that the traditional Roman alphabet (the one we use in English) seemed somewhat shoehorned into the English language? Well, that turns out to be true. So I designed a 38-letter alphabet specifically for English. Join me as we go through the letters one-by-one.
Read about it on my website:
www.keanimusic.com/other-proj...
Cheers,
KeaniMusic
I love this. As a native English speaker, I knew virtually none of this about the language. This sheds light on what's really going on with speech and writing.
Thank you! That was my hope with this video so I'm glad it was successful.
There's an entire discipline which studies this stuff. It's called linguistics. When I suggested that some basic linguistic concepts be introduced into spelling and reading instruction in English, as well as into foreign language instruction, I was irrationally shouted down by my professors. That just goes to show that the American education system is designed to keep the students uniformed so that they will have no critical thinking skills and can be treated as cattle and sheep.
Interesting material presented clearly, intelligently, and articulately, with snappy editing, helpful visuals, and some good laughs. This scholar is one to watch.
Thank you!
I appreciate the fact that you put effort into adding symbols that jive with the current English letters/symbols.
Agreed, I think this is key.
Thank you! Yeah, the thing with the Shavian alphabet is that it's just hard to read for an English speaker. The Roman-esque symbols are still somewhat difficult to read, but they are easier.
@@mikegeorge360 Yeah :)
About your definition of affricates and calling vowel pairs affricates: An affricate isn't just two random sounds said together, it specifically refers to a series of a plosive and a fricative with similar place of articulation. creating a motion where you build up and release air into a turbulent flow. Examples:
pf, bv, tθ, dð, ts, dz, tʃ, dʒ, ʈʂ, ɖʐ, tɕ, dʑ, kx, ɡɣ, qχ, ɡʁ. Counterexamples: aɪ, oʊ, ks, and pretty much anythinɡ not listed above
This is true, the correct term would be Diphthong, for the vowels that is
Wow! I did not realize your Alphabet video was so close to completion! I can't wait to see this and I hope the Algorithm is generous with this one :)
Yeah! I was working on editing it (almost) all day yesterday. I only have 4 shorts to edit (they are all 20-40 seconds though) and then this project is done! I'm so excited to work on KeaniMusic some more! :-)
@@DiegoKeaneMusic Oh yeah :) I have been very excited for KeaniMusic ever since I saw the trailer :)
@@Spiked_Energy_19 Yeah! It's gonna be awesome :-)
small correction. in old english, eth and thorn were not used exclusively for voiced and voiceless dental fricatives respectively. they were actually weirdly used interchangeably for both, and for a while eth was most widely used but over time it became almost exclusively thorn used.
Hmmm. Thanks for letting me know. I've gotten a few corrections for this video (one being that the Russian alphabet does, in fact, have cases), so I'll pin a comment with those corrections. :D
@@DiegoKeaneMusic Whether the claim made by @lesbianethera is correct or not, you should maintain letters for both the voiced and unvoiced interdental fricatives in your alphabet.
Yup I think that’s because they were allophonic, for example þ was usually pronounced voiced between two letters but didn’t convey any different meaning than if it were pronounced voiceless
@@aLadNamedNathan seconded. i just wanted to explain that that’s not how it was in old english. if i were bringing these letters back today i would wholly support assigning them according to voicedness
Nice video, I love how clear, structured and clean looking it was. I think you have a lot of potential to get big on CZcams. What I‘m missing is some examples of how things would be written in englophone though to get a feeling for how it would look and how it would impact readability. As is, the video mostly explored English phonology instead of an improved writing system for it, which is what englophone is supposed to be. Still interesting though! Just a b idea for the next video maybe :)
I really like this reform, but, I think it’s possible to do more with adding less letters
My spelling reform:
C is now repurposed as /tʃ/
X is now repurposed as /ʃ/
Q is now standalone, always making the /kʷ/ sound, even without a U
/ŋ/ is represented by ŋ
/θ/ is now represented with thorn (þ)
/ð/ is now represented with eth (ð)
/ʒ/ is now represented by a z with a caron (ž)
VOWELS:
a for /æ/
e for /ɛ/
i for /ɪ/
o for /ɑ/
u for /ʊ/
ey for /eɪ/
ay for /aɪ/
ow for /oʊ/
aw for /aʊ/
oy for /oɪ/
ii for /iː/
uu for /uː/
ë for /ə/
That is all
This is so interesting and I appreciate all the work you put into this. Great job!
Thank you!
Hey dude! I really enjoyed your video and the effort you put in to try and make a potential spelling reform, I think that if you keep up your research and stick at it you'll become even more knowledgeable in things like this and linguistics and whatnot. I think something you might enjoy learning about might be the full history of the Latin alphabet, especially from it's early proto-sinaitic ancestors, get this, all of our vowel graphemes were actually used for consonants in the beginning! Our letter A for example was once used for the aforementioned glottal stop. If you were to revisit this project I just have a few constructive recommendations. Try to keep the etymology of words in mind to some extent. Homophones, or words with the same pronunciations from different etymological backgrounds, is wildly prevalent in English. Often times we can just distinguish what they mean from context in speech, but it is still convenient in writing to keep some distinction. Also try to use more historical graphemes when possible or give using diacritics a shot, those can keep the grapheme count down while distinguishing different sounds from others at the same time. Or here is another idea, maybe make a transcription system where the units that represent sound can be divided into place of articulation and manner of articulation and you craft the graphemes in similar manner to how a system like hangul works. Also read up on the IPA, or the international phonetic alphabet (not the beer you seem a little young for that), it is super helpful for yourself and others! Overall fantastic video, you definitely executed a manner of professionalism and drive for the subject and I exhort you to keep up the good work! 🙂also sorry this so long xD, I just hope you find some of it useful thats all🙂
This would really benefit from chapters/segments/whatever YT calls them now, to quickly jump between parts of a video
Thank you, I have thought about that and will be getting around to it soon :D
My prediction of C,Q,X sounds
C(ch) chain(written as ceyn)
Q(th) weather(written as weqr)
British(RP):weqa
X(ng) singer(written as sixr)
British(RP):sixa
Still 26 letters
Schwas are unwritten in GA
epic sauce
Thanks! :D
I like the idea of English spelling reforms and new writing systems and I’ve made a few myself. At the same time, I wish they were presented more as fun thought experiments rather than practical solutions to writing that will really be implemented.
(Also midway through you said Cyrillic (Russian) doesn’t have upper and lowercases, but it most certainly does, it was just introduced to the later than in the Latin alphabet.)
Anyways, great video!
Amazing! I really look the scenery.
Thank you!
I love the slides you designed, it's very very cool!! Nice work on Englophone
Thank you! :D
13:43 I forgot that island isn't pronounced "is land"
My picks:
Plosives
Ch(Ч)
PBTDKGЧJ'
Glottal stop=apostrophe
Fricatives
FVSZCЖФH
Ф=th and dh(both at once)
Ж=zh
C=sh
With(with,wiф)
This(dhis,фis)
Liquid nasals
LRWYMNИ
I used И for ng
Vowels
AE(aye)IO(awe)U(same as Italian)
Schwa=Ъ
Ai=Я
Au=Э
Oi=Ю
Eu=Г
Boy(bю)
Weather(weфъ)
Clown(klэn)
Europa(гropa)
Eye(я)
Sky(skя)
Play(plè)
Snow(snò)
This reminds me of the Shavian alphabet.
Yeah. Actually this video was inspired by a video I saw about the Shavian alphabet. :D
Imagine screaming in this language
"AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"
ПППППППП
RobWords made a video similar to this. It's called "There's a better English alphabet."
Very professional and well done :) 👍No wonder it took a while to make.
Thank you!
@@DiegoKeaneMusic You are welcome :) [Note: Did you see my most recent message I Emailed you?]
@@Spiked_Energy_19 No not yet. Let me check real quick
@@Spiked_Energy_19 I just checked, I'm so sorry to hear that a tragedy happened to one of your friends.
@@DiegoKeaneMusic Thank you :) I really appreciate that :)
wonderful
Thank you!
5:22 Þ and Ð didn't make two different sounds (English only had /θ/ at the time). Þ was used at the start of words (or start of a part of a compound word) and Ð was used anywhere else (also, /θ/ and /ð/ are barely distinct in English, most speakers think of them as the same sound)
That sounds like how Modern Icelandic uses them. Old English well... that was quite the mixture. Like Æðelþryð could be written like that but also with all þorns or all eðs. So it's definitely a good idea to separate these in Modern English.
@@weepingscorpion8739 I don't think the distinction is that important in Modern English; the only minimal pairs are thigh-thy, thistle-this'll and (depending on how you pronounce "either") either-ether
@@aer0a Ðat still seems important enough to me. It may even become even more important in ðe future, so I wouldn't brush over it like ðat.
Very amazing video!
Thank you!
Could you provide an IPA transcription for the vowels? I can't really tell what phonemes most of them represent.
Are cot /ɒ/ and caught /ɔ/ merged? What about father /ɑ/ and bother /ɒ/? I can't really tell, because the transcription isn't IPA.
why haven't I heard this language before?!
She sells sea shells by the sea shore
ßi sels si ßels bai ça si ßor
😂😂😂
I made an alphabet in Comic Sans which is a weird mix of Greek and English
For "th" sound I used Delta
For "sh" sound I used Psi
Who writes "dishwasher" as dipswapser😂😂😂 r/grssk
The cyrillic (Russian) alphabet does have cases, they are just more often more similar than in the latin alphabet but your example of the letter A is the same in cyrillic.
Oh thanks for the information! I guess I just did not look hard enough 👍
@@DiegoKeaneMusic No worries, we are all here to learn. Just keep open minded and curious.
I learned Russian in university for one semester and was happy for the letters that are familiar =)
@@twipameyer1210 Yeah :-)
My new alphabet:Phonography
Phonography=Phones+Graphs
It has over 30 letters
Example:the letter "ai" looks like a Я
Яs krim???(ice cream)
interesting
I made a new letter "thee"
Design:Ф
How is Ф pronounced "uh"?
I pronounce it "th"
Example:Greek word(thermometer)
Фermometro
how did you modify futura?
Hey, nice video. So, how do you propose I write "a poor lady", given that American and British accents use different vowels in "poor" there might or might not be an intrusive "r" after "poor" and which form of the article "a" I should write (weak or strong)?
Thank you! Not familiar with the terminology of "weak" vs "strong" form, but there are two basic ways you could write "a poor lady":
The "proper" way: spelling it exactly as the official pronunciation:
Δ PσR LΔD+
(or Pσ, if you're saying it with a British accent)
The "casual" way: transcribing it like how it is said out loud. This way has more variations than the other one, because of dialects, but for example you could say:
ə PσR LΔD+ (again, you could drop the R in "PσR" if you're saying it with a British accent)
In this example phrase, the only difference in the spelling is pronouncing "a" as Δ versus ə, but in other sentences there are other differences that can arise.
TLDR: There are two ways of spelling in Englophone: the "proper" way (spelling it exactly how it is pronounced in the dictionary), and the "casual" way (spelling it exactly as it was said). In this example phrase, the only difference in the spelling is pronouncing "a" as Δ versus ə, but other differences can be found in other phrases.
@@DiegoKeaneMusic I see, I'm sorry, about talking about intrusive "r" I was convinced I wrote "a poor animal", which is transcribed as /(eɪ/e)pɔː(r)ˈæn.ɪ.məl/ in British i.e. 2 variants (not counting the article) and there's one American using /pʊr/ for poor. And to my knowledge these variants are "proper", the transcriptions are from the Cambridge dictionary.
All in all, what I wanted to add is some additional variety, but I get your idea that accent makes an impact on the way we write in your alphabet.
@@user-fh5rm2ef4n Yeah. In my alphabet, there may be some ambiguity because of differing spellings, but context will typically clear it up. (Kind of how we rely on context when dealing with homophones.)
In many accents, "pore", "pour" and "poor" sound the same but in my accent, "pore" is different. Who decides on the "correct" pronunciation?
How would you write the Scots pronunciation of the "ch" sound as in "loch"?
@@THECORBYLOON The writer decides depending on the context.
About the "ch" sound like in "loch", I specifically thought about that but since it's not very common in the English language, I decided to leave it out. (Maybe it will be included in next year's video.)
You could represent it with an "x", though.
2:13 Can the letters (or better, sounds) of English be split into five groups? They can actually be split up into a lot of different groups. They could even be split up into groups where one individual sound is a member of more than one group-thus making a Venn diagram necessary to visualize it all. The most basic split is between vowels and consonants. Your five groups are not too bad, but you’re missing glides as a group. It also might not hurt to bring up affricates and diphthongs here.
4:10 “The Russian alphabet doesn’t have cases.” I know you said alphabet and not language, but I’d be careful here. The Russian language has cases, which are something completely different than upper- and lower-case letters in the alphabet, and your terminology could cause confusion. Furthermore, you’re wrong about the Russian alphabet not having upper- and lower-case letters. It does have them. It’s just that most of the lower-case ones are just smaller versions of the upper-case ones-but there are a few that do have different forms. Ironically, you had just spoken about one that is shared by both the Roman and Russian alphabets, namely the letter A, which has exactly the same differentiation between upper- and lower-case forms in both alphabets.
7:09 While it is not incorrect to call them “plosives,” it sounds rather old-fashioned and/or British to do so. They’re more commonly referred to as “stops” in today’s America. I own a t-shirt which reads “Ain’t no party like a fricative party, ‘cause a fricative party don’t stop!” That joke doesn’t work if you call them plosives.
7:18 Who’s Larry?
7:26 “Plosives are sounds made by building up air and then releasing it somewhat violently all at once.” Well yes, that’s true-as far as it goes. You fail to mention how the air is built up, which is the key point. It’s built up by creating an occlusion in the vocal tract using the glottis, tongue, or lips-which stops up the air, thus allowing it to be released all at once in a burst.
7:38 I don’t like the fact that you include the CH and J sounds among the stops. They are affricates (as you know)-and you haven’t even explained what fricatives are yet! The affricates should be in their own category, following the stop and fricative categories.
7:39 The glottal stop is not phonemic in English; hence, it shouldn’t be represented in an alphabet designed for English.
9:07 But does the glottal stop precede every vowel that seems to be word-initial (at least in spelling)? NO! You’re taking a feature of your own dialect and misapplying it far too broadly across the entire English language. This presence of the glottal stop in your dialect is called “hard attack.” Dr. Geoff Lindsey has a good video about how this has entered the English language recently. It’s called “Hard Attack: How English Is Getting More Choppy.”
BTW, German does have language-wide hard attack. I wish someone had told me that when I started studying German. I didn’t learn about it until after I had been studying German for years, and now I know my pronunciation is off. It’s hard to unlearn something you’ve been doing incorrectly for years!
9:43 I’ve been aware of typoglycemia (a/k/a transposed letter effect) for many years, but I didn’t know it had a name. Thank you!
12:07 “There are four liquids.” NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! There are two liquids in English, namely L and R. W and Y are glides! Glides are like vowels that don't get a syllable beat.
13:23 What you call “vowel affricates” are properly called diphthongs. There are three in English which are phonemic, and four which are not phonemic because they’re entirely predictable.
You’ve correctly identified I as one of the phonemic ones. The other two phonemic ones are OW as in “how,” and OY as in “boy.” These two should have their own letters in your system.
The non-phonemic diphthongs are the AY as in “hay,” O as in “go,” EE as in “beet,” and OO as in “boot.” The front vowels AY and EE predictably and consistently glide up toward the roof of the mouth so that they end in a Y sound. This is why they’re referred to as off-glides. (Off-glides from tense vowels are one of the biggest mistakes that will give you an English accent when speaking a foreign language.) BTW, you identified the E in bed as one of the vowels with an off-glide. Sorry, but no. The correct vowel is the AY in “hay.” The difference between those vowels is the tense/lax distinction.
With the back vowels O and OO, they predictably and consistently glide up toward the roof of the mouth so that they end in a W sound-again, a totally non-phonemic off-glide.
Although I’m impressed with your budding study of linguistics, I’ll leave you with a word of advice. The market for linguistics jobs is incredibly small.
Thank you for such thoughtful feedback.
WHO IS THAT
that is me
@@DiegoKeaneMusic okay
It looks like Armenian(almost)
linguistics channel with only 160 subs ran by a kid? hell yea
Thank you! Usually I make music and computer animations, but I also am into phonetics and linguistics, yeah :D
Do you have any recommendations for good linguistics channels? Here are mine:
Ben Llywelyn
Dave Huxtable
Dr Geoff Lindsey
imshawn getoffmylawn
Jackson Crawford
JuLingo
K Klein
Langfocus
Language Simp
languagejones
Learn Hittite
Ling Thusiasm
NativLang
polyMATHY
RobWords
Simon Roper
Xidnaf
the problem with phonetic spelling reforms is that noone pronounces things the same way, which could be for multiple reasons such as a dialect or a speech disorder. so u either have to reuse the *entirety* of the ipa (which has alot of inconveniences), or have one singular standard dialect that must never be anything else
also i love how under-researched this video is speaking as an aspiring linguist myself. also glottal stop is voiceless since a voiced glottal stop isnt a sound that can be produced by a human, hope u got ur answer!
For an aspiring linguist yourself, you have very little to offer here or on your page.
@@VirtuousHereticKristin i dont post videos on yt anymore i currently have no motivation to continue uploading
Not sure if criticism made you stop, but I would encourage you to ignore that and keep creating. You don’t have to be perfect to share your art with the world.
@@VirtuousHereticKristin, that's a great way of putting it -- you don't have to be perfect to share your art with the world. I wish I'd learned that younger than I did.
@@VirtuousHereticKristin I agree
bro your camera is stuttering
Hmm let me look at that
He had a human tripod!
nevermind seems to just be my pc having a bad day yesterday, playing this video on my phone works just fine
I suggest you replace the letter Eth with Ꟙ, as it is inconsistent with Theta. Ꟙ derived from the Greek lowercase Delta, which makes the DH sound in Modern Greek, the same sound as Eth. Ꟙ is used because Δ is taken for a vowel sound. Plus, Eth is a dumb letter.