NativLang Response - The Hardest Language To Spell
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- • Tibetan vs Mongolian -... - Tibetan vs Mongolian, The Hardest Spelling
Some corrections and responses to Nativlang's video about why Tibetan spelling is so difficult.
Note: I love NativLang's videos, and this one he made about Tibetan is no exception. I just wanted to add a few things to the discussion and set a few things straight. Cheers!
4:09 On Page 301, Beyer clarifies that he means གྲོགས་ as a particle, not as the word, stating that based on the Lhasa pronunciation as /ɹô:/, he believes the particle evolved from the word, but shifted to be pronounced as གརོགས, , with fossilized spelling, though I think he should have said "See page 301 and footnote ibid." when he begins talking about the གྲོགས་ pronounced as /ɹô:/ in Lhasa Tibetan.
I think the problem with this video is that you're coming at the video from the wrong direction. It was prefaced with a spelling bee, so the problem is going from the sounds of the language to the spelling. This video seems to be mostly about going from the spelling to the pronunciation, which is relevant, but I don't think that is the main point.
but even if you're going from pronunciation to spelling, there are many languages where it's very ambiguous. take french, where plural and feminine forms of many words are pronounced the same, and often the 1st person singular, 2nd person singular, 3rd person singular, and sometimes the 3rd person plural are pronounced the same.
about the retroflexes, going by the Wikipedia page implies it varies between stop and affricate
The hardness on the spelling of Tibetan is basically the same as the ones on French
in tibetan language, alot of the same sound refers to a lot of different things....thats why spelling became hard to distinct which word your reading about....
My god I thought I mispronounced it, thank god I kept my gut feeling on the retroflex, I’m currently learning Lhasa.
I think the excuse "but English has that," but "but Hangul has that" aren't really valid since technically speaking, every language has some annoying parts about its script. I do think that tibetan still remains one of the hardest languages to spell and read.
I wonder how Josh took this if he looked at it.
Algorithm brought me.
People have been making attempts to respell Ladakhi language, related to Tibetan. They have experienced push back from Tibetans within Ladakh.
Oh shit, I had no idea. Admittedly I don't know a tonne about Ladakhi apart from the fact that it is a lot more conservative in it's pronunciation than other Tibetan dialects/languages. Not knowing enough about the situation in Ladakh, I wouldn't dare make a judgement call; though yeah, people are often very resistent to change of any kind aren't they. I guess to be fair sometimes it is justified, there are some good reasons for not wanting to change your languages spelling. Though there are also often a lot of bad ones too. Like I said though, I don't know enough bout this situation in particular.
nice video, and josh made a video on kanji next
Yeah, I have seen it, though to be honest, I don't have too much to add to it 🤣. It's a good vid, everything he says in it is pretty accurate 🤣
one question: did the silent sounds use to be spelled in old tibetan?
If you mean did they used to be pronounced, then yes for the most part they did, tho I have heard of some cases where people have changed the spelling over time so in those cases obviously the answer is no.
People don't realize that English spelling is just as clusterfucked.
Well at least Tibetan has strict spelling rules unlike English
yeah i don't think it would be too hard to parody nativlang's video to be about english. "you might figure out that the g is silent in "sign" and pronounce it /sɪn/. but that "i" is pronounced /aj/, because of the g after it. /sajn/. /ɪ/ to /aj/ isn't the only change g does (like impugn) and g isn't the only letter that does this (indict). even if you do figure out how to pronounce sign, you'll have to throw that all away in "signature", where the g is pronounced."