Talk:Orthography

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Constrained writing

I've removed the following:

Writing that blends meaning and orthography is called constrained writing.

Surely writing that belnds meaning and orthography is, um, meaningful writing. Constrained writing can be many things, but it tends to be a bit more constrained than "it must make sense". --Camembert

United Bible Society

Surely that should be United Bible Society? Can someone who has the book please check? -- mpt, 2003-06-04

Orthography vs. Writing system

What is the principled distinction between this article and writing system? Most of this article could be transplanted into the latter. --Ryguasu 00:16 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

History

A bit on the history of orthography wouldn't hurt if anybody has the required knowledge. -- 82.82.146.239 22:37, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Observation

The rule "i before e except after c" is wrong. "Feign" clearly is an exception. How can it be an orthagraphic rule if orthography means "how to write correctly"? Surely this is not an orthographic rule. Rintrah 13:09, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not wrong; that's just a truncated version. "I before e except after c and when sounding like a as in neighbor or weigh..." I'm pretty sure that's not the end of the rhyme, either. Besides, English is famous for nothing if not exceptions. J.M. Archer (talk) 19:40, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, but that doesn't explain words such as "protein". 23:44, 5 May 2010 (UTC)~

As a rule of thumb, "i before e except after c" is quite good. An exception is weird. English has many irregular spellings; only a tiny percentage of "i,e" words do not conform. I haven't worked out the precise coefficient of determination, but its goodness of fit must be pretty high. Any one who fancies proposing a pithy generalisation with fewer inadequacies is welcome to have a go. I could cite "Why Kids Can't Read" as a source (though it speaks American), if only I could recall the author.Memethuzla (talk) 13:06, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

The word protein, while apparently an exception to the "when sounding as ee" rule, is only spoken "proteen" because it originally was pro-tee-in and then got contracted.--2001:A61:260D:6E01:A865:1FCA:DA8A:D95E (talk) 19:04, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

According to Wells's Longman Pronunciation Dictionary it is correct to pronounce protein with either two or three syllables in RP. And according to my copy of Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary this is also the case in American English. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:58, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

German "efficiency"

Quoting the spelling Tzschaetzsch as an example for German orthography is not very good. No German in their right mind would write the name in this way. Normally, it would be spelled Tschätsch. In normal German orthography "tz" on the beginning on a word isn't valid, as well as "tz" before "sch". Moreover, "ae" is never written vor umlaut-a, instead the letter "ä" is used. Such crazy spellings only occur in names derived from Slavic languages and also then they're very seldom. Furthermore, "Tschätsch" is not a personal name in German, but a (seldom) surname. 62.46.180.91

The link for multiple language spell checker is broken

When I click this link http://www.rechtschreibprüfung24.de/ I get a "Can not find server" error.

198.85.228.129 13:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Defectiveness

I guess that English is defective because "th" doesn't differ between [ð] and [θ], but how is Italian and Arabian orthography defective? Maybe the article would need a short explanation? 惑乱 分からん 10:39, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

There are many many other reasons why English spelling is defective (why, after all, do we write defective and not defektiv?). Arabic is defective inasmuch as short vowels are not normally represented—some sounds can also be represented in more than one way (like the /n/ at the end of shukran, which is not written with the normal sign for /n/). And that's just Modern Standard Arabic—the everyday colloquial forms are barely even represented in writing. I'm less sure about Italian, though I'm sure an example will come to me. Perfectly phonemic alphabets are very rare. garik 12:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought that a defective orthography had sounds it couldn't mark in writing... 惑乱 分からん 13:09, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't have said so: to me a defective orthography is one where either there are distinctions that can't be represented in writing or where there are obsolete or redundant letters (basically where the one-letter-per-phoneme system breaks down) I'm not an orthography experts, however, so I may be misusing a term that has a narrower scope among specialists. garik 13:21, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Arabic is the text-book case of a defective orthography, because of the lack of vowels. Even long vowels - since they are written by consonants, it's not apparent that a vowel is intended without a knowledge of the language. That Arabic doesn't need to be written with vowels in order to be understood is irrelevent to the question, as is the fact that vowels can be written, since they generally aren't (the Koran, dictionaries, and children's primars notwithstanding).

Italian is defective because the script doesn't distinguish /ts/ from /dz/, and only has five letters for seven vowels. I believe this info was originally in the article, but it looks like someone took it out as excess detail. kwami 21:00, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

What is the sixth and seventh vowel of Italian? There are just the five, which then can be long or not, stressed or not or part of a diphthong or not.--2001:A61:260D:6E01:A865:1FCA:DA8A:D95E (talk) 19:07, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

The seven Italian vowel phonemes in stressed syllables are /i e ɛ a ɔ o u/. And Italian has neither phonemic vowel length not phonemic diphthongs. See Italian phonology. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:46, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, not being an Italian native speaker I don't know whether vowel length is phonemic, but I treated /e ɛ/ and /ɔ o/ as varieties (not to be freely choosen) of the same vowel, depending on the position and, possibly, also the length (not sure how exactly to give a rule), perhaps even in some words distinct without relation to position, but certainly not phonemically. But Italian obviously does have diphthongs, whether phonemic or not, such as /aʊ/ in Paolo.--2001:A61:260D:6E01:A865:1FCA:DA8A:D95E (talk) 20:35, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Here are examples of /e/ vs. /ɛ/ and /o/ vs. /ɔ/: (se) corresse (più velocemente) /korˈresse/ "(if) he/she/it ran (faster)" vs. (lei) corresse (i compiti) /korˈrɛsse/ "(she) corrected (the homework)" and (se) fosse (vero) /ˈfosse/ "(if) it were (true)" vs. (le) fosse (scavate) /ˈfɔsse/ "(the dug) graves."

Paolo /ˈpaolo/ certainly doesn't have /aʊ/ but a sequence of /a/ plus /o/; note that /ao/ is different from /au/ in Laura /ˈlaura/. Similarly: trae /ˈtrae/ "he/she/it pulls" vs. trai /ˈtrai/ "you (sg.) pull." Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 21:07, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

To a German ear, neither of the sounds in Paolo and Laura sound any different from the sound au in Glückauf - or the ao in Kakao (though that's the one and only occasion this sound is written ao in German), customarily written as /aʊ/. (A fact that comes as a surprise to those who read the word Paolo before hearing it spoken and think it is spoken /paˈɔ:lo/.) In any case, though, it's a diphtong, and since Laura and Lara (a name that is, I guess, foreign in Italy but not unthinkable) may well be two different women, it is phonemic. Thanks for the answer, especially for the interesting open vs. closed minimal pairs. The same, now writing as --138.245.1.1 (talk) 14:01, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Hmm...

The statement "These are all considerations in the design of a writing system" is, for lack of a better word, misleading. It implies that writing systems were actually designed, rather than simply evolving over time through cultural/social means. I'm going to remove the sentence for now. If someone can rewrite it so that it's meaningful, give it a shot. Fuzzform (talk) 01:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You have a point when it comes to orthographies of major languages, which are often in place for centuries, and they just keep growing, often wildly. There are, however, numerous smaller languages in the world which undergo language development. Usually, the first order of business in language development is orthography-design. Ideally, linguists will work together with the language community to come up with an orthography which serves the people best. This is a design process, and the abovementioned considerations are important for this. Landroving Linguist (talk) 16:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Some writing systems were most definitely designed, often developed from earlier established scripts like Pali. An example that sprung to mind was Thai, which was established under the then King Amkhamhaeng the Great. Another example is the faintly ridiculous Katakana; allegedly, the Japanese realised that Western languages could not be adequately transcribed in Hiragana, so tasked some scholars with filling the gap. What they did was simply to copy Hiragana using different symbols, producing a system with exactly the same inadequacies. Very amusing, but a little stupid. See List_of_inventors_of_writing_systems.Memethuzla (talk) 14:41, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Not true, katakana was not designed with Western languages in mind. Both katakana and hiragana were developed in the Heian period, the former for transcribing Buddhist sutras and the latter as a cursive shorthand for Man'yōgana. In fact before WWII katakana was preferred to hiragana in official documents. Only in 1946 were the usages of the two kana systems separated the way they are now. Not because katakana was somehow seen as better fitting to Western languages, just for better parsing: Japanese is written without spaces, so the three writing systems help delineate word boundaries (though not in all cases). Since Western loanwords usually cannot be written with kanji it was decided that they should be written in katakana to separate them from native and Chinese words.83.243.71.142 (talk) 10:13, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Complex orthographies

The text currently says "Complex orthographies often combine different types of scripts and/or utilize many different complex punctuation rules." AFAIK, punctuation has nothing to do with it. There are several issues--combining different types of scripts is, I guess, one of them (someone who knows more about Japanese can perhaps confirm that). Other issues include the use of context-sensitive forms of letters (like Arabic), and complex rules for positioning when combining characters (Bengali and many other languages written with Indic scripts). But I am looking at this from the perspective of computer rendering of written forms, and maybe there are other considerations when it comes to hand-written texts (like the number of different characters in the writing system). Mcswell (talk) 03:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Typology

Shouldn't etymological spelling be one of the kinds of spelling systems together with phonemic and morpho-phonemic? --Antonielly (talk) 21:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Interesting, but why? What do you mean by "etymological spelling"? Supply some examples, please. Cheers Bjenks (talk) 00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

For instance, in Portuguese, the word hospital (stress on the last syllable). The "h" is not pronounced in Portuguese, it is there only due to etymological reasons. If the Portuguese ortography were phonemic (one of the categories listed in the article), that word would be written ospital.

In English, I could mention the words colonel and kernel. If the ortography were phonemic rather than etymological in those cases, then those two words would be written the same. --Antonielly (talk) 11:00, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Good, but aren't these examples of the "defectiveness", ie, irregularity, accounted for in the article? I understand how etymology can cause irregularity in both pronunciation and semantics (cf shirt-skirt, brush-brake, and OE blac (black) vs blac (pale). But I also see that orthographic spelling and pronunciation are logically about morphemes, phonemes and an appreciation of "defective" examples. If we add an 'etymology' type, will we perhaps then have to include further types, eg, modern spelling reform, dialect and sociolect, etc? Or are all such 'types' best handled in the separate articles proper to them? Bjenks (talk) 12:39, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

This seems completely inadequate as a typology of orthographic systems. I know of no source (and the article cites none) that divides the world of orthographies into phonemic, morpho-phonemic, and defective, full-stop. These terms seem to be applicable only to alphabets, abjads, and syllabaries. Where are the logographic or mixed orthographies? Should transcription systems not commonly used by speakers (ASL comes to mind, as does IPA) be considered another type? I really don't know, but I would bet that scholars have considered such questions. If they have, cite them. If they have not, this section is original research and therefore inappropriate for Wikipedia.

This is not my area of expertise, but I'm fairly sure that the current typology misrepresents world orthographies, so I would be surprised if it does not misrepresent the state of accepted scholarship.

By the way, the typology section only mentions the terms "alphabet", "abjad", and "syllabary" in passing, and they are not defined anywhere on the page. These should be key terms in a typology, I think. At the very least they should be defined on a page about orthography. Cnilep (talk) 04:16, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Each subject matter you can cut up according to different typologies. Orthographies are no exception. Whether an orthography is based on phonemes, syllables, morphemes - that is a typology according to the dimension on what is represented. The typology in this article rather asks how things are represented in orthographies based on sounds (phonemes or syllables). Of course both typologies feature in the literature. I agree with you that phonemic, morphophonemic or defective is not a very happy way to express things, and rather reflects the state of the discussion in the 1960s. A better idea you may get from Keith Snider's Linguistic factors in orthography design from 2001 (published in: Ngessimo M. Mutaka and Sammy B. Chumbow, Research mate in African linguistics: focus on Cameroon p. 323-332. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag). This article discusses the question of which level of linguistic representation should be used in orthography design, and argues for the lexical level, as opposed to the post-lexical level. As I say, it is just another dimension according to which to classify orthographies. Landroving Linguist (talk) 07:06, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for that very useful pointer. I will see whether my university's library has the book.

To the subject of this page as currently written, though, I take you comments to imply that independent sources do not advocate the particular typological system described here, is that right? Or were you suggesting that work in the 1960s did use such a system? As you say, it is possible to create any number of typologies. If that described here was created by WP editors for this page, though, it seems out of step with the policy WP:No original research.

Perhaps a workable stop-gap for the time being would be to simply remove the header "Typology" and leave the actual content untouched, pending better sourcing? Cnilep (talk) 06:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

The way you did it now appears to be a good solution for the time being. I agree with your point on original research. Landroving Linguist (talk) 09:30, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Kurdic Orthography

Yesterday I reverted an edit setting a link to the Kurdic Academy of Language web site. When I checked the site, it was off-line, which is why I removed that link. Today I checked again, and the site is up and running, and immensely interesting. I would still think that the link is not appropriate for a page dealing with othography in general, but others might disagree with me on this. If so, then someone with a user name should put up the link once more. Landroving Linguist (talk) 13:32, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Orthographies and dyslexia

Could anyone familiar with orthogaphy and Orthography drop by and have a look? I'm getting a strong feeling it's turning into a content fork. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 19:41, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The duplication of orthography content is surely harmful and the article appears to be presenting a thesis or pov. If allowable, such a technique can open up a new world of comparative pov encyclopedics, e.g., General Motors and Ford :) Cheers Bjenks (talk) 13:42, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

So, in the absence of any disagreement, I've merged the content to Dyslexia research#Orthographies and dyslexia, complete with its shortcomings and tags. Cheers Bjenks (talk) 04:24, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

We need help to develop this artilce not have it moved around. This is part of the Dyslexia project series of articles, and the relevant discussions about this article are on Talk:Orthographies and dyslexia . The article was referred the article to be deleted, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Orthographies and dyslexiaConsensus was to Keep the article and develop the content in a multi discipline way with contributions from all interested specialists, so all content contributions are welcome. dolfrog (talk) 08:07, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Orthography [Revision 02:56, 26 July 2009]

Sorry, I agree my "content contribution" was too much close to a joke, so it was right to undo it.
As an italian who (tries to) use english, I (childly) just couldn't resist when I read "citation needed" referred to "English is among the least phonemic [orthographies]" !

With respect and gratitude to the wiki comunity,
bye,
Michele. --84.220.224.242 (talk) 13:47, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

A new verb; To orthograph

Can I propose a new verb? If it doesn't already exist then it really should - to orthograph.

Orthograph vb. The act of transliterating words into a standard spelling. Thus Chaucer's 'Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote, the droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote...' can be orthographed as 'When that April with his showers sweet, the drought of March hath pierced to the root...' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.1.107 (talk) 09:44, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

If serious: WP:OR. If not: WP:NOT#CHAT. Mutt Lunker (talk) 22:50, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Importance of Orthography

The importance of orthography is stressed in the studies of Linguistic. So the subject of it's important should be a main focus of the Wikipedia page for the overall topic of orthography. The information on orthography is already limited, new facts and connection to other topics can boost the overall length of the article.

Contingent variation

Sometimes there may be variation in a language's orthography, as between American and British spelling in the case of English orthography.

In the formal Canadian register, our orthography is predominantly British. In the informal register, our orthography is rife with Americanisms, almost to the point where anything goes (from either camp): even if the document on its own terms is inconsistent from one place to another.

At the semi-formal end—where the writer projects an educated persona, but might not be writing a formal piece as such—it's considered bad form to mix and match on an inconsistent basis (choose one or the other on each major decision point and stick with it), but only the most vigilant fussbudget reads carefully enough to notice this (Margaret Atwood?), so in practice this has little ultimate import (apart from, I suspect, some internal, rivalrous score-keeping).

It's not that different in Canada with measurement, either.

You can mix kg and °F in the same document (like a blog post), hardly anyone would bat an eyelash, though randomly switching between kg and lbs in the same document would attract some notice. You can also use °K for gas cylinders, °C for outdoor temperature, and then °F for your souffle recipe in the same post, and no Canadian would find this weird, either (living as a quasi-British culture as the cranial cumberbund of The Beast as we do, the "when in Rome" factor in Canada is unusually contextual). Canadian ovens are all in Fahrenheit, Canadian radio is all in Celsius, Canadian science is all in French (units), Canadian grocery pricing is half and half (until you get to the till, where receipts are recorded in kg only).

I'm not going to source any of this, but it's a thing, and if someone has a source, it wouldn't hurt the article to put the contingent dimension forward. — MaxEnt 21:19, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

The variation in units of measure is not an orthography issue, though fascinating! This article is about spelling. Pete unseth (talk) 17:41, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Transnational languages

Why does the article mention transnational languages first? Why not just say that most languages with a writing system have an orthography? To me, it seems that could mislead someone who is skimming the article. Turist-n (talk) 14:51, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Link to Nederlands (Dutch)

Hey guys, for some reason the link to the Dutch page of this article links to the Dutch Spelling page. There's no Dutch page for Ortography, only a translation on https://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/orthografie.

I'll happily translate the page but the link should be removed or linked to another more similar article before that is done.

Regards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.112.89.157 (talk) 08:32, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Nevermind, I was wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.112.89.157 (talk) 08:35, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposed template: Orthography notation

There is a proposed new template, {{Linguistics notation}}, which is intended as an entry point for readers unfamiliar with the specialist notation used in the subject. It would normally be placed after the lead of articles that use grapheme (and related) notations so that it sits beside the ToC. After a long discussion at template talk:Linguistics notation, the consensus is that the phoneme aspect is best handled by an addition to {{IPA key}}, leaving the orthography and typography aspects remaining. The proposal therefore is to rename the template as {{orthography notation}} and the opening sentence would read "This page uses orthography notation".

If there are any comments or reservations, please use template talk:Linguistics notation#Proposed new name: Orthography notation to express them. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:42, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

The new template is now live and called {{Orthography notation}}. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Original research

A lot of this article reads like an essay based in large part on original research and lacks citations to relevant sources. For example in one section there is the sentence "This is discussed further at Phonemic orthography § Morphophonemic features." which sounds more like something from an academic paper than an encyclopedia! 95.150.59.152 (talk) 12:29, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Linguistics in the Digital Age

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 21 August 2023 and 11 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): 716jrogers (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Fedfed2 (talk) 00:54, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Phonetic orthographies

Article currently reads:

the orthographies of languages such as Russian, German, and Spanish represent pronunciation much more faithfully, although the correspondence between letters and phonemes is still not exact. Finnish, Turkish, and Serbo-Croatian orthographies more consistently approximate the principle of "one letter per sound."

One letter per sound is not the correct criterion: there is nothing wrong with digraphs in faithful orthography, as long as they are unambiguous. And there is nothing wrong with representing phonemes rather than sounds as long as the sound is predictable. Also, I question whether the last three languages are any more faithful than the first three. In particular, Turkish orthography does not write stress and I vowel length, and Serbo-croatian does not write tone and vowel length. Can we find a reliable source for all this? --Macrakis (talk) 18:42, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

The correct way to articulate this idea is that there is a clear correspondence between functional units of writing and the sounds of speech. There's a bit of disagreement in the literature as to whether digraphs should could as graphemes in this way, but in any case a clear distinction can be made. Per the content, It's quite pointless to indulge in listing examples here at any length: people often enjoy tacking on their language to lists like these and it does nothing but make them smile in the act of adding it. Certainly doesn't help the reader.Remsense ‥ 论 21:09, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

[Language] Orthography vs. [Language] Alphabet pages

I want to question the need for two separate "Orthography" and "Alphabet" pages for individual languages. Some languages have both (e.g. English orthography, English alphabet), whereas some only have an Orthography page (Dutch orthography, French orthography), and some only have an Alphabet page (Bulgarian alphabet). The inconsistency is confusing, but I would ask why these even need to be two separate pages; unlike broader scripts that exist as their own entity (e.g. Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hangul), it seems like "how this language is written" is a singular topic, and it would make sense to have it all on one page. The distinction, when it exists, seems to be that "Alphabet" has the default sound values, and "Orthography" is opaque spelling rules. However, if you're interested in how these interact (e.g. both the default values for letters, and how they change in digraphs or in context), you have to tab back and forth. Overall, it seems like they could just be collapsed into a uniform Orthography page for every language.

(I'm not sure the best place to put this, since it encompasses the Orthography and Alphabet pages for every language. If there is a better place to put it, I would appreciate the pointer!) Ljshamz (talk) 21:08, 5 November 2024 (UTC)