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[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

I don't know Gaelic from garlic.

Welsh is phonetic for consonants but not vowels
Well, you could just about stretch the pronunciation for vowels but any language where you switch from long to short if the word has more than one syllable (other rules may apply) isn't phonetic enough for me not to mention the whole u/i problem (pronounced exactly the same in south wales, and varyingly similar in north wales) .

I stand by my statement, Mike. If you know the "rules" of either language, you will know how to pronounce any word from its spelling. The fact that those rules need to be learned, and differ from those of English, does not alter that.

[Fbone]

I always thought Robert Silverberg was very good at making up sci-fi words that the reader could understand.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Are you speaking from a personal knowledge of these languages?

No personal knowledge, just impressions garnered from books based on these languages.

I think you're right, for the record. I suppose Irish and Scottish are the ones that are not phonetic.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Luffy

I think you're right, for the record. I suppose Irish and Scottish are the ones that are not phonetic.

Irish and Scottish are the two varieties of the Gaelic language, and its spelling is phonetic. It certainly doesn't look it to an English speaker (eg the town of "Dún Laoghaire" is pronounced "Dunleary") but it is, nonetheless.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I remember several years ago when one bestselling author had a book pulled from Amazon's store simply because he ended a chapter in an "experimental" way. It was a first-person POV by a character who was trying to defuse an explosive device. The chapter ended in mid-sentence (mid-word, actually). People were sending the physical books back because they believed there was a large chunk of text missing. The ebook kept getting pulled because new readers were calling in and complaining of missing text. He (the author) swore he'd never try anything like that again.

I wasn't fooled, of course. Not sure why it was so hard for people to figure out that the device exploded; thus interrupting the first-person narrative mid-word.

Was it past tense? I would think it strange that you write a book and defuse a bomb at the same time.

Sent from my ONE A2003 using Tapatalk

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It would be helpful if you gave more information rather than cryptic one liners.

Your wife's knowledge of Welsh, or Gaelic, or both?

My wife is Scottish. So I'd go with her knowledge of both.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My wife is Scottish. So I'd go with her knowledge of both.

Please ask your wife to give an example of a Welsh or Gaelic word that has non-phonetic spelling according to the spelling rules of the language.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My wife is Scottish. So I'd go with her knowledge of both.

Umm... being Scottish might give a knowledge of Gaelic. Although there are very few Gaelic speakers in Scotland (about 60,000 people, or just over 1% of the population).

But it's no guide to a knowledge of Welsh.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I stand by my statement, Mike. If you know the "rules" of either language, you will know how to pronounce any word from its spelling. The fact that those rules need to be learned, and differ from those of English, does not alter that.

I'll stand by mine as well

My understanding of phonetic pronunciation is that the same symbol is always pronounced the same way, I may be being a bit overstrict but you shouldn't need any rules, just the pronunciation of each individual symbol.

Welsh is a lot more phonetic if people use the to bach and acute accents and you class double consonants as different symbols giving you a, err, 28,29+? letter alphabet - Some letters have been borrowed so may be more than this now, unless there is a welsh translation for Jive
That covers pretty much everything except w & y, y changes for uh to ee if in the last syllable and w is a mess.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

I'll stand by mine as well

My understanding of phonetic pronunciation is that the same symbol is always pronounced the same way, I may be being a bit overstrict but you shouldn't need any rules, just the pronunciation of each individual symbol.

I use the term to mean that the spelling conventions of the language will tell you how to pronounce the word. I can't off-hand think of any Welsh word that I would not know how to pronounce correctly by looking at its spelling (which is of course not to say that there aren't any).

Welsh has no equivalent of the English nightmare of through/though/trough, and such irregularities.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I use the term to mean that the spelling conventions of the language will tell you how to pronounce the word. I can't off-hand think of any Welsh word that I would not know how to pronounce correctly by looking at its spelling (which is of course not to say that there aren't any).

Welsh has no equivalent of the English nightmare of through/though/trough, and such irregularities.

Fair enough, I can live with slightly different definitions of phonetic.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Fair enough, I can live with slightly different definitions of phonetic.

I can agree to that .

[Krazykiwi]

Swedish is a very entertainingly sort of phonetic once you get the hang of it, although not as rigidly as Gaelic. There's just the problem of one particular sound ('sj') having 65 different ways to spell it (Personally, I think about 15 of those are reaching or highly local but the rest are totally legit). And it's the one many foreigners can't pronounce, which is kind of difficult since it's needed to even count to ten.

Here's a video with the most common spelling variants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZXZYEVEkug

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I use the term to mean that the spelling conventions of the language will tell you how to pronounce the word. I can't off-hand think of any Welsh word that I would not know how to pronounce correctly by looking at its spelling (which is of course not to say that there aren't any).

Welsh has no equivalent of the English nightmare of through/though/trough, and such irregularities.

Here is another English irregularity: so/sew/sow. And sow can be pronounced two ways.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Here is another English irregularity: so/sew/sow. And sow can be pronounced two ways.

Oh, there are tons of English ones, Lead & Live immediately spring to mind for words that have multiple meanings and pronunciation for the same spelling.