A world of characters

Did you know that the word alphabet comes from alpha and beta to symbolize that there are both consonants and vowels represented in the alphabet.  A writing system that does not have both consonants and vowels as separate characters is not an alphabet.  Here are some different kinds of writing systems.

An abjad
An abjad contains only consonants.  The vowels are added through diacritics which are little marks added above or below the stream of consonants.
Arabic and Hebrew are examples of this writing system.

An abugida
A character from an abugida typically has both consonant and vowel components combining to make a syllable (though separate vowels are often included to so that a word can start/end with a vowel sound).     Diacritic marks are used to change or mute the vowel sound.
This type of writing system is common in Southeast Asia; examples include Thai, Lao, and Bengali.

A syllabary
A syllabary is a writing system that combines consonant and vowel sounds to make a syllable (again separate vowels are used as well).
Japanese Hiragana and Katakana are examples of this as well as Inuktitut (Eastern Canadian Inuit).

A semanto-phonetic 
These symbols represent both sound and meaning.  They typically have a large number of characters (some estimates of the number of Chinese characters go up to 80 000).  They include both pictograms which derive from pictures of things, ideograms which represent abstract ideas and compound characters which have both a semantic (hints at meaning) and phonetic (hints at pronunciation) element.
A modern example is Chinese (and therefore Japanese Kanji) and a historical example is ancient Greek hieroglyphics.

I find it interesting to think about how different the languages and therefore the starting point of some of my students actually is.  We often notice how students from a language which uses the Latin alphabet pick up some things faster than those who aren't.  Have you ever noticed the difference between those from a similar kind of alphabet and those from an entirely different kind of alphabet?

Improving our alphabet

As discussed in previous posts, the Roman alphabet (ABC's) that we use to represent the English language does a poor job of matching sounds to letters.  That is why spelling is so difficult in English.  When was the last time you had to think about the spelling of a word?  Did you know that problem is not not an issue in languages which have an effective phonetic alphabet (i.e. an alphabet where the letters match the sounds)?

Because we try to represent the 12 vowel sounds with only 5-6 vowel letters, it is clearly that we are using an alphabet that was designed for another purpose.  Here is a list of benefits of swapping up our ABC's for a more appropriate script.

• Children spend more time on maths and science and less time memorizing strings of letters to learn spelling
• English would be easier for learners making it a more competitive language
• Spelling would be easier for everyone
• Standardise/standardize spelling

So why don't we change it?  Why don't we just start using the phonemic alphabet in place of the Roman one?  Well, it is just not that easy.  It is clear that there are long-term benefits that would seriously benefit our children and help to promote the English language as an international language.  But these are long-term benefits and to get there we have to go through a difficult and costly short term.  And if we fail, then the costly and difficult short term was for naught.

Here are the challenges:

• The transition period would be difficult (especially for the elderly and children/learners)
• Change management on such a large scale would be difficult as people tend to resist change
• People speak differently so the change would not only standardise spelling but pronunciation as well
• Lost investment if it does not catch on

I guess that the biggest obstacle would be that you would effectively need to get the world to decide on one way to spell and say words and you can imagine the political battles that would create.  Take a word like regular for instance.  How do you say it?

/rɛgjələr/
or
/rɛgjʊlə/?

And more importantly, would you mind changing the way that you say it if the world decided that we were going with the alternative pronunciation.  Could you change the way you have been words since you a kid for that matter?  It would probably be a change that would would take a couple of generations to really take hold but possible if we devoted to it.

And what if we couldn't decide on one pronunciation or people couldn't change the habits ingrained in their version of the language?  Do we go with two different spellings and have the dictionary looking a whole lot fuller with thousands of extra polysemes?

My personal opinion on this is that it is doable but only if done well.  It is possible that some change to our language in the future may make this change necessary or popular and that is the ticket;  if you could somehow motivate the majority of the English speakers on the planet to make the change by making the new version of English desirable (e.g. it's spoken in universities or on TV or through any other popular medium), then you could motivate the people to change it.  

Just something to think about :)

Immersion and social pressures

When we think about the best way to learn a foreign language, we think of immersion.  There is simply no substitute for the constant exposure to the language that comes from living in country that speaks that language.  But what other factors make immersion successful?

It has been said that learning is change and that in developing the ability to speak a new language, we are adopting the perspectives that are part of the new language.  We absorb a new culture and develop the skill to see two potentially contradicting perspectives on issues.  While this is confusing at first, it gives us the ability to think in new directions and possibly to solve problems or understand views that we could not understand before.

The immersion experience has been described as a process of reconstructing your social identity.  It is easier to adapt to new ideas and new concepts when you are placed into a living situation where they exist and the ones that you knew before did not.  With migration comes the pressure to adapt to the new rather than the social pressures to stick to the old.  And finally a sense of anonymity that comes with being alone in a new country may lead people to lose the inhibitions that prevent them from making the all-important errors.

Immersion frees you from the ties and social pressures that keep you afraid to be someone new.