Various Writing Systems Logographic Idiographic Writing Systems

Various Writing Systems • Logographic (Idiographic) Writing Systems • Phonographic Writing Systems – Syllabic Writing Systems – Alphabetic Writing Systems

Logographic (or Idiographic) Writing Systems • Chinese characters (used in Chinese and Japanese) – A character is a meaning unit and not necessarily a sound unit.

Phonographic Writing Systems • Syllabic Writing Systems – A character is a syllable unit. – Japanese has two sets of syllabary • Alphabetic Writing Systems – A character is a sound unit. – Roman Alphabet – Greek Alphabet

What is a syllable? • A combination of a consonant (or consonants) (optional) and a vowel (obligatory)

One Example from Japanese • The word sushi ‘sushi’ is spelled like this in Japanese: • The syllable “su” corresponds to the first character, and the syllable “shi” corresponds to the second character. • In the Roman transliteration, you use five characters, but in the original Japanese writing system, you use just two characters.

Alphabetic Writing Systems • A character represents a consonant or a vowel (a minimal sound), not a combination thereof. • In an ideal situation, one should be able to use an existing alphabetic writing system for phonetic transcription. • However, no existing alphabet is perfect in that there is no one-to-one correspondence between sounds and characters.

Problems with the English Orthography • The Roman Alphabet does not “fit” the English sound system well. • The writing system tends to be more conservative than speech.

Examples • same sound, different spelling: aye, buy, by, die, hi, Thai, height, guide. • different sound, same spelling: thought, though, Thomas; ate, at, father, many • silent letters: listen, debt, know, psychology, right, mnemonic, balm, honest, sword, bomb, clue, Wednesday • Missing letters: use (no ‘y’), fuse (no ‘y’)

Spelling tends to be more conservative than Speech • gh is dropped in pronunciation – light German Licht, leicht) – right (German Recht, richtig) • “ah” changes into “ey” and “e” is dropped – name (German Name)

Foreign Spelling Conventions imposed into English • Middle English indite dette receit oure ® ® “Reformed” Spelling indict debt receipt hour

Additional reasons for adopting IPA • A normal alphabet “ignores” some sound distinctions (often for a good reason). But in transcription, we want to be able to describe such distinctions as well. • We want to describe all sounds used in natural language, not just in English.

Spelling “ignores” some sound distinctions • pin vs. spin – These two “p” sounds have very different physical characteristics, a difference having to do with aspiration. – In IPA, the distinction is indicated by two partially different characters: [ph] vs. [p]

Spelling Pronunciations • Pronunciation imitates spelling – often, soften

IPA • There is a one-to-one correspondence between a sound a symbol. – By looking an IPA symbol, you know how it should be pronounced. – When transcribing a sound, you know what symbol should be used for that sound.