Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2000 16:33:30 +0100 From: Paul Richards <paul@originative.co.uk> To: Brad Knowles <blk@skynet.be> Cc: Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSDCon East Message-ID: <38EF514A.97F8001C@originative.co.uk> References: <20000404152346.01398@techunix.technion.ac.il> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0004042145500.88181-100000@freefall.freebsd.org> <8cgj1a$313f$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> <v04220805b511f7c7e2a6@[195.238.1.121]>
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Brad Knowles wrote: > > At 1:42 AM +0200 2000/4/6, Christian Weisgerber wrote: > > > If the language in question has > > a strong divergence between spelling and pronunciation (English is > > pathological in this respect), > > On a side-note, English may be bad at things like this, but my > experience so far is that French is worse. > > Of course, Welsh is by far the worst I've ever encountered -- if > you ever hear a Welsh name that you think would result in less than > twelve characters, you probably aren't adding enough silent vowels > and consonants. ;-) Dai, that's a pretty short name and no silent letters. I'm not sure Welsh has that many silent letters, its more a case of non-Welsh speakers not understanding the sounds they make in that language. Then again, my knowledge of languages, even my own native tongue, is not that good (my native tongue being Welsh, my English is very good but I can't speak any other languages). I think the thing that's difficult about English is its irregularity. There aren't definitive ways of pronouncing words, there are general rules but there are lots of exceptions so you have to learn each word individually. I don't think Welsh is like that, its pretty regular in its pronunciation; once you know the rules for pronouncing character combinations then all words adhere to what you'd expect. If there's a fluent Welsh speaker on this list they can correct me? Paul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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