The Slavonic languages have plenty of vowels too, even more than German and
Latin - such as the vowel in "chrzaszcz", which is actually a nasal, using a
different letter from a normal "a" (but you can't see it in ASCII text).
The issue (n.b. it's not a problem!) is simply how to represent consonantal
sounds not present in Latin using a Latin alphabet. The sounds are common,
more or less, to all Slavonic languages, Russian, Polish, Serbo-Croat and
all points in between. The languages which use the Cyrillic alphabet have
some "invented" letters for the sounds that did not exist in Greek, but
otherwise use Greek letters. Thus the (invented) Cyrillic letter which
looks like two "k"s back to back is used where Polish uses "rz" for the same
sound. But the (Greek) "x" is used where Polish uses "ch" for the same
sound.
It might hurt Nathan to hear this, but it would have been easier to use the
Cyrillic alphabet for Polish! It's not a question of who has the more vowels
(or consonants), but who had the most letters to spare - and the Latin
Alphabet wasn't the best foundation. And who do we blame for all of this?
Ninth century competition between Rome and Constantinople to spread the
Roman and Orthodox spheres of influence!
Piers
-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Norcutt [mailto:chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 10 February 2009 21:57
To: Olympus Camera Discussion
Subject: Re: [OM] Nathan's PAD 08/02/2009: Gare du Midi market
I've never before seen a Polish word that I can recall that puts "ch"
and "rz" together. Either one is hard to pronounce for a non-native speaker
and I was sure it must be a typo to have them side by side. But you're
right. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrz%C4%85szcz>
Chuck Norcutt
Nathan wrote:
> Only the Slavic ones, that's why a classic Polish tongue twister
> reads: "Chrzaszcz brzmi w trzcinie" and one of my favourite Liverpool
> FC players, who is either Czech or Slovak, is called Skrtel.
>
> The Germanic and Latin languages have plenty of vowels.
>
> Cheers,
> Nathan
>
>
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|