Talk:Orthography

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Contents 1 Constrained writing 2 United Bible Society 3 Orthography vs. Writing system 4 History 5 Observation 6 German "efficiency" 7 The link for multiple language spell checker is broken 8 Defectiveness

[edit] Constrained writing

I've removed the following:

Writing that blends meaning and orthography is called constrained writing.

Surely writing that belnds meaning and orthography is, um, meaningful writing. Constrained writing can be many things, but it tends to be a bit more constrained than "it must make sense". --Camembert

[edit] United Bible Society

Surely that should be United Bible Society? Can someone who has the book please check? -- mpt, 2003-06-04

[edit] Orthography vs. Writing system

What is the principled distinction between this article and writing system? Most of this article could be transplanted into the latter. --Ryguasu 00:16 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

[edit] History

A bit on the history of orthography wouldn't hurt if anybody has the required knowledge. -- 82.82.146.239 22:37, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Observation

The rule "i before e except after c" is wrong. "Feign" clearly is an exception. How can it be an orthagraphic rule if orthography means "how to write correctly"? Surely this is not an orthographic rule. Rintrah 13:09, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] German "efficiency"

Quoting the spelling Tzschaetzsch as an example for German orthography is not very good. No German in their right mind would write the name in this way. Normally, it would be spelled Tschätsch. In normal German orthography "tz" on the beginning on a word isn't valid, as well as "tz" before "sch". Moreover, "ae" is never written vor umlaut-a, instead the letter "ä" is used. Such crazy spellings only occur in names derived from Slavic languages and also then they're very seldom. Furthermore, "Tschätsch" is not a personal name in German, but a (seldom) surname. 62.46.180.91

[edit] The link for multiple language spell checker is broken

When I click this link http://www.rechtschreibprüfung24.de/ I get a "Can not find server" error.

198.85.228.129 13:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Defectiveness

I guess that English is defective because "th" doesn't differ between [ð] and [θ], but how is Italian and Arabian orthography defective? Maybe the article would need a short explanation? 惑乱 分からん 10:39, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

There are many many other reasons why English spelling is defective (why, after all, do we write defective and not defektiv?). Arabic is defective inasmuch as short vowels are not normally represented—some sounds can also be represented in more than one way (like the /n/ at the end of shukran, which is not written with the normal sign for /n/). And that's just Modern Standard Arabic—the everyday colloquial forms are barely even represented in writing. I'm less sure about Italian, though I'm sure an example will come to me. Perfectly phonemic alphabets are very rare. garik 12:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought that a defective orthography had sounds it couldn't mark in writing... 惑乱 分からん 13:09, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't have said so: to me a defective orthography is one where either there are distinctions that can't be represented in writing or where there are obsolete or redundant letters (basically where the one-letter-per-phoneme system breaks down) I'm not an orthography experts, however, so I may be misusing a term that has a narrower scope among specialists. garik 13:21, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Arabic is the text-book case of a defective orthography, because of the lack of vowels. Even long vowels - since they are written by consonants, it's not apparent that a vowel is intended without a knowledge of the language. That Arabic doesn't need to be written with vowels in order to be understood is irrelevent to the question, as is the fact that vowels can be written, since they generally aren't (the Koran, dictionaries, and children's primars notwithstanding).

Italian is defective because the script doesn't distinguish /ts/ from /dz/, and only has five letters for seven vowels. I believe this info was originally in the article, but it looks like someone took it out as excess detail. kwami 21:00, 3 September 2007 (UTC)