Talk:Phonemic orthography

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Georgian language claims that there are 14 true alphabets. Anyone know what they are?

Sounds like a nonsense claim to me... Morwen 23:03, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

How can International Phonetic Alphabet be used as an example of a phonemic alphabet? Don't you see the phonemic x phonetic conflict mentioned later in the article?

You can do this by using IPA characters in order to write the phonemes of the language. Roman orthography is practically useless for a lot of languages, and the IPA is a good starting point for a phonemic orthography. Sure, it's primarily a phonetic alphabet, but that doesn't mean it can't be used as a phonemic alphabet by omitting some features. thefamouseccles

[edit] Rename to: phonemic and phonetic orthography

The article seems to talk equally much on both topics (phonemic and phonetic orthographies). Perhaps rename (and restructure) it to cover both notions?--Imz 06:41, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Interlingua

How can Interlingua be considered phonemic when the sound [f] can be spelled "f" or "ph", the sound [r] "r" or "rh", the sound [t] "t" or "th", the "c" can be read [k] or [ts], the "ch" can be read [k] or [ʃ], the [k] can be spelled "c", "q" or "ch", the "g" can be read [g] or [ʒ], the "j" can be read [ʒ] or [j], the [ts] can be spelled "c" or "t", the "w" can be read [w] or [v]?

That characterization of Interlingua is highly misleading. It includes pronunciations that occur only in foreign words ("w" as [w] or [v]), pronunciations that are not generally accepted ("j" as [j]), and repeats one complaint three time in different variations ("ch" as [k] or [ʃ], [k] as "c", "q" or "ch", [ts] as "c" or "t"). Interlingua has a few exceptions to phonemicity, but so does Finnish, which is listed as having good phonemic correspondence.

Here is a more accurate representation of Interlingua's letters and sounds. There are also the digraphs ph, th, and rh, but they have one sound as well.

a one sound

b one sound

c two sounds

d one sound

e one sound

f one sound

g two sounds

h one sound

i basically one sound, can be a semi-consonant

j one sound

k one sound

l one sound

m one sound

n one sound

o one sound

p one sound

q one sound

r one sound

s basically one sound

t marginally two sounds

u basically one sound, can be a semi-consonant

v one sound

w rare

x basically one sound

y one sound

z one sound

I listed Interlingua as having "a good grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence", not as being phonemic. 66.68.174.245 05:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

You realize of course that you have weakened the definition of phonemic orthography to make it just mean predictable pronunciation based on spelling without also implying the opposite. Now one can claim that French has a phonemic orthography, which I don't think is the intention. -- Dissident (Talk) 01:33, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I think there are different terms for languages where there is a predictable pronunciation based on spelling (e.g. French) and languages where there is a predictable spelling based on sound (I believe Arabic is like this). I can't remember what they are though. Does anyone know? -- Q Chris 08:13, 20 February 2007 (UTC)