casting

[Joe Wright]

This is a kind of a dumb strawman. Although some are odd or quirky,
English does have rules. To make "fish" out of the above, you have to
violate several of those rules.

Yes, "gh" can produce an "f" sound, but only in an -ough suffix. There
are no examples that produce that sound from the letters solely paired
that I'm aware of. Similarly "ti" only makes an "sh" in certain
combinations, notably the -tion suffix. Not alone.

The only one that reasonable is the "o", and that's only by it serving
as a schwa.

I learned 'gh' as in enough, 'o' as in women, 'ti' as in nation.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[Ben Pfaff]

I learned 'gh' as in enough [...]

Sounds ghastly!

 

[CBFalconer]

I learned 'gh' as in enough [...]

Sounds ghastly!

Absolutely ghoulish. Or should that be ghouloti?

 

[Dan Pop]

That is why Esperanto was invented, somewhere around a century
ago.

Nope, that's not the reason: most of the already existing languages didn't
share this problem of the English language: their pronunciation rules have
few exception and each word has an unique official pronunciation.

Esperanto was invented to provide a language that is easy to learn for
most people, with the hope (hence the name) that it will help improve
the communication between people belonging to different nations
and cultures. Its failure was completely unrelated to its design
and entirely due to the lack of "marketing forces" behind it.

It does not seem to have fared as well as English as a
universal medium. IIRC Latin also has many fewer irregularities
than does English, yet it too seems to have fallen into disfavor
as the universal language.

If you wanted to make a point here, I'm afraid I missed it.

None of the languages that had acquired the status of "universal language"
(in one domain or another, at one time or another) did it due to some of
their intrinsic qualities. It *always* happened due to non-linguistic
reasons.

If China ever acquires the status of economic, military and scientific
leader of the world, chinese *will* become the "lingua franca" of the
world. You can count on it.

Dan

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

Esperanto was invented to provide a language that is easy to learn
for most people, with the hope (hence the name) that it will help
improve the communication between people belonging to different
nations and cultures. Its failure was completely unrelated to its
design and entirely due to the lack of "marketing forces" behind it.


If you wanted to make a point here, I'm afraid I missed it.

Just that regularity seems to have little correlation with the
'universality' or popularity of a language. To put it in another
context, Pascal is far simpler and more regular than C, and no
less expressive (especially with Extended Pascal), yet C remains
far more popular. Pascal and Esperanto were designed, C and
English just grew.

None of the languages that had acquired the status of "universal
language" (in one domain or another, at one time or another) did
it due to some of their intrinsic qualities. It *always* happened
due to non-linguistic reasons.

No doubt. Not too long ago French was considered the language of
diplomacy, German the language of science, and English the
language of commerce. Hitler and co. pretty well ended the first
two dominances, leaving a void to be filled by English. Now we
have foolishness such as the French, both in France and Quebec,
trying to preserve the purity of the language, largely against
incursions from English, which is a polygot with a large
proportion of French in the first place. English continues to
adapt and import, while German constructs longer and longer words
out of shorter ones, and French atrophies. At least as I see it.
Among Western languages, Spanish is probably now second behind
English.

If China ever acquires the status of economic, military and
scientific leader of the world, chinese *will* become the "lingua
franca" of the world. You can count on it.

Written Chinese is probably more universal, in terms of head
count, than English at the present time. I understand the written
language does not change through the various flavors of spoken
Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.)

 

[Dan Pop]

Just that regularity seems to have little correlation with the
'universality' or popularity of a language.

Have I ever claimed or implied otherwise?

To put it in another
context, Pascal is far simpler and more regular than C, and no
less expressive (especially with Extended Pascal),

What is Extended Pascal? I've never used two Pascals having compatible
extensions. The Pascal defined by Wirth is a useless language for
developing real applications, for the reasons already explained by
Kernighan.

yet C remains far more popular. Pascal and Esperanto were designed, C
and English just grew.

C is popular because it was designed with a practical purpose in mind
and proved to be very adequate for that purpose. It's interesting to note
that C99's attempt to extend C's application range was met with a quasi
complete lack of interest by the programming community.

Pascal was designed with an academic purpose in mind. This explains the
difference in popularity between the two languages. Pascal simply shares
the fate of other languages designed for mostly academic purposes, e.g.
the various ALGOLs.

Written Chinese is probably more universal, in terms of head
count, than English at the present time.

This has never been the criterion for establishing the universality of a
language. It's the number of non-native speakers that counts here.

Dan

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...


What is Extended Pascal? I've never used two Pascals having
compatible extensions.

Standard Pascal is defined by ISO 7185. Extended Pascal is
defined by ISO 10206, and is strictly compatible with Standard
Pascal, apart from some additional reserved words.

 

[Dan Pop]

Standard Pascal is defined by ISO 7185. Extended Pascal is
defined by ISO 10206, and is strictly compatible with Standard
Pascal, apart from some additional reserved words.

Ah, I see, you were referring to the useless Pascal standards, that were
adopted far too late to make any difference to the Pascal programming
community for which Borland Pascal was the de facto standard (or VAX
Pascal for the VMS people and so on).

Dan