Frankouche:

darkweasel:

SuperMarc92:French:
Pronounce like spelling: NO

Well, what exactly is "pronounce like spelling"? Pronounciation is MUCH easier in French than in English, where you have to learn it for every word. (For example, I once pronounced "reliable" "re-li-e-bl" instead of "ri-laj-bl") While in French, if you know the rules, you can always pronounce a written word even if you never heard of it before. (So far - in 2,5 years of learning French - the only words I know of that don't seem to follow the rules are "femme" and "suspense")

So I think this can well be set to YES.

The word "oiseau" [ŭazo] (bird) in french is funny because none of its letters o-i-s-e-a-u are pronunced as in the alphabet.

Hah I never actually though of that! Although scarily it looks like it should be pronounced 'wazo' to me even if it's spelt as if it should be 'oyseaw' or something crazy.

SuperMarc92:

darkweasel:

SuperMarc92:French:
Pronounce like spelling: NO

Well, what exactly is "pronounce like spelling"? Pronounciation is MUCH easier in French than in English, where you have to learn it for every word. (For example, I once pronounced "reliable" "re-li-e-bl" instead of "ri-laj-bl") While in French, if you know the rules, you can always pronounce a written word even if you never heard of it before. (So far - in 2,5 years of learning French - the only words I know of that don't seem to follow the rules are "femme" and "suspense")

So I think this can well be set to YES.

Ok, so what about :

- ville (vile), fille (fiye)

Okay, here you're right. "ville" isn't regular.

- aquarium (akouariom)

Hm. I currently can't recall any other French words that end with -ium, so I can't compare the -iom pronounciation to anything else.

- temps (tan), champs (chan)...

Well, I think that it's somehow a rule that words ending in -p and -s (or -t and some others), or a combination of them, have these sounds silent. At least I haven't had any big problems with this... (the largest problems with silent letters that my classmates have is that they don't always remember to pronounce "ils regardent" with a silent -ent) But you're right that this is not ALWAYS regular.

- baptiser (batizé)

You're right again - the p wouldn't normally be silent.

- the 's' a the end of plural words aren't pronounced and the a lot of words are silent
- mot (mo)

See temps/champs.

- er, ai = é (or è )

That's a pronounciation rule, not an exception.

- etc...

Frankouche: Actually, I think the s is pronounced like that - well maybe that's because as a German speaker I don't really notice much of a difference between s and z. And well, it's strange, but it's regular! oi is always pronounced ŭa and eau always o. (And it's the shortest French word that has all vowels in it if you don't count y!)

darkweasel:
Frankouche: Actually, I think the s is pronounced like that - well maybe that's because as a German speaker I don't really notice much of a difference between s and z. And well, it's strange, but it's regular! oi is always pronounced ŭa and eau always o. (And it's the shortest French word that has all vowels in it if you don't count y!)

Yes, this word is "regular" but what are all these amazing rules with exceptions ? Imagine a young french or a stranger learning the french orthograph !
Will rules help to guess how to pronounce "les poules du couvent couvent" ? (le pul du kuvan kuv / la kokinoj de la monaĥejo kovas) .
And what about the famous liaisons, ex : "les hommes" (le zom / la homoj), but "les haches" (le aŝ / la hakiloj)...(here there is a "rule", the latin or germanic origin of the word, but who remembers this?)

So : French:
Pronounce like spelling: NO

Okay, probably you're right Didn't think of that there are no real rules what letters are silent - which really convinces me that it's not as easy as I always thought. But still, I've had much more trouble with this in English than in French (both of which are foreign languages to me, and I've learned English for two more years than French).

Norwegian/Swedish
-one gender: no
-use verbs the same way: yes
-pronounce like spelling: yes
-no irregular verbs: no
-same way of making tenses: yes
-easy pronunciation: yes
-ease to learn vocabulary: yes - uses word building like in Esperanto or German
-easy listening comprehension: yes
-easy writing system: yes/no
-lacks commonplace complex idioms: kinda
-easy/lack of word mutation: yes

Taiwanese (a Chinese dialect in the Min-Nan branch)
-one gender: yes
-use verbs the same way: yes (there is no inflection at all)
-pronounce like spelling: Taiwanese, like most Sinitic (Chinese) languages, does not use an alphabet, so...the answer is no?
-no irregular verbs: a few irregulars
-same way of making tenses: no (there are no grammatical tenses in Taiwanese, but how you indicate past/present/future actions is not totally regular)
-easy pronunciation: NO! the tones are horrendous, even for speakers of other tonal languages, since Taiwanese has a system of tones that essentially gives each syllable 2 possible tones, and you have to know which of the 2 to use
-easy to learn vocabulary: yes and no. Taiwanese is mildly agglutinative, and most words are a compound of other roots, so it's easy in that respect. However, these roots often change pronounciation depending on what words they're found in, so difficult in that respect.
-easy listening comprehension: yes and no. yes if you're used to tonal languages, and no if you're not, since many words may sound like homophones to you.
-easy writing system: no, it lacks a standardized writing system. however, it is usually written in Chinese characters, which is one of the most interesting scripts in existence today
-lacks commonplace complex idioms: no
-easy/lack of word mutation: yes (lack of)

Hey eikored85, I thought Taiwanese used an alphabet in some places (I was getting all excited about it because I though 'yay Chinese that I can read straight-off!' )?

But then again, I heard about Taiwanese from Wikipedia

ceigered:Hey eikored85, I thought Taiwanese used an alphabet in some places (I was getting all excited about it because I though 'yay Chinese that I can read straight-off!' )?

But then again, I heard about Taiwanese from Wikipedia

Well, Taiwanese uses an alphabet (called Peh-Oe-Ji) in the same way that Mandarin uses Pinyin. Both romanization schemes are useful for westerners who can't easily read Chinese characters. However, both are rarely used by native speakers, due to their low awareness; you'd be hard-pressed to find native Mandarin speakers above the age of 30 who know Pinyin, for example. As for the Taiwanese romanization, it is virtually unknown among native Taiwanese speakers, except for among linguists. Native Taiwanese speakers tend to write Taiwanese using Chinese characters, or avoid that problem and write in Mandarin completely.

And yes, I've seen Wikipedia articles written in romanized Taiwanese There's apparently a movement to promote that system of writing, since Taiwanese currently has no standardized writing system. Sorry if I'm not totally coherent, I'm at work right now and occasionally pausing to listen for my boss's footsteps...

ceigered:Hey eikored85, I thought Taiwanese used an alphabet in some places (I was getting all excited about it because I though 'yay Chinese that I can read straight-off!' )?

But then again, I heard about Taiwanese from Wikipedia

I'm not exactly sure, but i think the romanized Taiwanese is probably used more among Christian Taiwanese? although they now also use Chinese script since the introduction of Mandarin (along with Chinese script) to Taiwan 60ish years ago. I believe it was the Dutch missionaries who romanized Taiwanese. I remember going to some huge bible collage, and they had the romanized Taiwanese written on a wall, and also one of my friends was reading a romanized text book (she was also a bible student), and I went to a Taiwanese small-town church once where many of the elderly could only read romanized. So my own conclusion is that the romanized is probably used more among the Christian Taiwanese and in larger numbers among those who went to school before the arrival of the KMT, but I don't think many of the younger generation, unless they're in Bible school, know the romanized.

but other then being able to understand some, and speak some swearwords or sometimes mixing in some Taiwanese words into my mandarin, i can't really speak Taiwanese, and therefor, my opinion is mostly from an outsiders point of view.

D. Esperado:is there a way in chinese whereby, if one grapheme is made or based from another, there is a similarity in the spoken word? i hope you understand that.

example

word
:
said: hao

other word
;
said: hai

I'm not really sure what you are asking so forgive me if my answer is irrelevant.

But what i think your saying is, "is there a component in words that tell you what the word is related to" the answer is, yes (or atleast on many words)

水 water (shui, pronounced like "shuei" but pinyin is weird so they got rid of the "e" for some reason!)

冰 ice (bīng)

as u can see they are related. There are much better examples of this, but I'm to lazy to find my dictionary right now (sorry my room is a mess!)

there are also often a phonetic component to words as in the case of 馬mǎ,嗎ma,媽mā, and 罵mà. They all have the 馬 (horse) component in them and therefore produce the "ma" sound but differant tones.

In conclusion, Chinese characters are often made up of a phonetic component and other components which shows the meaning.

Anyways hopefully that's what you were asking. (and others please correct me if i made any errors or false statements )