On 1/26/2016 3:16 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Jan 2016 08:38:43 +0100, clipka wrote:
>
>>> True, then again, you could always try something like Gaelic.
>>
>> Well... I /vaguely/ recall having mention Irish ;)
>
> Which is not quite the same as Gaelic - or rather, Gaelic languages (6
> living langauges, a few mixed, and a few nearly dead languages - I know
> someone who's one of about 5 people in the world who speak one particular
> dialect - in Scotland).
>

About 20 years ago I was on a rig where the OIM had been to the funeral 
of the last Doric, of a certain type, speaker.

> Welsh actually is one of those languages, as is Irish.  Breton, Scotish
> Gaelic, Cornish, and Manx are the other living languages.
>

Irish, are you talking about Irish Gaelic?

I would call Irish Gaelic and Scotish Gaelic, gaelic but would pronounce 
then differently.


> I can't tell you how many people mispronounce my cats' names - which are
> Manx Gaelic (and actually, relatively simple names to pronounce).
>

That supriseses me. :-P

>>> Or for a challenge, try a non-Romanized language; Russian, Polish,
>>> Hungarian (is quite interesting), Japanese, Chinese, or another similar
>>> language. :)
>>
>> I think aside from Chinese (for rather obvious reasons) neither of them
>> can cope with Irish when it comes to leaving the reader puzzled as to
>> how an unfamiliar written word is spoken or vice versa, even when said
>> reader is well-versed in the script(*) used.
>
> Arguably, English itself has some oddities that make pronunciation
> difficult for non-native speakers to use.
>

Ah! remember who you are speaking to.
Being bi-lingual, adds complications.


> For example, the made-up word 'ghoti' is often used to describe the
> idiosyncrasies of English pronunciation.  (The actual pronunciation of
> that made-up word is "fish" - gh from 'tough', o from 'women', ti from
> 'nation').
>

A case of the parts adding to more than the sun of the whoke. :)

>> That's because Irish is exceptionally unconventional in how it uses the
>> latin script to render the language's phonemes.
>
> Another that strikes me as in a similar class is Catalan - though a fair
> amount of the 'misunderstanding' of Catalan vs. European Spanish is less
> a lack of understanding based on mispronunciation and more what some
> might just term as 'dickishness'. :)
>
Watch it ot ETA will come to get you. :P



-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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