From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Apr 7 11:25:58 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mail.enteract.com (mail.enteract.com [207.229.143.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C136337BE9D for ; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 11:25:55 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bitsurfr@enteract.com) Received: from shell-1.enteract.com (bitsurfr@shell-1.enteract.com [207.229.143.40]) by mail.enteract.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id NAA94564; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 13:24:21 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from bitsurfr@enteract.com) Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 13:24:21 -0500 (CDT) From: bitsurfer To: Rahul Siddharthan Cc: Marco Molteni , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSDCon East In-Reply-To: <20000407235221.B1610@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Ummm, just how East are we going here? ;) _____________________________________________________________________ RSA Key Fingerprint = 6D0B 5536 7825 3D09 9093 384A 9694 FDB6 RSA Key Fingerprint = 4390 44E5 E316 F2AA A11E 5755 F3F9 D69B DH/DSS Fingerprint = 089B 0B5C 75C7 A7B4 B050 DD14 2D65 5DD6 E87D 239A PGP Mail encouraged / preferred - keys available on common keyservers _____________________________________________________________________ On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > I would like to introduce you all to a language where there is NO > > difference between spelling and pronunciation: Italian. I am wondering > > if there are other languages with this feature. > > Most Indian languages. The Devanagari script (Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi > etc) is such that all sounds in the language, vowels and consonants, > are represented accurately. Moreover they're pronounced the same way, > unlike say English and French. So a person literate in Hindi can > pronounce Sanskrit almost perfectly without understanding it. In > practice, though, spoken Hindi has some corrupted pronunciations > which would sound bad in Sanskrit -- in particular, the last "a" in > words ending in a short "a" is left out in Hindi but not in Sanskrit. > > This is true also of at least two southern languages, Kannada and > Telugu, which use a different but more or less "isomorphic" script. > Tamil tends to represent several sounds with the same letter (k, g and > h; t and d; th and dh; ch, sh and s; etc) so it can get confusing, but > then these sounds also often get fudged when spoken. I'm not sure of > the other languages, but I believe none of them are as chaotic as > English. However, it's easier and faster typing in English. (Fewer > letters = simpler keyboards but less accurate representation of > sounds.) > > There are several efforts to represent Indian-language sounds in the > roman script using well-defined letter combinations for each > corresponding Indian letter, and software translation into Indian > scripts "on the fly". I haven't been following them carefully, though. > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message