Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

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Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Woods » 2021-09-26, 9:40

I just read that some prefixes containing voiced consonants change also in writing when they are followed by an unvoiced one. That seems incredibly strange to me - since when has it been this way and is it mandatory?

бездумный / бесстрастный
вздремнуть / вскипятить
возродить / воспитать
издать / исправить
разбудить / рассыпать

(examples from Modern Russian Grammar: A Practical Guide by John Dunn and Shamil Khairov, 2009)

I really would prefer to write безстрастный, взкипять, возпитать, изправить, разсыпать - why have two separate writings for the same prefix?

And could you give some examples of the remaining prefixes that do not change?

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-09-26, 15:37

Woods wrote:I just read that some prefixes containing voiced consonants change also in writing when they are followed by an unvoiced one. That seems incredibly strange to me - since when has it been this way and is it mandatory?

бездумный / бесстрастный
вздремнуть / вскипятить
возродить / воспитать
издать / исправить
разбудить / рассыпать

(examples from Modern Russian Grammar: A Practical Guide by John Dunn and Shamil Khairov, 2009)

I really would prefer to write страстный, взкипять, возпитать, изправить, разсыпать - why have two separate writings for the same prefix?

And could you give some examples of the remaining prefixes that do not change?


This rule was introduced more than a century ago during the spelling reform in December 1917 to simplify the spelling (better reflecting the pronunciation of those words) and improve literacy levels. It was adopted as an official rule in October 1918.
It only applies to the prefixes that end with -з, which change to -с. Those that don't end with -з don't change.
Yes, it is "mandatory", as this is a spelling rule. It is a misspelling to spell them the way you say you'd prefer. (Of course it does happen, but it is a misspelling.) There are also some people in the Russian Orthodox Church who refuse to use the бес- spelling and use без- in its place based on a mistaken belief that бес- refers to the devil, since the word бес on its own does mean demon or devil. (They associate the prefix with, for example, words like бесовский "demonic, devilish" or бесноватый "possessed, frantic", where бес- is part of the root rather than part of the prefix.) But, of course, this association is a folk etymology and not the true etymological origin when бес- is used as an actual prefix. And words with the бес- prefix are even used in Old Church Slavonic (i.e. бесконьчьнъ). Anyway, the religious objection which some people have to the spelling rule applies only to the prefix бес-, not to any other prefixes.

Other languages do something similar to this too. Even in English, some of our Latin-based prefixes change their spellings based on the beginning of the following root: the prefix in- means "not" but changes to im- before a p in words like impatient, imperfect, impede, to il- before an l in words like illegal, illegitimate, illogical, to ir- before an r in words like irregular, irreversible, irresponsible, to ig- before a gn or n in words like ignoble, ignore, ignominy etc. and these changes occur in Latin as well and (just like the Russian spelling changes) reflect the pronunciation.

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Woods » 2021-09-26, 16:45

Linguaphile wrote:This rule was introduced more than a century ago during the spelling reform in December 1917 to simplify the spelling (better reflecting the pronunciation of those words) and improve literacy levels. It was adopted as an official rule in October 1918.

Wow, what a mess.

I am going to try not to say my opinion about it then - since it probably doesn't make sense to questions spelling norms in a non-democratic country (I may be thrown in jail if I cross the border or something :D)

But I really don't see how having two different ways to write the same prefix could improve literacy levels, I would expect quite the contrary.


But then that means that some of the well-renowned classics were written using the prefixes with the voiced consonants only?

But I guess nowadays they reprint everything using the new prefixes.


But, Russian people, don't you get confused?


A good deal of the words would look much closer to Bulgarian if it wasn't for this new spelling. It would be very natural to have a few diffences in the spelling that reflect the pronunciation while at the same time keeping it similar, but this one kind of makes the word a lot less recognisable at first sight to me.


Thanks for the factual info, Linguaphile - I am amazed how some of you guys here know so many facts about all kinds of different languages :)


Linguaphile wrote:Yes, it is "mandatory", as this is a spelling rule. It is a misspelling to spell them the way you say you'd prefer.

Misspelling today, but it wouldn't have been a hundred and five years ago, so I wouldn't call it so - that would be calling everyone who has lived before that date bad at spelling!

I am actually very much in favour of printing older text the way they were (when they could still be understood of course) - especially in Bulgarian - some letters such as ѣ, ѫ and ѭ were removed in a very unjust way - and if we reprint everything according to current norms, something will be lost.


Linguaphile wrote:(Of course it does happen, but it is a misspelling.)

Oh, so you confirm you've noticed people getting confused?


Linguaphile wrote:There are also some people in the Russian Orthodox Church who refuse to use the бес- spelling and use без- in its place based on a mistaken belief that бес- refers to the devil

Only без-, but not the other ones?

I would be very proud of them if they insisted on keeping the origins of the languages, but I guess that would get them in jail so I understand.


Linguaphile wrote:And words with the бес- prefix are even used in Old Church Slavonic (i.e. бесконьчьнъ).

Wait, wasn't it all из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без- in Old Church Slavonic?


Linguaphile wrote:Other languages do something similar to this too. Even in English, some of our Latin-based prefixes change their spellings based on the beginning of the following root: the prefix in- means "not" but changes to im- before a p in words like impatient, imperfect, impede, to il- before an l in words like illegal, illegitimate, illogical, to ir- before an r in words like irregular, irreversible, irresponsible

Wasn't French responsible for that?

These are much more substantial sound changes though: in "illegal" there is not a trace of the sound /n/; While the Russian prefixes would just become unvoiced before an unvoiced consonant which is a perfectly normal thing that also happens in all kinds of languages and doesn't seem to be a problem at all. Two alternative prefixes that mean the exact same thing can be a big pain in the ass though.


Linguaphile wrote:to ig- before a gn or n in words like ignoble, ignore, ignominy etc. and these changes occur in Latin as well and (just like the Russian spelling changes) reflect the pronunciation.

Were those also initially in- ?


Really it's so cool that English doesn't have a country messing with its spelling rules - regulators only come up with stuff that doesn't make any sense.

I keep insisting that languages should be considered some sort of global heritage and such arbitrary changes that break the linguistic continuum should not be allowed.

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-09-26, 20:44

Woods wrote:I really don't see how having two different ways to write the same prefix could improve literacy levels, I would expect quite the contrary.

You write it the way you hear it, and you pronounce it the way you see it. So if you hear бес- you write бес- (not без-), and when you are reading you don't need to worry about whether to say без- or бес-, even if it's a word you don't know from spoken language, because they are written differently. For most people without prior literacy skills, this sort of thing makes it easier to learn to read and write, and that improves literacy levels.

Woods wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:(Of course it does happen, but it is a misspelling.)

Oh, so you confirm you've noticed people getting confused?

I don't know enough Russian for that. But you can search online for things like без/бес and find lots of forums and educational sites where native Russian speakers are discussing when to use them, which seems to indicate that it happens often enough to be worth a discussion.

Woods wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:There are also some people in the Russian Orthodox Church who refuse to use the бес- spelling and use без- in its place based on a mistaken belief that бес- refers to the devil

Only без-, but not the other ones?

Yes, because the objection is not that the spelling is being changed, but rather than the word "бес" means demon/devil. (it is related to Bulgarian бяс, if that helps, from Proto-Slavic *běsъ; in Russian it means "demon" or "devil", in Bulgarian perhaps not so strong a connotation in religious terms). Of course, this has nothing to do with the real etymology of the prefix. It's a folk etymology based on the similarity of spelling and pronunciation rather than linguistic history.
Nothing like that happens with the other prefixes.

Woods wrote:I would be very proud of them if they insisted on keeping the origins of the languages, but I guess that would get them in jail so I understand.

:roll:
Again the issue with бес- isn't about keeping the original spelling, but that some people associate it with the devil. Literally a religious objection, not a linguistic one per se, and definitely not originating from actual linguistics.

Woods wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:And words with the бес- prefix are even used in Old Church Slavonic (i.e. бесконьчьнъ).

Wait, wasn't it all из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без- in Old Church Slavonic?

I don't know about historical changes but as far as I can tell, the бес- spelling was used in both Church Slavonic and Russian even before the 1917 reform, but wasn't part of the standardized spelling rules for Russian until 1917. Aside from that I honestly don't know its history. I learned it is used in Old Church Slavonic mainly from the context of the religious objection mentioned above, where people were saying "it can't be bad from a religious standpoint to use the prefix бес- in Russian because, look, it's even used in Old Church Slavonic too and surely Old Church Slavonic wouldn't allow demonic references." Several sites cited a 1999 Old Church Slavonic dictionary.
Anyway the Wikipedia page for the prefix без- in Old Church Slavonic confirms that by including some words that are spelled there with бес-. I don't know whether or not they were previously spelled with без- and if so, when it changed.
I don't know as much about the other prefixes because most of what I found concerned this one, but it's probably a similar situation. I'm not sure.

Woods wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:Other languages do something similar to this too. Even in English, some of our Latin-based prefixes change their spellings based on the beginning of the following root: the prefix in- means "not" but changes to im- before a p in words like impatient, imperfect, impede, to il- before an l in words like illegal, illegitimate, illogical, to ir- before an r in words like irregular, irreversible, irresponsible

Wasn't French responsible for that?

Latin.

Woods wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:to ig- before a gn or n in words like ignoble, ignore, ignominy etc. and these changes occur in Latin as well and (just like the Russian spelling changes) reflect the pronunciation.

Were those also initially in- ?

Depends on the word. Some were gn-, some were n-. Latin in + gnōbilis (eventually leading to English ignoble), in + gnārus (eventually leading to English ignore), but in + nōminia (eventually leading to English ignominy).

Woods wrote:These are much more substantial sound changes though: in "illegal" there is not a trace of the sound /n/; While the Russian prefixes would just become unvoiced before an unvoiced consonant which is a perfectly normal thing that also happens in all kinds of languages and doesn't seem to be a problem at all. Two alternative prefixes that mean the exact same thing can be a big pain in the ass though.

Woods wrote:Really it's so cool that English doesn't have a country messing with its spelling rules

But why do you think several different spellings for in- in English makes sense (ill-, irr-, imp-, ign- etc) makes sense but then object to без-/бес-, из-/ис-, раз-/рас- and so on? Why accept one (the English and Latin changes) and reject the other (the Russian changes)? You claim it's a more substantial difference with the English and Latin prefixes because the pronunciations are so different, but in Russian it does reflect the pronunciation too. I guess whether the sound change is substantial enough to warrant a new spelling is a judgement call, but when the difference is substantial enough to match the sound of a different letter (з versus с) that seems substantial enough to me.

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Dormouse559 » 2021-09-27, 0:12

Woods wrote:Really it's so cool that English doesn't have a country messing with its spelling rules - regulators only come up with stuff that doesn't make any sense.

I keep insisting that languages should be considered some sort of global heritage and such arbitrary changes that break the linguistic continuum should not be allowed.

The mere idea of spelling a given word — even your own name — the same way each time you write it is a modern innovation for English. But sure, English is a bastion of continuity.
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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby sa wulfs » 2021-09-27, 10:14

This is no different to Swedish or Dutch deciding that the preterite dental suffix should be variably spelled with a <d> or a <t> depending on whether the preceding consonant is voiced or voiceless. Or indeed no different to Dutch deciding that some instances of final devoicing should be reflected in the spelling, so you get things like lezen~lees. I would imagine this kind of spelling variation is actually super common cross-linguistically. As noted, English also does it, and since you're concerned with continuity and heritage, I would note that Middle and Old English also had examples of this.

It just seems very weird to me to go over to the speakers of some language to complain that you don't like this or that feature because it's different from what you're used to and that therefore it's bad and it should be changed. It comes across as a bit insulting.
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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Woods » 2021-09-27, 23:02

sa wulfs wrote:It just seems very weird to me to go over to the speakers of some language to complain that you don't like this or that feature because it's different from what you're used to and that therefore it's bad and it should be changed. It comes across as a bit insulting.

Well, since we're mostly people learning many different languages, it think it's good to discuss such things since those processes will continue, and depending on the predisposition of people in charge we can end with something beautiful (like Danish spelling) or looking horrible (like Swedish spelling) - the qualifications of those two examples being, of course, my personal opinion.


sa wulfs wrote:no different to Dutch deciding that some instances of final devoicing should be reflected in the spelling, so you get things like lezen~lees

No stance on Dutch - I don't know enough. But I most likely wouldn't like it. Some examples from English look super fine to me though - e. g. leaf - leaves - because they are consistent.

Раз-/рас- is not consistent.


I didn't come to tell the Russians anything, but to ask where that comes from and how mandatory it is - questions which Linguaphile answered.

I hope it won't trigger a reaction like when I exposed my views about some elements of Swedish writing and one of the people there got personally offended seemingly for the rest of her life.

You can tell me anything you want about my native language and I won't have a problem with it - but of course, I will let you know if I disagree.

Of course it might be a little bit harder to form an objective opinion when one is too used to it.

One thing I probably prefer about Russian is that it keeps double consonants in loanwords. But I would probably go even further and write the words in the original alphabet especially if it's a common one plus some reading aid in brackets if needed.

I've already exposed this view somewhere in this forum already and it also caused a lot of disagreement. Actually if we transition from one alphabet to another it gets a little bit harder to put the same principle in practice. But if you see how they transliterate French names into Bulgarian Cyrillics you will agree that it should be considered a crime against humanity.

In short - I would like to see people learning more languages and keeping what they have in common close to the origins, whilst striving for using native words rather than loanwords when possible. Quite the opposite of what's being done these days by most Bulgarians (that's my native language), and I wouldn't hesitate criticising them until the end of the world.

You can't say I'm offending anyone if I criticise Bulgarian, since it's my native language, right? So I don't see by what logic someone would feel offended if I disfavour a certain feature of another language I'm interested in.


Dormouse559 wrote:
Woods wrote:Really it's so cool that English doesn't have a country messing with its spelling rules - regulators only come up with stuff that doesn't make any sense.

I keep insisting that languages should be considered some sort of global heritage and such arbitrary changes that break the linguistic continuum should not be allowed.

The mere idea of spelling a given word — even your own name — the same way each time you write it is a modern innovation for English. But sure, English is a bastion of continuity.

Part of why and how it became the global language - it seems that in theory many people have issues with its spelling, but at the end all agree that this approach is the best.

Preservation of origins in vocabulary, extreme simplification of grammar - brilliant!

And it being the natural evolution of the work of everyone is yet another proof that this is where things end up when all points of view are taken into account.


Linguaphile wrote:the word "бес" means demon/devil. (it is related to Bulgarian бяс, if that helps, from Proto-Slavic *běsъ; in Russian it means "demon" or "devil", in Bulgarian perhaps not so strong a connotation in religious terms).

Бяс means rage. We uded to have a letter ѣ covering both я and е and it was a matter of dialect, but then the so-called "communist" dictators decided to remove it and force я or е everywhere, which causes tons of issues to this day. I suppose a similar process happened in Russia.


Linguaphile wrote:the issue with бес- isn't about keeping the original spelling, but that some people associate it with the devil. Literally a religious objection, not a linguistic one

Yeah, that's a shame.


Linguaphile wrote:But why do you think several different spellings for in- in English makes sense (ill-, irr-, imp-, ign- etc) makes sense but then object to без-/бес-, из-/ис-, раз-/рас- and so on? Why accept one (the English and Latin changes) and reject the other (the Russian changes)?

Cause English took them from Latin, or from French. As long as it kept them as they were, I'm fine with it. If I lived back in those days and knew Latin, maybe I would have had some objections. Now I really can't tell. But I love the consistency between English, French, German, Danish and I hate the lack thereof when it comes to Swedish, Norwegian and so forth. I feel like the 20th century, after tons of written literature have been amassed, is just way too late for making such changes.

I am all for promoting originality and diversity, but when it stems from actual innovation and does not represent only a break from logic and tradition.


Linguaphile wrote: But why do you think several different spellings for in- in English makes sense (ill-, irr-, imp-, ign- etc) makes sense but then object to без-/бес-, из-/ис-, раз-/рас- and so on? Why accept one (the English and Latin changes) and reject the other (the Russian changes)? You claim it's a more substantial difference with the English and Latin prefixes because the pronunciations are so different, but in Russian it does reflect the pronunciation too.

They're too close. The only reason they are pronounced unvoiced is due to the technical impossibility to voice them because of the immediately following unvoiced consonant. So it's perfectly obvious to everyone that they are unvoiced without indicating it in writing. The argument they put forward that writing what one hears would make it easier for the masses does not hold true, since now there are two almost identical prefixes with the same meaning and for the same purpose. They should have chosen one of them - whichever is more historically correct.


Linguaphile wrote:I guess whether the sound change is substantial enough to warrant a new spelling is a judgement call, but when the difference is substantial enough to match the sound of a different letter (з versus с) that seems substantial enough to me.

I doubt Russian people consistently make the conscious distinction between voiced consonants and their unvoiced counterparts. How is the final letter in "раз" (as in один раз - once) pronounced?

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-09-28, 1:58

Woods wrote:No stance on Dutch - I don't know enough. But I most likely wouldn't like it. Some examples from English look super fine to me though - e. g. leaf - leaves - because they are consistent.

:hmm:
Consistent with what? Many would disagree with you there. For example:
Grammar Monster wrote:There is confusion because the rule for forming plurals with nouns ending in f or fe isn't straightforward. Most nouns will drop the f or fe and gain a ves.
For example:
Knife becomes knives.
Loaf becomes loaves.

Some just add s. For example:
Safe becomes safes.
Chief becomes chiefs.

With some words, both versions are accepted. For example:
Scarf becomes scarfs or scarves.
Dwarf becomes dwarfs or dwarves.

The plural of leaf is always leaves. Unfortunately, there is no clever way of knowing which nouns ending f or fe follow which rules. You have to know. (For example, you have to know that leaf becomes leaves, but belief becomes beliefs.)

Source

Dictionary.com wrote:
Leaf, leaves. Wolf, wolves. Scarf, scarves. Beef, beeves?

Well, the plural of beef, in its most familiar sense of “meat from cows” or the like, is generally beef. But, beef can also mean “an adult cow, steer, or bull”; the plural, here, is beeves. And if you have more than one beef (“complaint”) with that unusual-seeming plural, well, you’ve got beefs.

source

And my point here isn't that English should be changed, but that every language has its idiosyncrasies and oddities that make them difficult for learners and confusing at times. If you want to learn a language, you just need to take the time to learn its idiosyncrasies. I've struggled with some of Russian's idiosyncrasies (not the prefixes, but other aspects) so much that I've never been successful at learning the language, but I wouldn't suggest that Russian should change. Instead I would just need to spend more time learning it, which is something I haven't done. That's on me, not the language. I just haven't dedicated enough time to be successful in learning it at a sufficient level.
Continuously suggesting that languages change to match what you expect them to be just comes off as sounding as though you don't want to take that time to learn and instead want everyone else to change.
It also continues to strike me as very odd that you hold English spelling up as an example of the kind of thing you'd like to see in other languages. English has its strengths, but consistent and logical spelling truly isn't one of them.

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Dormouse559 » 2021-09-28, 3:13

Woods wrote:Part of why and how it became the global language - it seems that in theory many people have issues with its spelling, but at the end all agree that this approach is the best.

Everyone agrees on this? Which international accord should I refer to? And I feel like you're talking about something different than I am. I'll rephrase: The belief that you and I should agree on the spelling of a word, or that I should even be consistent in my own spelling of that word, is relatively new for English. "Shakespeare" wasn't spelled consistently until the 20th century. So your sense of English as maintaining a linguistic continuum is questionable.

Preservation of origins in vocabulary, extreme simplification of grammar - brilliant!

And it being the natural evolution of the work of everyone is yet another proof that this is where things end up when all points of view are taken into account.

Why would this process preserve the origins of words? Most people never think about the history of the words they use, so why would they do so collectively? And, far from preserving origins, there are myriad examples in English where supposedly historical spellings actively obscure history.

There are "historical" spellings that reference an unconnected word, like "arbor". It does not descend from Latin arbor, even though it was respelled to look like that word. Instead, it comes from Old French erbier, derived from Latin herba.

There are "historical" spellings that skip parts of history, like "debt". The B was added as a nod to Latin debitum, but the word hadn't previously been spelled with a B in English, nor in Old French, which is the immediate source of the English word. Is French (or English itself) not a relevant part of the history of "debt"?

There are "historical" spellings based on forms that have never existed, like "scent". The C does not reflect a sound that has ever existed in this word or its ancestors (Old French sentir, Latin sentio), and the word had previously been spelled sent in English. You'll note that that original spelling accurately reflected both etymology and pronunciation, but, for some reason, tradition and logic weren't good enough in this case.


And prescriptive English spelling does not and never has taken all points of view into account, only those of the powerful, privileged and upper-class. The spelling of less prestigious varieties of English, like AAVE, often cleaves more closely to pronunciation.
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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby h34 » 2021-09-28, 8:50

Woods wrote:How is the final letter in "раз" (as in один раз - once) pronounced?

Generally, with an unvoiced -з (so it sounds like *рас). The pattern in Russian seems to be that voiced obstruents are devoiced in final position. Then again, I'm almost sure I've heard раз being pronounced with a voiced -з as well (correct me if I'm wrong), especially if it is immediately followed by a word beginning with a voiced consonant, as in раз, два, три ("one, two, three") or раз в год ("once a year"). So perhaps it depends on the definition of "final position", on the semantic relationship with the next word etc.

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby sa wulfs » 2021-09-28, 10:27

Woods wrote:No stance on Dutch - I don't know enough. But I most likely wouldn't like it. Some examples from English look super fine to me though - e. g. leaf - leaves - because they are consistent.

Раз-/рас- is not consistent.

How is раз-/рас- not consistent if the form with <с> is consistently used before voiceless consonants? In English you need to know whether a word has /vz/ or /fs/ in the plural and spell it with <ves> or <fs> accordingly. How is this not essentially the same thing?
I didn't come to tell the Russians anything, but to ask where that comes from and how mandatory it is - questions which Linguaphile answered.

I hope it won't trigger a reaction like when I exposed my views about some elements of Swedish writing and one of the people there got personally offended seemingly for the rest of her life.

That's the thing, you didn't merely ask a question about whether this is mandatory or whether some variance is acceptable. You got an answer to that question and then you challenged it, arguing that your way would be better and seemingly looking for a loophole or a gotcha to get it your way. It may not be your intention, but that's how it comes across. If you want to know why this keeps happening, that's why.
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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Woods » 2021-09-28, 11:20

Linguaphile wrote:
Woods wrote:No stance on Dutch - I don't know enough. But I most likely wouldn't like it. Some examples from English look super fine to me though - e. g. leaf - leaves - because they are consistent.

:hmm:
Consistent with what?

In that it -fe becomes -ves in every word that ends in -fe and has similar origins.


Linguaphile wrote:
Grammar Monster wrote:Safe becomes safes.
Chief becomes chiefs.

Safe and chief are different because they're essentially advectives.


Linguaphile wrote:
Grammar Monster wrote:With some words, both versions are accepted. For example:
Scarf becomes scarfs or scarves.
Dwarf becomes dwarfs or dwarves.

I would go for dwarves and scarves. I have much less of a problem with it if I can choose, rather than some incompetent regulator forcing a sudden change on me - let the better win!


Linguaphile wrote:Unfortunately, there is no clever way of knowing which nouns ending f or fe follow which rules. You have to know.

Well yeah, you may be right but since in English every word has its own spelling rules it doesn't bother me that much. Раз-/раз- is another thing - that's grammar. So there are many arguments in favour of keeping раз- everywhere for me: 1) the historical (mainly), 2) the consistency, 3) not having an arbitrary grammar rule alter the spelling of nouns.


Linguaphile wrote:belief becomes beliefs

This one comes from a verb - maybe a disctinction from "believes" as in 3rd person singular was intended.


Linguaphile wrote:Well, the plural of beef, in its most familiar sense of “meat from cows” or the like, is generally beef. But, beef can also mean “an adult cow, steer, or bull”; the plural, here, is beeves. And if you have more than one beef (“complaint”) with that unusual-seeming plural, well, you’ve got beefs.

Same thing with the intrinsic quality of an adjective, I think. "Beefs" is used when talking about meat from that animal, which in a way gives the feeling that "beef" qualifies the noun, from there it's spelt like an adjective.

I didn't know about the word beeves, but the way it's explained it makes perfect sense to me. It's quite clever.

Again - it's a natural evolution, I guess that's why it sounds very good to me. If there was somebody reforming the spelling and saying "we will always write -ve in plurals of nouns ending in -f," all that richness would have been lost and English would have been yet another boring language.


Linguaphile wrote:every language has its idiosyncrasies and oddities that make them difficult for learners and confusing at times. If you want to learn a language, you just need to take the time to learn its idiosyncrasies.

It's not about time put in, and obviouslu I got the rule immediataly just by reading about it. It is just that I don't like that somebody comes and makes an arbitrary change like that. Such things make me like the spelling of one language (Danish) and dislike the spelling of another so much that it makes me feel bad every time I read or write it (Swedish) - even though they are essentially two very close deviations of one and the same language.


Linguaphile wrote:I wouldn't suggest that Russian should change. Instead I would just need to spend more time learning it (...) I just haven't dedicated enough time to be successful in learning it

Let's take the example with Swedish again. I totally want to learn it. It's not about not wanting to put in the time at all. I want to learn it, but I also want it to be nice and beautiful, the same way that if I pass by a beautiful statue in the middle of my town every day and I like the statue, and someone comes and spits on it and sprays it with graffiti just to keep on with modern tendencies because, let's say, he doesn't like old art but only new things, I would be very annoyed.


Linguaphile wrote:It also continues to strike me as very odd that you hold English spelling up as an example of the kind of thing you'd like to see in other languages. English has its strengths, but consistent and logical spelling truly isn't one of them.

For me English is the absolute masterpiece. I am yet to see another language that well made and nice to use.

But it does have its annoyances too. For example, I feel indignation every time I have to write the word "resource" with a single s (if that came from French, it should have been kept double).



Dormouse559 wrote:
Woods wrote:Part of why and how it became the global language - it seems that in theory many people have issues with its spelling, but at the end all agree that this approach is the best.

Everyone agrees on this? Which international accord should I refer to?

The implicit accord of everyone writing it the way they do, while being free to write however they wish.


Dormouse559 wrote:The B was added as a nod to Latin debitum, but the word hadn't previously been spelled with a B in English, nor in Old French, which is the immediate source of the English word. Is French (or English itself) not a relevant part of the history of "debt"?

No, it's mending one injustice :)


Dormouse559 wrote:And, far from preserving origins, there are myriad examples in English where supposedly historical spellings actively obscure history.
(...)
There are "historical" spellings based on forms that have never existed, like "scent". The C does not reflect a sound that has ever existed in this word or its ancestors (Old French sentir, Latin sentio), and the word had previously been spelled sent in English.

Mistakes happen. I would have gone for "sent" for sure.


Dormouse559 wrote:And prescriptive English spelling does not and never has taken all points of view into account, only those of the powerful, privileged and upper-class.

Which coincidentally were also the ones educated at language?



h34 wrote:
Woods wrote:How is the final letter in "раз" (as in один раз - once) pronounced?

Generally, with an unvoiced -з (so it sounds like *рас). The pattern in Russian seems to be that voiced obstruents are devoiced in final position. Then again, I'm almost sure I've heard раз being pronounced with a voiced -з as well (correct me if I'm wrong), especially if it is immediately followed by a word beginning with a voiced consonant, as in раз, два, три ("one, two, three") or раз в год ("once a year"). So perhaps it depends on the definition of "final position", on the semantic relationship with the next word etc.

Bingo!

It was a question for Linguaphile though :)

Of course. Or the plural "два раза". It is just natural to pronounce the з as /z/ when there's a voiced consonant or vowel to accentuate it. Not a good idea to respell every word where it doesn't happen to be the case.

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Dormouse559 » 2021-09-28, 14:39

Woods wrote:
Dormouse559 wrote:
Woods wrote:Part of why and how it became the global language - it seems that in theory many people have issues with its spelling, but at the end all agree that this approach is the best.

Everyone agrees on this? Which international accord should I refer to?

The implicit accord of everyone writing it the way they do, while being free to write however they wish.

Right. We write how we do because we're all secretly philologists at heart and not because there are overwhelming economic and social advantages to it.


Dormouse559 wrote:The B was added as a nod to Latin debitum, but the word hadn't previously been spelled with a B in English, nor in Old French, which is the immediate source of the English word. Is French (or English itself) not a relevant part of the history of "debt"?

No, it's mending one injustice :)

What injustice?


Dormouse559 wrote:And, far from preserving origins, there are myriad examples in English where supposedly historical spellings actively obscure history.
(...)
There are "historical" spellings based on forms that have never existed, like "scent". The C does not reflect a sound that has ever existed in this word or its ancestors (Old French sentir, Latin sentio), and the word had previously been spelled sent in English.

Mistakes happen. I would have gone for "sent" for sure.

"Mistakes" … So many aspects of modern English spelling (and its grammar, while we're here) were put in place quite purposefully. Influential Anglophone writers have historically been less interested in preserving linguistic origins than in flaunting the trappings of Latin and reinforcing their own sense of superiority. English happens to have a lot of borrowings from Latin — all the better — but these educated people were perfectly willing to arbitrarily change English orthography and grammar in order to make it more like Latin and harder for the unprivileged to learn, history be damned. And yet you idolize these people.


Dormouse559 wrote:And prescriptive English spelling does not and never has taken all points of view into account, only those of the powerful, privileged and upper-class.

Which coincidentally were also the ones educated at language?

And also weren't "everyone", as you so utopically phrase it. And, in case you haven't noticed, nonwhite, nonrich people have been writing English for a good long time at this point, yet the spelling hasn't changed. And, no, it's not because we all earnestly want to pay homage to Norman French.
Last edited by Dormouse559 on 2021-09-28, 14:42, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-09-28, 14:41

Woods wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:
Grammar Monster wrote:Safe becomes safes.
Chief becomes chiefs.

Safe and chief are different because they're essentially advectives.

No, they aren't adjectives. They can't be adjectives when used in these plural forms because adjectives don't take plural endings in English. If you're saying that they're derived from adjectives, "safe" is, but "chief" is not.
What makes them different from words pronounced and spelled with the -ves plural is the time at which they entered English. Words that entered English a long time ago from Old English (leaf, calf, thief, wolf, half) tend to use the -ves plural. Words that entered English more recently from mostly other sources (chief, safe, beef, proof, oaf, waif) tend to have the -fs plural. But then there is the group of words that can take either plural (dwarf, roof, hoof, scarf, kerchief) and some of these are from Old English, some from Old French, etc. and there is no rule to predict their plurals. In fact, often it's some work of popular culture that influences which is more common (most of us have heard of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "The Elves and the Shoemaker", and Tolkien deliberating used "dwarves" in his works even though "dwarfs" was more common, to make them seem otherworldly).

Woods wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:
Dictionary.com wrote:Well, the plural of beef, in its most familiar sense of “meat from cows” or the like, is generally beef. But, beef can also mean “an adult cow, steer, or bull”; the plural, here, is beeves. And if you have more than one beef (“complaint”) with that unusual-seeming plural, well, you’ve got beefs.

Same thing with the intrinsic quality of an adjective, I think. "Beefs" is used when talking about meat from that animal, which in a way gives the feeling that "beef" qualifies the noun, from there it's spelt like an adjective.

I didn't know about the word beeves, but the way it's explained it makes perfect sense to me. It's quite clever.

You've misunderstood it though. "Beefs" isn't use when talking about meat from the animal. (When talking about meat, we treat it is a noncount noun, so the plural is "beef".) "Beeves" is used (rarely) when talking about the animals themselves. "Beefs" is used when talking about complaints; it is a newer meaning, so it uses the newer (-fs) rule.
This is also why an accepted plural of "computer mouse" is "computer mouses" instead of only "computer mice"; it's a newer usage. (Both plurals are accepted for "computer mouse". I have always preferred "computer mouses", even back when the only definition in the dictionary was the rodent so the only plural in the dictionary was "mice", because for the new meaning the more regular form "mouses" made more sense to me. It follows the same logic as "beefs".)

Woods wrote:It's not about time put in, and obviouslu I got the rule immediataly just by reading about it. It is just that I don't like that somebody comes and makes an arbitrary change like that. Such things make me like the spelling of one language (Danish) and dislike the spelling of another so much that it makes me feel bad every time I read or write it (Swedish) - even though they are essentially two very close deviations of one and the same language.

In other posts I think you've mentioned trying to write things in Danish in Swedish-speaking contexts (in Finland) and being disappointed when it was not accepted, right? Try to see it from a Swedish-speaker's point of view. The first assumption might be "he already knows Danish and doesn't want to take the time to learn Swedish" and, since you are in a place where Swedish is an official language and Danish is not, it comes off as being unwilling to adapt to your surroundings or valuing someone else's language more than theirs. Okay, so you say that the time needed for this is not the reason. It's actually because you think their language is too ugly to write! Honestly I think that would be seen as even more insulting than the first assumption. Of course I can't tell you that you must consider the language beautiful; that's an opinion and no one can make you have a specific opinion, but when you keep insisting and trying to convince others that your opinion is better, and it concerns someone's own language, I think you are always going to find opposition to that, resistance, and some hard feelings.

Woods wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:I wouldn't suggest that Russian should change. Instead I would just need to spend more time learning it (...) I just haven't dedicated enough time to be successful in learning it

Let's take the example with Swedish again. I totally want to learn it. It's not about not wanting to put in the time at all. I want to learn it, but I also want it to be nice and beautiful, the same way that if I pass by a beautiful statue in the middle of my town every day and I like the statue, and someone comes and spits on it and sprays it with graffiti just to keep on with modern tendencies because, let's say, he doesn't like old art but only new things, I would be very annoyed.

See above. It's not a graffiti-sprayed statue. It's the language people speak as their mother tongue.

Woods wrote:
Dormouse559 wrote:
Woods wrote:Part of why and how it became the global language - it seems that in theory many people have issues with its spelling, but at the end all agree that this approach is the best.

Everyone agrees on this? Which international accord should I refer to?

The implicit accord of everyone writing it the way they do, while being free to write however they wish.

But that is no longer true. And the older texts, where people did spell however they wished, are harder to read. There are works of Shakespeare in which he spelled the same word two different ways in the same line.
Now we have spelling rules that we learn in school and have to follow them, the same as any other language.

Woods wrote:
h34 wrote:
Woods wrote:How is the final letter in "раз" (as in один раз - once) pronounced?

Generally, with an unvoiced -з (so it sounds like *рас). The pattern in Russian seems to be that voiced obstruents are devoiced in final position. Then again, I'm almost sure I've heard раз being pronounced with a voiced -з as well (correct me if I'm wrong), especially if it is immediately followed by a word beginning with a voiced consonant, as in раз, два, три ("one, two, three") or раз в год ("once a year"). So perhaps it depends on the definition of "final position", on the semantic relationship with the next word etc.

Bingo!

It was a question for Linguaphile though :)

Of course. Or the plural "два раза". It is just natural to pronounce the з as /z/ when there's a voiced consonant or vowel to accentuate it. Not a good idea to respell every word where it doesn't happen to be the case.

Why should the question be only for me? h34 took the time to answer you in good faith, presumably in the belief that you really wanted to know. But instead you were looking for some kind of "gotcha" or loophole like sa wulfs mentioned above (and, for some strange reason, you apparently wanted it to come only from me). I think this is exactly the kind of thing sa wulfs was talking about, and I agree:
sa wulfs wrote:
Woods wrote:I didn't come to tell the Russians anything, but to ask where that comes from and how mandatory it is - questions which Linguaphile answered.
I hope it won't trigger a reaction like when I exposed my views about some elements of Swedish writing and one of the people there got personally offended seemingly for the rest of her life.

That's the thing, you didn't merely ask a question about whether this is mandatory or whether some variance is acceptable. You got an answer to that question and then you challenged it, arguing that your way would be better and seemingly looking for a loophole or a gotcha to get it your way. It may not be your intention, but that's how it comes across. If you want to know why this keeps happening, that's why.

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Woods » 2021-09-28, 20:05

Dormouse559 wrote:
Woods wrote:
Dormouse559 wrote:
Woods wrote:Part of why and how it became the global language - it seems that in theory many people have issues with its spelling, but at the end all agree that this approach is the best.

Everyone agrees on this? Which international accord should I refer to?

The implicit accord of everyone writing it the way they do, while being free to write however they wish.

Right. We write how we do because we're all secretly philologists at heart and not because there are overwhelming economic and social advantages to it.

I can't please anyone: when I don't like something about a certain language - how dare I, and when I do like something about another - how dare I again. The price of having an opinion.


Dormouse559 wrote:English happens to have a lot of borrowings from Latin — all the better — but these educated people were perfectly willing to arbitrarily change English orthography and grammar in order to make it more like Latin and harder for the unprivileged to learn, history be damned. And yet you idolize these people.

Quite a stretch. I don't mind you finding ingenious arguments against my position, but it isn't all right to almost attribute me supporting exploitative and racist politics.


Linguaphile wrote:If you're saying that they're derived from adjectives, "safe" is, but "chief" is not.
What makes them different from words pronounced and spelled with the -ves plural is the time at which they entered English. Words that entered English a long time ago from Old English (leaf, calf, thief, wolf, half) tend to use the -ves plural. Words that entered English more recently from mostly other sources (chief, safe, beef, proof, oaf, waif) tend to have the -fs plural.

Well that's also fine with me. Different periods, different spelling - we only need to learn a little bit of history and it makes sense.

Chinese speakers have to learn thousands of characters and they don't complain, because they want to throw their heritage in the trash.

(well in the PRC they partly do but that's another topic)


Linguaphile wrote:But then there is the group of words that can take either plural (dwarf, roof, hoof, scarf, kerchief) and some of these are from Old English, some from Old French, etc. and there is no rule to predict their plurals.

There are dictionaries. And linguists should be free to emit an opinion.


Linguaphile wrote:
Woods wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:
Dictionary.com wrote:Well, the plural of beef, in its most familiar sense of “meat from cows” or the like, is generally beef. But, beef can also mean “an adult cow, steer, or bull”; the plural, here, is beeves. And if you have more than one beef (“complaint”) with that unusual-seeming plural, well, you’ve got beefs.

Same thing with the intrinsic quality of an adjective, I think. "Beefs" is used when talking about meat from that animal, which in a way gives the feeling that "beef" qualifies the noun, from there it's spelt like an adjective.

I didn't know about the word beeves, but the way it's explained it makes perfect sense to me. It's quite clever.

You've misunderstood it though. "Beefs" isn't use when talking about meat from the animal. (When talking about meat, we treat it is a noncount noun, so the plural is "beef".) "Beeves" is used (rarely) when talking about the animals themselves. "Beefs" is used when talking about complaints; it is a newer meaning, so it uses the newer (-fs) rule.

Never heard that. I was thinking different types of bovine meat.

"Our beefs are all selected to match even the most carnivorous taste" - something like that.


Linguaphile wrote:In other posts I think you've mentioned trying to write things in Danish in Swedish-speaking contexts (in Finland) and being disappointed when it was not accepted, right?

Yes because it doesn't make any sense to write in a different standard while the two "separate languages" are 95% identical; and everything in written Danish is perfectly understandable to a Swedish speaker.

Here we can put forward Dormouse's argument about some people's wish to be in a position of superiority.


Linguaphile wrote:Try to see it from a Swedish-speaker's point of view. The first assumption might be "he already knows Danish and doesn't want to take the time to learn Swedish"

Learning Danish technically is learning Swedish, with some minor differences in writing and a huge difference in pronunciation.

It makes much more sense to familiarise oneself with the different phonology and the few words that are different and stick to one standard in writing.

Scandinavian countries seem to agree on that, with the odd exception of Finland.


Linguaphile wrote:Okay, so you say that the time needed for this is not the reason. It's actually because you think their language is too ugly to write!

Not "their language" but some of the features of the spelling they inherited from some kings which in my opinion had a bad taste in spelling features.

And I'm not bringing this argument for that purpose, only discussing it in a language forum.


Linguaphile wrote:since you are in a place where Swedish is an official language and Danish is not, it comes off as being unwilling to adapt to your surroundings or valuing someone else's language more than theirs

Tell me what you'd think if you wanted to sit an exam in a UK uni and they asked you to first bring a certificate that you speak British English, because learning in the US doesn't count.


Linguaphile wrote:when you keep insisting and trying to convince others that your opinion is better

How is that different from you trying to convince me that yours is better?


Linguaphile wrote:
Woods wrote:
h34 wrote:
Woods wrote:How is the final letter in "раз" (as in один раз - once) pronounced?

Generally, with an unvoiced -з (so it sounds like *рас). The pattern in Russian seems to be that voiced obstruents are devoiced in final position. Then again, I'm almost sure I've heard раз being pronounced with a voiced -з as well (correct me if I'm wrong), especially if it is immediately followed by a word beginning with a voiced consonant, as in раз, два, три ("one, two, three") or раз в год ("once a year"). So perhaps it depends on the definition of "final position", on the semantic relationship with the next word etc.

Bingo!

It was a question for Linguaphile though :)

Of course. Or the plural "два раза". It is just natural to pronounce the з as /z/ when there's a voiced consonant or vowel to accentuate it. Not a good idea to respell every word where it doesn't happen to be the case.

Why should the question be only for me? h34 took the time to answer you in good faith, presumably in the belief that you really wanted to know. But instead you were looking for some kind of "gotcha" or loophole like sa wulfs mentioned above (and, for some strange reason, you apparently wanted it to come only from me).

Because it was a reply to one of your points that voiced consonants were spelt with equivalent voiced letters and unvoiced consonants with unvoiced ones. Or something like that. I was surprised he thought it was a question.

But if you don't want to understand my argument and just prove yours, then you will only see an attempt to quibble with you, which is not the case.


Linguaphile wrote:I think this is exactly the kind of thing sa wulfs was talking about, and I agree:
sa wulfs wrote:
Woods wrote:I didn't come to tell the Russians anything, but to ask where that comes from and how mandatory it is - questions which Linguaphile answered.
I hope it won't trigger a reaction like when I exposed my views about some elements of Swedish writing and one of the people there got personally offended seemingly for the rest of her life.

That's the thing, you didn't merely ask a question about whether this is mandatory or whether some variance is acceptable. You got an answer to that question and then you challenged it, arguing that your way would be better and seemingly looking for a loophole or a gotcha to get it your way. It may not be your intention, but that's how it comes across. If you want to know why this keeps happening, that's why.

Of course I will look for a loophole if I would prefer to write it in another way. That was part of my question and then started a discussion.??


So if we live in a world where people are not allowed to have their own opinions you will be happier?

I think that's when things get scary - when a group of people gets annoyed at the mere fact someone doesn't agree with something or questions things.

Whoever made an arbitrary change to Russian orthography because he didn't like it was fine, but me preferring the old way is an offence?

It's easier to agree with whatever you're handed and not question things, but I'm not that kind of person.

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Dormouse559 » 2021-09-28, 22:22

Woods wrote:I can't please anyone: when I don't like something about a certain language - how dare I, and when I do like something about another - how dare I again. The price of having an opinion.

Well, when that opinion is misinformed, it doesn't really matter whether you think of it as condemnation or praise. It's just wrong.

Woods wrote:
Dormouse559 wrote:English happens to have a lot of borrowings from Latin — all the better — but these educated people were perfectly willing to arbitrarily change English orthography and grammar in order to make it more like Latin and harder for the unprivileged to learn, history be damned. And yet you idolize these people.

Quite a stretch. I don't mind you finding ingenious arguments against my position, but it isn't all right to almost attribute me supporting exploitative and racist politics.

I'm not saying you do support racism or exploitation. I'm saying you have profoundly misunderstood the reasons why English orthography is the way it is.
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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-09-28, 22:34

Woods wrote:Chinese speakers have to learn thousands of characters and they don't complain

Russian speakers have to learn two spellings for some prefixes and they don't complain.

Woods wrote:Yes because it doesn't make any sense to write in a different standard while the two "separate languages" are 95% identical; and everything in written Danish is perfectly understandable to a Swedish speaker.

Woods wrote:Learning Danish technically is learning Swedish, with some minor differences in writing and a huge difference in pronunciation.

Woods wrote:Tell me what you'd think if you wanted to sit an exam in a UK uni and they asked you to first bring a certificate that you speak British English, because learning in the US doesn't count.

Danish and Swedish are different languages, while American and British English are two varieties of the same language. You may not like it, and there may be situations where you can use one in place of the other more easily than with other language pairs, but it's still an internationally-recognized and accepted fact that Danish and Swedish are different languages while British and American English are not.
But ignoring that for a moment: if I were going to a university in the UK I would have absolutely no issue with them asking me to take a British English test to enroll there or do whatever else was needed to obtain something certifying my language ability. LOL, you have no idea how many language exams I've had to take to get various language certifications over the years for various reasons, and usually for the same languages over and over because they are for different purposes and require different certifications. To need another because I'm in a different country would come as no surprise. In the U.S. I had to take an English test as well to enroll in the university and would have been placed in ESL or remedial English classes if I'd failed. I don't see why it would be different in the UK, and sure, they'd have their own test or certification, just like my university here did. No problem. I'd expect that. And I would pass it.

Woods wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:when you keep insisting and trying to convince others that your opinion is better

How is that different from you trying to convince me that yours is better?

I didn't say you couldn't do it, I said that when you do I think you are always going to find opposition, resistance, and some hard feelings, because you are trying to convince people that their language is wrong. I'm not causing that situation or trying to censor you, I'm just explaining that's how many people would feel. I think it would be a useful thing for you to try to understand.
And I'm not trying to convince you that my opinion is better. (My opinion is irrelevant and I've mentioned briefly that there are aspects of Russian that I find challenging, but I think that's the only mention I've made of my personal opinion here because my opinion is not the point.) I'm not trying to convince you that my opinion is better. I'm trying to convince you that native speakers know best what works for their language, and when you argue that they don't, they'll resist that idea or even feel insulted.
No one is censoring you or saying you can't make these arguments. I'm just explaining why you keep finding resistance to them. If you want to keep arguing these kinds of things with language after language, great, keep on doing it. But know that it's not an argument you're likely to win with any of them. I'm clearly not going to convince you of that either, so I'll stop trying.

Woods wrote:I was surprised he thought it was a question.

You wrote it as a question, on a Russian-learning forum. What else would people think it was?

Woods wrote:So if we live in a world where people are not allowed to have their own opinions you will be happier?
I think that's when things get scary - when a group of people gets annoyed at the mere fact someone doesn't agree with something or questions things.

No, that's not what anyone here said. The comments about gotchas and loopholes came after you said this:
Woods wrote:I hope it won't trigger a reaction like when I exposed my views about some elements of Swedish writing and one of the people there got personally offended seemingly for the rest of her life.

Literally, we were explaining why your comments sometimes trigger that reaction. You said you hoped it wouldn't happen, I was explaining how you could avoid it and why I think it keeps happening. You have the right to complain about orthography, native speakers have the right to disagree, and after that if you continue insisting that you know better than native speakers, to feel offended by that attitude. Having opinions and expressing them is not the problem. The key here is that after you've done that, you keep insisting that you are right and challenging everything the other person says, in a "gotcha" sort of mode, even when they are a native speaker of the language in question and even if it's about a language you don't even know. Although there are no native Russian speakers in this particular discussion, you've done that with native or near-native speakers IIRC regarding Swedish, Serbian, Saami, etc. Exactly as I stated earlier: when you keep insisting and trying to convince others that your opinion is better, and it concerns someone's own language, I think you are always going to find opposition to that, resistance, and some hard feelings.

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Woods » 2021-09-30, 10:42

Dormouse559 wrote:
Woods wrote:I can't please anyone: when I don't like something about a certain language - how dare I, and when I do like something about another - how dare I again. The price of having an opinion.

Well, when that opinion is misinformed, it doesn't really matter whether you think of it as condemnation or praise. It's just wrong.

Misinformed in what way?

Obviously I can't know everything, I'm not even a linguist, English is not my native language and I have barely ever had any schooling in it. Interesting points came during the discussion. However, we're turning that debate into a fight.

You didn't tell me why me liking some characteristic of English is a problem, while disliking a certain feature of Russian orthography is also a problem. The only thing I can conclude is that it will only not be a problem if I have the same feeling as you.


Dormouse559 wrote:
Woods wrote:
Dormouse559 wrote:English happens to have a lot of borrowings from Latin — all the better — but these educated people were perfectly willing to arbitrarily change English orthography and grammar in order to make it more like Latin and harder for the unprivileged to learn, history be damned. And yet you idolize these people.

Quite a stretch. I don't mind you finding ingenious arguments against my position, but it isn't all right to almost attribute me supporting exploitative and racist politics.

I'm not saying you do support racism or exploitation. I'm saying you have profoundly misunderstood the reasons why English orthography is the way it is.

You know you took it to the point where you were saying that if I support their way of treating language, then I support them together with their other, clearly despicable, policies.



Linguaphile wrote:
Woods wrote:Chinese speakers have to learn thousands of characters and they don't complain

Russian speakers have to learn two spellings for some prefixes and they don't complain.

You purposefully ignored the key element of my argument. You didn't even include it in your quote. You're answering to something that is clearly not the point of what I'm saying.


Linguaphile wrote:Danish and Swedish are different languages, while American and British English are two varieties of the same language. You may not like it (...)

That's an arbitrary definition done by governments. They could have easily changed the spelling of US English a little bit further and called it American or whatever they want, and if you go to some corners of the UK it's not more mutually intelligible than if you cross from Denmark to Sweden.


Linguaphile wrote:if I were going to a university in the UK I would have absolutely no issue with them asking me to take a British English test to enroll there or do whatever else was needed to obtain something certifying my language ability.

Strange. And if they asked you to change the spelling of the few words that you Americans write differently? I would have told them to **** off.


Linguaphile wrote:LOL, you have no idea how many language exams I've had to take to get various language certifications over the years for various reasons, and usually for the same languages over and over because they are for different purposes and require different certifications.

Sounds like they're cash cows filling their pockets.


Linguaphile wrote:you are trying to convince people that their language is wrong

Languages cannot be wrong, the way people treat them can.


Linguaphile wrote:I'm trying to convince you that native speakers know best what works for their language

Could be the case or not. Compare a writer or someone who has spent years working with that language with someone who hasn't even taken the pain to learn to read and write. And you seem to hold those people as examples.


Linguaphile wrote:
Woods wrote:I was surprised he thought it was a question.

You wrote it as a question, on a Russian-learning forum. What else would people think it was?

Well if he saw it was placed under a quote as an answer to what you said, and heard the tone of it.


Linguaphile wrote:No one is censoring you or saying you can't make these arguments. (...) But know that it's not an argument you're likely to win with any of them. I'm clearly not going to convince you of that either, so I'll stop trying.

Yeah, at some point I will just stop telling my opinions about things altogether, it's just not worth it.


Linguaphile wrote:
Woods wrote:So if we live in a world where people are not allowed to have their own opinions you will be happier?
I think that's when things get scary - when a group of people gets annoyed at the mere fact someone doesn't agree with something or questions things.

No, that's not what anyone here said. The comments about gotchas and loopholes came after you said this:
Woods wrote:I hope it won't trigger a reaction like when I exposed my views about some elements of Swedish writing and one of the people there got personally offended seemingly for the rest of her life.

That was literally an appeal to not turn this topic into a heated argument like we did.


Linguaphile wrote:You said you hoped it wouldn't happen, I was explaining how you could avoid it

But I never asked to know about that. I have my own interpretation of it and it is such, to paraphrase one Finnish girl: "that's when you learn several related languages, you start having opinions about things people don't think about." The problem comes when people take it as something personal when it is not.

And reforms that harm languages will keep happening. The most recent example I can think of is the new French spelling reform that was suggested in the 80s by the Académie Française, and it has some good ideas plus a lot of bad ones, in fact it does almost nothing to improve French spelling and it's full of arbitrary changes that most French people disagree with. As it was just a recommendation, people naturally started adopting the features they liked and ignored the ones they didn't. That is, until in 2016 or so, politicians in order to turn public attention away from their other dealings, issued legislation to make it mandatory for teachers to teach the new spelling and reprint school books. That (the reform) causes a lot of anger - but maybe after a hundred years, if someone makes the point, it would be exactly the same as me questioning that change in Russian spelling right now. Is there only a certain time window in which I'm allowed to have an opinion?


Linguaphile wrote:You have the right to complain about orthography, native speakers have the right to disagree, and after that if you continue insisting that you know better than native speakers

Herein lies the problem. As soon as they have to agree or disagree, we are already in an argument.

I indeed learnt interesting things from this discussion. Like for example, the one Dormouse said that "scent" was written "sent". If it would be recognised today, I would start writing it this way. Obviously English didn't get it perfectly. What I'm saying is that IN MY OPINION it took the right approach.

I'm not going to go a lot further with this post because it takes a lot of time, and I don't personally get much from trying to convince a small group of people that spelling languages in a more consistent and etymologically correct way will be better. It feels more like trying to help someone who doesn't want to be helped (like when I see Swedish, my first thought is how could you be doing something so horrible to your language). And if I've asked this kind of questions about different languages, it was because I've been interested in learning those languages and if I've looked for a loophole around a feature I don't like - because I've wanted to be able to use this language the way it best can be used. Like I literally never want to be a person writing a word like "broschyr" - it feels like a crime against humanity!

And the example you're giving about the Saami forum is totally incorrect. I went there to ask why they were trying to develop so many different standards of what I assumed, without any prior knowledge about the subject, would be a few very closely related languages. Before I was - I believe rightfully - told that they were indeed very different and not even mutually intelligible, I was called an ignorant racist and coloniser by a Saami person who compared me to the people who forced the usage of other languages instead of their mother tongue to his or her grandparents, plus he or she told me that if I am so ignorant then I better never be interested in or work with indigenous languages. It indeed made such an impact on me that it was one of the reasons I deleted Saami from my list of desired languages.

Besides, what I kept from it was that it does make sense to have so many varieties of Saami, because they were (according to that person's words) as different from each other as English from Icelandic. On the contrary, it didn't change my perception that it would be better to try keeping the spelling conventions as close as possible rather than taking them further apart. (It was also funny how that same person probably supported having 25 different spelling conventions, while at the same time insisted that everybody calls the language Saami instead of Sámi, because that would have been more correct according to the spelling of a larger number of varieties.)

What you kept from it seems to be, unfortunately, that I like to go around forums and argue with natives about their languages :(

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Dormouse559 » 2021-09-30, 15:15

Woods wrote:Misinformed in what way?

I’ve already told you, but I’ll say it again. You have a view that modern English orthography preserves its linguistic heritage for posterity and additionally have talked about that feature as if it were a benign thing. I take more issue with the second point because it ignores the elitist motivations behind the orthography. I don’t believe you agree with those motives, and, true, you aren’t a linguist or a native speaker. But then, that should be all the more reason to acknowledge new information when it’s presented to you.

Your aesthetic appreciation of English spelling is neither here nor there for me (and I’ve never said anything about your thoughts on Russian) but it’s important to challenge misinformed statements about what this spelling is accomplishing and why.
N'hésite pas à corriger mes erreurs.

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Re: Prefixes из-, воз-, вз-, раз-, без-

Postby Woods » 2021-09-30, 16:18

Dormouse559 wrote:
Woods wrote:Misinformed in what way?

I’ve already told you, but I’ll say it again. You have a view that modern English orthography preserves its linguistic heritage for posterity

Well of course it can only do so to an extent. But its philosophy is to try to do so, and so is mine - and I like that about it.


Dormouse559 wrote:I take more issue with the second point because it ignores the elitist motivations behind the orthography.

I don't know about those, and if they were a point I would have very strongly disagreed with that point. If it happened to be that it helped preserve the origins of many words for future generations, then something good happened regardless of the motivations.

In France for example, I read that printing professionals were doing so because it meant longer text which meant they could charge more. All kinds of reasons, according to different people - as you can see, mine are very different.


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