[XeTeX] Hyphenation in polyglossia - Latin and Greek

[John Was]

Hello Yannis

I'm happy to report that I don't share any of these false assumptions at 
all.  All written languages have features in their script which are not 
'required' logically but do, as you say, embody much information about the 
history of the language.  I am all for a writing system which forces its 
learners (particularly children whose brains need stretching) to keep their 
wits about them, and as I said, I'm the last one to advocate abolition of 
the polytonic system.

The English equivalent of such 'unnecessary' elements is its orthography, of 
course, and to lighten the mood let me append an anonymous poem illustrative 
of that fact....

English is Tough Stuff



Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye, your dress will tear.

So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.



Just compare heart, beard, and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word,

Sword and sward, retain and Britain.

(Mind the latter, how it's written.)

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as plaque and ague.

But be careful how you speak:

Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,

Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,

Exiles, similes, and reviles;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far;

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,

Scene, Melpomene, mankind.



Billet does not rhyme with ballet,

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

Blood and flood are not like food,

Nor is mould like should and would.

Viscous, viscount, load and broad,

Toward, to forward, to reward.

And your pronunciation's OK

When you correctly say croquet,

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

And enamour rhyme with hammer.

River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,

Doll and roll and some and home.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,

Neither does devour with clangour.

Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,



Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,

And then singer, ginger, linger,

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,

Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,

Nor does fury sound like bury.

Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.

Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.

Though the differences seem little,

We say actual but victual.

Refer does not rhyme with deafer.

Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.

Mint, pint, senate and sedate;

Dull, bull, and George ate late.

Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,

Science, conscience, scientific.



Liberty, library, heave and heaven,

Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.

We say hallowed, but allowed,

People, leopard, towed, but vowed.

Mark the differences, moreover,

Between mover, cover, clover;

Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,

Chalice, but police and lice;

Camel, constable, unstable,

Principle, disciple, label.



Petal, panel, and canal,

Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.

Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,

Senator, spectator, mayor.

Tour, but our and succour, four.

Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Sea, idea, Korea, area,

Psalm, Maria, but malaria.

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.

Doctrine, turpentine, marine.



Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion and battalion.

Sally with ally, yea, ye,

Eye, I, ay, whey, and key.

Say aver, but ever, fever,

Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.

Heron, granary, canary.

Crevice and device and aerie.





Face, but preface, not efface.

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Large, but target, gin, give, verging,

Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.

Ear, but earn and wear and tear

Do not rhyme with here but ere.

Seven is right, but so is even,

Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,

Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,

Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation-think of Psyche!

Is a paling stout and spikey?

Won't it make you lose your wits,

Writing groats and saying grits?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel:

Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,

Islington and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough-Though,

through, plough, or dough, or cough?

Hiccough has the sound of cup.

My advice is to give up!!!



Author Unknown



John
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yannis Haralambous" <yannis.haralambous at telecom-bretagne.eu>
To: "Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms" <xetex at tug.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [XeTeX] Hyphenation in polyglossia - Latin and Greek


> Le 16 mai 09 à 17:56, John Was a écrit :
>
>> The polytonic system looks nice (and I'm the last one to want to see  it 
>> disappear) but is strictly over-elaborate in modern Greek since  the 
>> standard language no longer uses varieties of tonic accent - so  one 
>> accent would in fact do the job (native Greek speakers don't  need it at 
>> all really, since they all know where the accent comes  anyway!).
>
>
> This is the typical false argument number 1 of the monotonists:
>
> it is false because it assumes that writing has the only function of 
> representing oral language, and so whatever has no oral function is 
> useless. This is clearly wrong otherwise we would all write in the 
> phonetic alphabet. Accents carry morphological and syntactic  information, 
> breathings etymological one, just like iotacism,  diphthongs, etc. Of 
> course once and then somebody arrives and says "we  don't the 
> iota/eta/upsilon distinction, nor the omicron/omega one",  but then of 
> course people get upset. People do not realize that  accents and breathing 
> are first-class citizens of the writing system,  just like letters.
>
>
>