HappyCamper wrote:spanish is a commonly taught modern languages in uk schools. the iberian peninsula is one of the biggest overseas holiday destinations from the uk. they are indo-european languages using the same alphabet etc. there are significant spainsh influence in the art such as operas in spanish or multiple recent chart hits. so actually yes, accessible.
What a stretch!
HappyCamper wrote:you said that hanyu pinyin doesn't work and should be changed because it does not correspond to one particular possible pronunciation you had in mind. this makes no sense given there would be multiple valid pronunciations of those combinations of letters as written in english anyway.
Exactly, you can't on the one hand argue that strings of letters don't always have the same pronunciation while at the same time demanding a precise pronunciation of a set string of letters. That is why people don't usually bother being pedantic with pronunciation pedantry, it's a pointless paradox. Some people seem to think that names are an exception though, something to take personally, which is a paradox within a paradox, because names are inextricably linked to regional languages and dialects.
However, when you regularly speak words in a community you develop what is termed 'common-sense'. People copy each other, making communication easier within the clique but at the same time more complex for those outside that clique. Just human nature. And so when an English person sees the word Xu or Zhou they will read that word as Zoo, because it conforms to their clique-speak, making communication easier within the clique. If you feel it's important to bugger-that-up for the sake of pedantry to a system that is outside the clique then more fool you.
When we're all speaking Chinese or Hindi or German or Brazilian or whatever becomes the new language of trade in the next one or two hundred years, feel free to come back and laugh at me
HappyCamper wrote:not everyone can pronounce every foreign word. shocking i know. as long as they communicate clearly and respectfully it's not an issue to say things coloured by their natural voice. i don't think anyone really expects otherwise, certainly i don't.
it would be incorrect to claim 'torburn' is a, let alone only, correct pronunciation.
You are right, it's not a 'correct' pronunciation, but it's acceptable, glad you agree. We're getting somewhere at last!
HappyCamper wrote:no i have neither said nor implied any such thing. i have said that we do not need to change a status quo that work due to invalid objections. i also explained what i felt was wrong with those objections.
It quite clearly doesn't work, and, no, you can't just say the objections are invalid, that's not how it works. Yes, you had quite a laughable string of reasons why you didn't like the objections. The situation is still the same though, the current system is not fit for purpose.