LINGUIST List 11.297

Sun Feb 13 2000

Qs: Farsi Letters, Phonemes/Homophones

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Justin L. Smith, Farsi Letters
2. Carolin, Phonemes, Homophones and False Friends

 Ladies and Gentlemen,

 While I am a fluent speaker of Persian, I am by no means a specialist. 
 In this, I offer the following question to the list in hopes of 
 assistance:
 
 1 - What are the five most used letters in Persian?
 
 2 - What are the five least used letters in Persian?
 
 Any help would be sincerely appreciated.
 
 Justin Smith
 jlsmi11earthlink.net
 
 

I am conducting an experiment on bilinguals.
In the experiment I am trying to investigate the influence of
the first language on the second language regarding the
learning of a new variant of the alphabet and new names for 
numbers.

The languages, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish 
and Swedish are under investigation as the alphabets are 
basically the same with additions in some languages:

 i.e. French and Swedish.


The aim of the experiment is to find out if the way in which
one learns those letters and numbers has an influence on the same
elements in a second language. When the ABC or numbers
are learned in a second language are those elements learned anew 
in all aspect or not.


The experiment tries to cover the following topics:


The influence of the number naming system in first language on the 
competence of using the number naming system of a second 
language.


The influence of phonemes for different letters in the first language 
on the competence in using the same letters in the second 
language, especially when different letters of the two languages 
have the same phoneme.

For this reason I am looking for help in locating information 
on the following:


The phoneme for each INDIVIDUAL letter of the alphabet in
the following languages: 

Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish


The average length of phonemes for each INDIVIDUAL letter of the 
alphabet in the following languages:	

Dutch,	English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish

i.e. 'n' is in Italian much longer than in English


Homophones of INDIVIDUAL letters of the alphabet in the following 
combinations of ENGLISH with

Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish


The amount of homophone words, i.e. percentage of homophone 
words in a language, for the following languages:	

Dutch,	English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and	Swedish


The amount of false friends (faux amis) in the following 	
combinations of ENGLISH with 

Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish


I would appreciate any help or guidelines on the above.



Carolin Grampp
Psychology Dept,
University College Dublin,
Ireland.

a97bf1aastudent.ucd.ie

puddingeurope.com