LINGUIST List 11.297

Sun Feb 13 2000

Qs: Farsi Letters, Phonemes/Homophones

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Directory

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

    Message 1: Farsi Letters

     Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 23:37:41 -0500
    From: Justin L. Smith <jlsmi11earthlink.net>
    Subject: Farsi Letters


    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

    Message 2: Phonemes, Homophones and False Friends

     Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 11:27:52 +0100 (BST)
    From: Carolin <a97bf1aastudent.ucd.ie>
    Subject: Phonemes, Homophones and False Friends




    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