Re: Len Silverston's Universal Data Models sanity

"x" <x-false_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message news:409b43e7$1_at_post.usenet.com...
> I'm curious. There is only one sound for any Spanish letter (character) ?
> If not, how many exceptions are ?

OK, this is way off topic, but what the heck. The mapping between sound and symbol was updated in Spain sometime a few centuries ago. There are a few quirks in Spanish spelling, but many fewer than in English or French. Spanish is not my native language, but I can almost guarantee you that, if I were to take a page of dictation in both languages, I would have more errors in the English page than in the Spanish page.

There are traces of "old spelling" in modern Spanish. For example, the "x" in "México" is old spelling for the sound that is now represented by "j" (as in "hijo").

In the word, "vergüenza" (meaning "shame") , the u would be silent if it were not for the dieresis over the "u". In Spain, the words "casa" and "caza" are pronounced differently. In Latin America, they are pronounced the same. The letters "v" and "b" are pronounced the same in many countries. The letter "h" is silent. The letter "ch" is two characters but one letter.

But it's nothing like English. You have homophones like "cot" and "caught". How can you make any sense out of that? Received on Fri May 07 2004 - 19:22:19 CEST