This is a guest post by by Siôn Jobbins.
Wrth tecstio yn Gymraeg ar fy ffôn poced dwi’n ceisio osgoi defnyddio llythrennau dwbwl gan fod hynny’n cymryd gormod o amser. Mae’n hawdd peidio dyblu ‘n’ ac ‘r’ (a dweud y gwir, dwi ddim yn deall pam na wnaeth John Morris Jones gael gwared arnyn nhw yn yr 1920, fel y cafodd wared ar ddyblu ‘m’ a ‘t’). Byddaf yn osgoi dyblu ‘d’ ar gyfer y lythyren ‘d’ trwy ddefnyddio’r symbol ð sydd ar allweddell rhif 4 fel arfer ar y ffôn. Mae’n rhaid dyblu ‘l’ ar gyfer ‘ll’. Byddaf hefyd yn defnyddio ‘x’ ar gyfer y swn ‘ch’ gan fod hynny’n gynt.
Ond hoffwn holi, gan fod dyblu llythrennau mor drafferthus wrth ddanfon neges destun, sut mae ieithoedd sy’n llawn llythrennau dwbwl fel Iseldireg, Estoneg neu Ffineg yn mynd i’r afael gyda’r broblem (os ydyn nhw’n ei weld yn broblem wrth gwrs!)? A fyddai gan ddarllenwyr dy flog atebion neu awgrymiadau?
Texting in Welsh I try to avoid doubling letters as it’s a nuicance whilst texting. Not doubling ‘n’ and ‘r’ is easy and I don’t understand why we need them in Welsh in anycase (we got rid of doubling t and m with John Morris Jones’s reforms in the 1920s). I can avoid doubing ‘d’ for the ‘dd’ sound by using the ð symbol which is on the d key, though many Welsh-speakers aren’t familiar with this letter. I can’t find a way of not doubling l to get the ll letter.
This got me thinking how do language with many double letters; Dutch, Estonian or Finnish cope with this problem (if they see it a problem)?
As a native Dutch speaker and frequent “texter” I never perceived double letters as a problem. I would also never leave out letters (obviously).
I’ll ask around for other people’s texting habits…
Yes, in Dutch double vowels are often omitted aswell, while texting. Also, some sounds are shortened. Like the ch in school becomes g (sgool, or even sgol). ‘Gaat’ often becomes gat (hoe gat t, instead of hoe gaat ‘t (or ‘het’). Etc. etc.
Does Siôn use Tesctio?
You could use the Polish ł for ll.
Rhys – I haven’t used tecstio because my old phone was, well, too old and didn’t have the functions. I’ll try it with my new one. Diolch am fy atgoffa – ydy e’n gweithio (does it work?)
I’ll try and find the Polish ‘l’, I also use ‘x’ for ‘ch’ as this is the letter in Greek and Cyrillic for this sound. Apparently William Morgan wanted to use ‘x’ when tranlating the Bible into Welsh in 1588, but there wasn’t enough of the ‘x’ typefaces in English for the Bible, which was printed in London, to use.
The trouble with double letters is you have to hang around for hours before you can type the second of the double letters otherwise you’ll get the next letter in the alphabet e.g. ‘b’ rather than the secon ‘a’. Maybe I should just chill out a bit!
I have that all the time when typing Dutch with my phone, I have to wait way to long for the double letters, or a letter under the same button. Normally I just click the navigation button so I can move on faster.
I usually use T9 predictive text input, which works fine in Dutch. I have a little tip though. If you prefer not to use predictive text input and want to insert two characters that are on the same button (like the ‘tt’ in button, or even worse, the ‘utt’), you can type the first letter, then hit the right-button (you’ll see the cursor move to the next position) and immediately type the character again. It’s an extra keystroke, but it usually is a little faster. For al those out there that don’t like to wait, this is a handy suggestion.
When I text (in Dutch) I usually don’t leave out the double letters, it is quite annoying to wait for them but I use T9.
If I have to get some letters gone for the sake of sending only 1 sms and not two, I’d rather leave out the “e” in the verb ending or other vocals in common words.
Like “komn” for “komen”, “mr” for “maar”…
Oh and by the way, isn’t it “nuisance” instead of nuicance”?
In Portuguese, there is only a couple of double consonants (‘ss’ and ‘rr’), but still there are a bunch of same-button combinations of letters. For mobile texting, that hasn’t been a problem, since T9 and other such typing systems have become quite widespread. Like the Dutch guys, we tend to abbreviate words, often cutting out unnecessary vowels from words.
As for the web, there are basically three internet argots in Brazil: one as old as Usenet and IRC which is pretty much just an abbreviating convention, and two modern, tiop and miguxo. Both address any piece of (arguably) unnecessary typing. Miguxo, for instance, replaces ‘ss’ (and often the single ‘s’ too) with a ‘x’, thus: ‘assim’ –> ‘axim’.
tiop, on the other hand, tends to either not double the ‘ss’ (whether the consonant is voiceless or voiced can be infered from context by a native speaker), thus: ‘assim’ –> ‘asim’. Alternatively, the ‘soft s’ sound is represented in tiop with a c cedilla, like this: ‘assim’ –> ‘açim’. tiop is an argot developed from common typos (and other violations of common grammar) and it’s intended to look wrong (at least for those who don’t master tiop’s own rules). In fact, depending on where you hang around, and what personality traits you wish to express, you can use some pretty wild variations, which go from simulating lisps (‘assim’ –> ‘athim’, ‘affim’) to incorporating from other internet argots (‘assim’ –> ‘axim’, ‘azim’, ‘a5im’). But now I digress. 🙂
I’m a native Dutch speaker. we generally don’t leave out double letters, because double letters in Dutch are functional and change the meaning of a word.
The difference between 1 and 2 vowels is between short and long pronounciation – so “o” and “oo” is like “o” and “ô” in Welsh.
pot = /pot/ = pot in English;
poot = /pôt/ = paw in English.
The difference between 1 and 2 consonants is between open and closed syllables or between present and past tense.
zaken = /zâken/ = things in English;
zakken = /zaken/ = to lower in English.
poten = /pôten/ = paws in English = plural of poot /pôt/.
potten = /poten/ = pots in English = plural of pot /pot/;
antwoorden = answer in English;
antwoordden (identical pronounciation) = answered in English.
So the difference between single and double letters is a key concept in Dutch, and most people feel this instinctively and therefor don’t leave out double letters. If they do, it’s rather because they can’t spell and/or are lowly educated and/or don’t have any linguistic feeling, and not deliberately to save space.
What does happen in Dutch sms-language:
first of all, Dutch sms language is very English-based, so a lot of abbreviations come from English: cu (see you), lu (love you), ayor (at your own risk), btw (by the way), rofl (rolling over the floor laughing), and litterally dozens more.
replacing the indefinite article by 1
replacing parts of words by numbers
e.g. 8 = acht; wacht = w8
abbreviating adverbs
e.g. zeer (very in English) = zr
abbreviating prepositions
e.g. naar (indicating a direction) = nr
abbreviating pronouns
e.g. ik (I in English) = k
mijn (my in English) = mn
abbreviating nouns
e.g. Antwerpen = A’pen
abbreviating verbs
e.g. verb ending -en = -n