Thảo luận:A

Alphabetization

Many of the more modern Vietnamese dictionaries seem to alphabetize their entries by letter alone, and not by accent mark. Traditionally, though, entries are also alphabetized by accent mark. What should we do here? – Minh Nguyễn 23:36, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I am not really the right person to suggest something but I think that the accent marks should be the suborder if words consist of the same kind of letters. Example: Ga, Gà, Gá, Gã ... Joakim Löfkvist 17:36, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree, but I'm saying that traditional dictionaries even go so far as to put words beginning with, say, "đá" separate from words beginning with "đà", etc. In other words, the traditional dictionaries use the accent marks as the order, not as the suborder. This IMHO just makes it harder for someone to find an entry. – Minh Nguyễn 22:41, 10 December 2003 (UTC)

Purpose

What is the purpose of these entries on letters of the alphabet? They contain absolutely no content. More effort should be expended on badly needed articles that might be useful. These should belong to somebody's sandbox if they want to experiment with the different tones of Vietnamese. By the way, ă and â are two different letters, and shouldn't be put in the same article as A, if such an article should exist at all. Just my 2 cents. DHN 04:45, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It seems as though these pages were created for an alphabetical list of articles. – Minh Nguyễn 05:18, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Then again, take a look at the English-language version of the same article. It's actually an encyclopedic article on the letter A, containing history on the letter, its current phonetic uses, and ASCII information, as well. We can use this articles. – Minh Nguyễn 05:23, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'm all for creating articles about the history of these letters. However, as they now stand, they look like somebody's sandbox. Why create them now when there's obviously no content yet? DHN 06:36, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Those articles' basic format is to describe the evolution of the letters: From Egyptian to Phoenician to Greek to Latin. But if ă and â are simply modified (not evolved naturally) from a by adding breve and circumflex... that is really not much history to tell. So maybe it's best to combine them here, as they are, in form, very much related to a. Of course, just explicitly state that they are not, phonetically or in use, related to a (Those are the diff, right?)

--Menchi 05:59, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Split off: Circumflexes on Vowels

But is there a relation between â, ê, and ô (beside the appearance)? If so, maybe they can be described in a collective article as well/instead.

--Menchi 05:59, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 is different from A in that it's a shorter vowel. Ê and Ô are equivalent to the E and O in Latin, Spanish, etc. – Minh Nguyễn 15:58, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

So the ^ signifies vowel shortness (the common trend)? --Menchi 09:03, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Not really. I think that's just the case with A. Also, A can get even shorter – like an /uh/ sound – with a breve above it: Ă. With the other vowels, it becomes like the Latin equivalent. – Minh Nguyễn 23:01, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Check out this [[fr:Qu%F4c-ngu|French article]] about the quốc ngữ. It claims that:

le circonflexe sur â, ê et ô marque le caractère mi-fermé ;

la corne sur ơ et ư le caractère non arrondi.

(â, ê and ô are semi-closed characters while ơ and ư are nonround(?) characters)

I can't verify its claims, but the rest of the article is pretty credible. 128.195.100.62 00:09, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yes, Ơ and Ư make unrounded sounds, and so does Ê. But I'm pretty sure that  isn't semi-closed; it's probably semi-open, in fact. – Minh Nguyễn 01:24, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)