Languages exist where every character's pronunciation depends entirely on its word context
the verdict
REFUTED
the evidence says no
refutedsupported
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AS REPORTEDno primary record reached; this is what the reporting says
Reference discussions on linguistics suggest that it is unlikely for any language to have a writing system where every character's pronunciation depends entirely on the word it appears in.
# Is there any language where each character is pronounced differently depending on the word it's in?
Tags: orthography, list-of-languages
- Score: 5
- Views: 3478
- Answers: 5
- Answered: yes
- Asked by: Pablo (446 rep)
- Asked: 2018-12-27
- Edited: 2019-01-06
- Site: linguistics
## Question
Languages like Japanese have different pronunciations for each character (in the kanji system in this case) , a kanji character can have up to 20 different pronunciations depending on the the word it is in. Is there or was there any language where each character is pronounced differently depending on the word it's in?
## Answers
### Answer by user6726 (score: 7 [ACCEPTED])
It is unlikely that in some language's writing system, each and every character is pronounced differently depending on the word it's in. For that to be true, it would mean that every character has at least two pronunciations. The implication of "what word it is in" is that what determines the pronunciation is the word, and not the general context (for instance, the Devanagari letter त is pronounced differently when it is combined with the letter ि). Kanji may have multiple readings, for example 明 can be myō or mei. C