Why Reform?

[Iain]

Why alter the spelling of the English language when it makes perfect
sense? The only flaw I have found is words that have two completely
different meanings such as "wind", and "tip".

Slightly ahead of French, and far ahead of Celtic languages, English
spelling does a nearly perfect job of conveying information.

It also looks nice.

As for the quibbles about phoneticisation, there is an issue of
futility and one of pointlessness to consider:

Trying to phoneticise English spelling in accordance with modern
pronunciations is like attempting to solve an impossible rubix-cube.
Certainly it is easy if the reformer considers the written word as
merely a concise form of sound recorsion, but that is not the
case(hence all aspects of spelling that are not manifest in speech
such as spaces between words, etcetera.

Pronunciation is fleeting in time and diverse in space.

If everyone considered it correct to pronounce "ratio" as
"rai-tee-oh", then after a couple of generations the pronunciation
would have reverted back to "rai-shee-oh" because it is easier to
pronounce. In this sense, "ray-shee-oh" is contained nicely within
"R.A.T.I.O"

Therefore, most unphoneticness is emergent, rather than anomylous, and
temporary rather than permenant, and flucuant, rather than
standardised.

Modern spelling acts as a retainer for how far unphoneticness can go
and now scarcely changes, especially in the digital age.

If an American says "lab-ratory" and a Briton says "Lab-oratry", it's
fairly clear to everyone which sequence of letters he is referring to.
Some people say "evry" and some "every", but this is emphasis and not
a case for spelling reform. Modern spelling is now the medium via
which the English language is standardised.

I produced for myself "phoneticisation", without any memory of having
heard the word, but would consider it silly to replace the "C" with an
"S".

I'll reckon that even Latin, famous for its phoneticness, had it's
missing vowels and glottal stops amongst the people of Italy B.C..
Keeping the spelling proved worthwhile, however.

Also note that in Wales it is common to hear "question" said in the
letter-for-letter way, and in Scotland "heart" is sometimes "heert",
as the spelling suggests.

~Iain

[Derek Jensen]

Iain--

A complete overhaul of English spelling is probably both mechanically
and socially impossible, but that's no reason to give up trying to at
least improve it. It's true that pronunciation is always changing, but
it doesn't change so quickly that the spellings can't eventually catch
up. It's also true that pronunciations differ from place to place, but
we live with different US/UK spellings now; there's no reason we can't
have "labratory" in the US and "laboratry" in the UK. That would make
more sense than "color" and "colour."

The craziness of English spelling is an enormous barrier to children
and foreigners trying to learn the language. It makes it very difficult
to learn how to correctly pronounce a word when the same spelling may
have different pronunciations (heard / beard, war / car) and to
correctly spell a word when the same sound may be spelled several
different ways (they're, their, there; to, too, two, tu-tu). When
perfectly intelligent, well-educated adults misspell words all the time
(such as anomalous, permanent, and fluctuant) that should be a signal
that we need to reconsider the wisdom of our "nearly perfect" system.

Some simple changes (fixing the EA problem, GH problem, and
letter-doubling problem, for example) would maintain the look of
English and yet make it much more regular. The "TION"-type spellings
help many foreign learners and are regular and predictable, so there's
no reason to get rid of them.

=D=

[Michael Mendelsohn]

Post by Derek Jensen
A complete overhaul of English spelling is probably both mechanically
and socially impossible, but that's no reason to give up trying to at
least improve it.

My thought has always been to decide on a single "original" root
language, keep the words from that as is, and change all the others to
fit, with the exception of words that retain their Latin spelling.

It'd be logical, it'd not have _all_ of the etymologists screaming, and
it would retain the roots of the language.

One may dream.

Cheers
Michael

[David Barnsdale]

Post by Michael Mendelsohn
It'd be logical, it'd not have _all_ of the etymologists screaming, and
it would retain the roots of the language.

I don't the etymology argument on its face value. If they
really cared about etymology they would be concerned about
cleaning up some of the false etymologies. When I hear
someone advocating that admiral be spelled as Amir,
then I'll believe that it isn't a cover for conservativism.

Daivid