If the native spelling is retained, much of Latin and French element becomes unrecognizable. If we take seed as the norm,then cede and recede must become seed and reseed.
If we take mesh as the norm, then both cession and session must become seshon, and fissure must become identical with fisher.
If, on the contrary, fuse and muse are kept, then news will be nuse and both hues and hews (in 'he hews') will be huse.
Again, if 'c' were retained before the back vowel in capital, colony, and custom, then some such forms as senter, sertin, and sirkel would have to take the place of centre, certain, and circle.
Should nation and national be written neishon and nashonal ?
If the native spelling is retained, much of the Latin and French element becomes unrecognizable.
If we take seed as the norm, then cede and recede must become seed and reseed.
If we take mesh as the norm, then both cession and session must become seshon, and fissure mush become identical with fisher.
If, on the contrary, fuse and muse are kept, then news will be nuse and both hues and hews (in 'he hews') will be huse.
Again, if 'c' were retained before the back vowel in capital, colony, and custom, then some such forms as senter, sertin, sirkel would have to take the place of centre, certain, and circle.
Should nation and national be written naishon and nashonal ?
I think a good spelling reform would be
the end of -gh, or atleast give a regular pronunciation for words ending in -gh.
Dh would replace voiced TH while TH will still be voiceless
Diphthong "ou/ow" would always sound like OW in COW.
S would have a SS (LIke double S (SS) In Portuguese), no more ZH or SH for S please.
Pronunciation rules will be kept as it is:
if you remove the E
Bate (beit) > Bat (bat)
Duck (dVck) > Duk (dook)
But (bVt) > Bute (bewt)
Boc (Bóc) > boke (bouk)
Bite (bait) > bit (beet)
Remove silent K: Knight, Know, Knee.
G becomes ZH and J becomes DJ
WHAT ABOUT my proposal?
"The sun's rays meet."
Or...
"The sons raise meat."
Would an English child find self-expression easier if her were tahght to write cats, but dogz and horsez; jumps but runz; and jumpt but turned and landed ?
Many authors in the 17th century, including Milton and Dryden, wrote mist for missed, and this simple phonetic spelling surely has everything in its favour. In practice, however, it was found to lead to ambiguity and misunderstanding and by general consent it was discarded. As for that butt of so much scorn and obloquy, that notorious -ough- group, no satisfactory spellings have ever been devised for all the seven pronunciations represented by
plough, trough, rough, thought, through, though and thorough.
American plow is old and good, but are bough and slough to be written bow and slow ?
American thru is brief but unparalled, and thruout is unacceptable.
We may all use tho* in private correspondance, but we know very well that the apostrophe is irregular and the apostrophe is the nearest approach in English to a diacritical mark, to be avoided, if possible, at all costs.
Even the delection of final -e, when it does not fulfil the historical function of denoting a long vowel or diphthong as in ravine and stone, can not be applied universally. For example, it must be retained in hearse. It might, perhaps, be dropped in words like infinite and doctrine, even as it has already been discarded in deposit and fossil and, quite recently, in proletariat, salariat and secretariat.
typo !
"...if he were taught ..."
Words like horrour and terrour, musick and physick, chymical and chymist have been changed to horror and terror, music and physic, chemical and chemist within living memory.
Gradually, these new spellings have 'caught on' and they are now firmly established. We now see fantasy superseding phantasy. Why not ? It is, with a different penumbra of meaning, a variant of fancy.
We should welcome attempts at improvement and we should encourage editors to be enterprising. Many more words might have two accepted 'correct' spellings side by side. We may follow the Oxford manner and write abridgement, acknowledgement, and judgement on the ground that these forms are more in accordance with English values of letters, but we should not object in the least to the Cambrdge fashion of writing abridgment, acknowledgment, and judgment.
As there's a great amount of homophones in English, as well as in many languages, we're quite obliged to keep the spelling strangenesses.
Moreover, a reform wouln't necessarily be suitable for everyone, as there are several pronounciations depending on the accent.
Unless if a reform is invented for each accent!
Yeah, like Scots!
But though, it would become a bit harder for English speaking people from different countries to understand each other when writing...
Oooops!
I've just said something Clark already said in the "american & british english" topic. never mind!
Somehow or other, one pronunciation system has to be learned in order to speak and write English. To every written word one sound sequence. I think as a learner there is no big problem to be forced to learn more than one possibility of spelling pronunciation or 2 or 3 or 7. Perhaps otherwise it would be more difficult to catch subtle distinctions and everything turned out to be more difficult in the end. Why destroying one nice system. Changing the english language system would cause an unnatural feeling because e.g. the letter "s" is for me with my firstlanguage more likely connected to the English "z" sound than the letter "z", so there is no confusion and no need to change "s" in "z". It has not to be better for anyone trying to learn english- but that's only one question and only my view.
Reforms can be really bad. Look at the spelling reform in Germany. They change in most cases the "ß" in "ss " what causes a lot of trouble. It was quite terrible for me and I guess it led to nothing. It destroyed some parts of the beautiful german language. A word with three "s" in the middle , how ugly.
Comparing to the French universities , American and British universities are more tolerant regarding different spellings of the same word. Cambridge University, for instance, accepts both American and English spelling for the exmams, as long as we are consistent.
You sure, Shana?
As far as I know it's the same in France.
I use British spellings in my essays and exam papers at school in California. All my teachers this year were tolerant and never pointed out any spelling mistakes (save once when my English teacher circled "organise" but did not regard the spelling as a mistake any longer when I told him that "organise" is a spelling accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary).