Hoo wunts speling too chaenj?

Lazar   Tue Dec 13, 2005 7:00 am GMT
<<I suppose so, but "juce" instinctively looks like [dZMs] to me. If told to pronounce a word spelled "juce," that's how I'd say it, while the word I happen to spell "juice" I pronounce with /j/.>>

That's interesting - I just pronounce "juice" as [dZus], and for me it could just as well be spelled "juce" or "jooce".
Travis   Tue Dec 13, 2005 7:06 am GMT
Ai wuod insted se:

Hu woants spelling tu tjeendj?

Ai wuod se dhaet aez mutj aez ai wuod laik tu si oorthograefik riffoorm in prinsippyl, dha praektikkyl implemmenteesjin uv sutjt bi kloos tu infizibbyl. Probbabli dha oonli kees in hwitj it kuod bi dun widhin dha nekst fju sentriez wuod bi in dha kontekst uv a soosjyl revylluusjin in sum eria uv dha ingglisjspikingwerld, aend evin dhen sutj wuod rikwair breking dha rellattiv oorthograefik junitti uv rittin ingglisj.
Guest   Tue Dec 13, 2005 8:01 am GMT
hoo wanna da si da speln ruform?
a wud see dat az mach az a wud lak too si owrtogwafik rufowrm in prinsupul, da ...
oh crap, forget it. I've changed my mind. No more on spelling reform plz.
Travis   Tue Dec 13, 2005 8:06 am GMT
Dhaet sjuod bi "aend ievin dhen sutj wuod rikwair breking dha rellattiv oorthugraefik junitti uv rittin ingglisj." abbuv.
Felix the Cassowary   Tue Dec 13, 2005 11:15 am GMT
I agree that if English spelling changes, what it needs is not to change the rules, but to change the exceptions. That's the only possible change that's remotely got a chance of happening. Still I don't actually see that as very likely, at least in the medium term. Any other spelling reform conceivable is going to be dialect-specific. Even this sort of a reform will need to be very careful not to be dialect-specific. So really I don't forsee any reform happening until after the dialects have become separate languages. And that I doubt will happen until after our civilisation collapses—and I certainly don't hope that happens tomorrow! (That being said I don't rule out the possibility that some dialects will become mutually incomprehensible particularly if our civisilation is set to last for more than a few hundred years, but they won't really be separate languages ... it will be more like Swiss German than Swedish/Danish or Serbo-Croatian.)

However, as to Lazar's suggestions, I must confess as to be slightly confused about where the logic comes from. Why should we put a double L at the end of "control" (which ends in a long vowel), but have a single L at the end of "egg", "odd" etc. (which end in short vowels)? I would rather have "controle" and leave "egg" and "odd" and "err" and such alone, if we're going to be changing any of them.
Travis   Tue Dec 13, 2005 12:14 pm GMT
>>(That being said I don't rule out the possibility that some dialects will become mutually incomprehensible particularly if our civisilation is set to last for more than a few hundred years, but they won't really be separate languages ... it will be more like Swiss German than Swedish/Danish or Serbo-Croatian.) <<

You do understand that there is enough internal variation inside German to consider it an entire language group unto itself, even when one excludes Low Saxon from the outset, but it is by convention considered a single language due to having a single common literary language, standard Hochdeutsch. You also understand that standard Swedish* and standard Danish* differ less than many German dialects do from each other, and that the notion of separate Serbian and Croatian languages is just a political construct with no real linguistic basis. The whole "Swiss German" thing here is effectively just trying to (weakly) maintain the pretenses of a unified language more than anything else.

* One important consideration, though, is that many continental North Germanic dialects differ from each other far more than standard Swedish, standard Danish, Bokmål, and Nynorsk do from each other. There are extreme cases such as Dalecarlian, which while nominally assigned as dialects of "Danish", "Swedish", or "Norwegian" differ more from the standard languages in question than the standard languages do *from each other*. (Just so you get a picture of what I mean here, Dalecarlian, for example, superficially is more like Icelandic or Faroese than like standard Swedish, despite being genetically East North Germanic rather than West North Germanic.)
Abednego   Tue Dec 13, 2005 7:43 pm GMT
Although I am not in favour of any major spelling reform, I HAVE always wondered why "friend" is spelled the way it is and not simply "frend". What's the deal with the 'i'??? "Dress" has no 'i' and it has the exact same phoneme as "friend". Also, "friend" does NOT rhyme with "fiend" (which means quite the opposite). The "ie" combination is almost always associated with the "fleece" vowel, NOT with the "dress" vowel. Why on earth, then, is "friend" not spelled "frend"???

Also, why isn't "money" spelled "muney". Except for certain speakers from Northern England (who use the "lot" or the "foot" vowel for the first syllable) nearly EVERY native speaker of English, uses the "strut" vowel.

Also: food, book, and blood respectively take "goose", "foot", and "strut". Why can't we eat "food", read "buks" and have "blud" flowing through our veins? Actually, I now see that although my bright ideas may work for "friend' and "money" they would not work for "food, book, and blood". However, just because a misleading spelling is unavoidabe in some cases (food, book, and blood) doesn't mean that such a spelling should be used in cases where it IS avoidable (friend and money).

...but, I suppose it's too late to change the rules at this stage of the game...
Lazar   Tue Dec 13, 2005 9:13 pm GMT
<<However, as to Lazar's suggestions, I must confess as to be slightly confused about where the logic comes from. Why should we put a double L at the end of "control" (which ends in a long vowel), but have a single L at the end of "egg", "odd" etc. (which end in short vowels)? I would rather have "controle" and leave "egg" and "odd" and "err" and such alone, if we're going to be changing any of them.>>

Well I should preface this by saying that I'm *not* actually advocating these spelling reforms in the first place - it's just more of a thought experiment really - but for what it's worth, I'll try to explain my suggestions:

They follow the principle that "l" can be doubled at the ends of words (like "roll", "stall", "ball"), while other consonants *generally* cannot. (I'm leaving "ck" out of this for the moment.)

The "l" of control *is* doubled when inflection is added ("controller", "controlling"), and "l" is a consonant that can be doubled at the ends of words, so I think it would be more consistent for the uninflected word to be "controll".

In American English, a reform has added doubled "l"s like this in certain words:

"fulfil, fulfilling" < "fulfill, fulfilling"
"enrol, enrolling" < "enroll, enrolling"

And my suggestion would apply this reform more consistently:

"control, controlling" < "controll, controlling"
"compel, compelling" < "compell, compelling"

But as for my suggestions of "egg, odd, err" < "eg, od, er", these follow the principle that certain consonants, like "g", "d", and "r", are almost never doubled at the ends of words. There's a host of words which end in a single "g", "d", or "r", but have doubled consonants in inflected forms: "bag, bagging"; "sad, sadder", "pad, padding", "infer, inferring". Doubled "g"s, "d"s, and "r"s at the ends of words are rare in English spelling - we don't have many words that are spelled like *bagg, *sadd, *inferr.

The reason why "egg, odd, err" have doubled consonants is because English, at some point in its history, developed a prohibition against 2-letter words that were not function words. I'd like to drop this prohibition in order to make consonant doubling patterns more consistent.

"Egg<eg", formerly an exception to the rule, is now consistent with:
"beg"
"leg"
"bag"
"hag"
"log"
etc.

"Odd<od", formerly an exception to the rule, is now consistent with:
"god"
"pod"
"pad"
"bed"
etc.

"Err<er", formerly an exception to the rule, is now consistent with other Latin-derived words like:
"infer"
"confer"
"inter"

My goal is not necessarily to be any more consistent with the depiction of long vowels versus short vowels, but simply to make the existing spelling system more consistent with respect to consonant doubling.
Al   Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:16 pm GMT
<<The reason why "egg, odd, err" have doubled consonants is because English, at some point in its history, developed a prohibition against 2-letter words that were not function words. I'd like to drop this prohibition in order to make consonant doubling patterns more consistent.>>

Lazar,

Also:

add - ad

mitt - mit

mutt - mut
Al   Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:21 pm GMT
Lazar,

Why not ''controle'', then you'd get ''controling'' with a single ''l''. That would be much shorter.
Lazar   Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:27 pm GMT
<<Lazar,

Also:

add - ad

mitt - mit

mutt - mut>>

Yes, those too. The only one I'd consider leaving unchanged is "putt", since this spelling conveys a difference in meaning and in pronunciation compared with "put".

<<Why not ''controle'', then you'd get ''controling'' with a single ''l''. That would be much shorter.>>

But as I said above, I'd really just prefer to stick to more superficial reforms (if there are to be any reforms at all). ;-) But yes, you could do "controle, controling".
RFK   Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:28 pm GMT
Quote-''Hoo wunts speling too chaenj?

or raather

Hu wonts speling tu chainj?

Not I. I second Lazar's thauts.''

Jim, wie doent ue wunt speling too chaenj. Wuudunt it leed too guud benufits? Such az geting rid uv thu needlis sielunt ''gh's'', and thu nonsensikul spelingz liek ''one'', ''two'', ''sugar'', ''chauffeur'', ''phlegm'' etc.
Al   Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:32 pm GMT
Lazar,

How about these also:

witch - wich (cf. ''sandwich'', ''rich'')
switch - swich
pitch - pich
glitch - glich
Al   Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:34 pm GMT
<<Yes, those too. The only one I'd consider leaving unchanged is "putt", since this spelling conveys a difference in meaning and in pronunciation compared with "put".>>

Yeah, you can't remove the double ''t'' from ''putt'' as that would leave ''put'' which has a different meaning and pronunciation.
Al   Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:37 pm GMT
Also, how about these:

paid - payed
laid - layed (cf. ''played'', ''prayed'')