Hoo wunts speling too chaenj?

SpaceFlight   Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:32 am GMT
What about /3`/ as in ''burn''? According to something I've read, Britons distinguish ''forward'' and ''foreward'' as /fOrw@`d/ and /fOrw3`d/.
Travis   Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:34 am GMT
That should be "Yes, they are rather complex", and one other note that I left out is that the above system is somewhat biased towards the phonology of my own dialect, due to how it <eer> is used for mid front vowels before /r/ which is followed in turn by a vowel when they are not distinguished tenseness-wise, and likewise with <oor> being default for rounded mid back vowels which are not distinguished in the same positions. This is because I originally designed this with my own dialect in mind, which uses [er\] and [or\] rather than [Er\] and [Or\], for merging mid front and rounded mid back vowels to, and /e/ and /o/ before a consonant cluster, digraph, or word-final consonant are normally marked <ee> and <oo> respectively. It was only later extended to fit a much wider range of dialects, and this stuck, in particular due to the assignment of /@`/ to <err>/<er>.
SpaceFlight   Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:34 am GMT
According to this thread http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t246-90.htm, you're using ''eur'' for /3`/. Is that true?
Travis   Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:37 am GMT
>>What about /3`/ as in ''burn''? According to something I've read, Britons distinguish ''forward'' and ''foreward'' as /fOrw@`d/ and /fOrw3`d/.<<

I originally assigned that to <eur> in all positions, simply for lack of appropriate digraphs, and because it didn't look too ugly, even if technically better choices could have been made. However, the main matter is that such was never designed to be an orthography to fit all of English, simply due to my own lack of knowledge about the details of the phonologies of English dialects outside of North America, so consequently it was limited to only really fit the phonologies of NAE dialects.
SpaceFlight   Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:43 am GMT
<<I originally assigned that to <eur> in all positions, simply for lack of appropriate digraphs, and because it didn't look too ugly, even if technically better choices could have been made.>>

Doesn't ''eur'' look like it should be pronounced as in ''Europe''?
Travis   Tue Dec 20, 2005 2:04 am GMT
The main thing is that <j> is ready being used for /j/ in all positions ("Europe" would be <Jurrap>, and there are only so many potential digraphs to go around. <ear> is already taken, and <eor> is aethetically IMHO not as suitable. The main thing, though, is that digraphs cannot necessarily be treated as simply intuitively sounding like something from spelling alone; they are simply a measure to deal with a restriction on the characters that can be used in a given case.
Bardioc   Tue Dec 20, 2005 5:56 pm GMT
eito(jpn) Mon Dec 19, 2005 5:14 pm GMT
To Bardioc:

''I will not go too far. Some moderate spelling reformers have something in common when it comes to respellings. That's what I seek for. And I presume that's what some peeple can also seek for. That's my belief(or "beleef").''

Here in germany, they (the reformers) used a deminuitive form of the word reform to bluff the people about the real extent of it. There are no moderate spelling reforms!

How can you say that english spelling is chaotic? Maybe it seems to be chaotic, from a leaners point of view. But actually, it isn't. It is just the way the evoluton of a language goes! Leaning means to find out about that what's behind, the history, the linguistic evolution, the cultur, the tast, the many things to what spelling is related to. If you loose that by a spelling reform, than you and your language are really poor. Wiped out soul! Artificial! Special spellings are easier to read and to remember than just simple spellings, which doesn't have a special ''tast''. If a spelling system is simplyfied, reading, whether aloud or not, will not be easier. You not only have to read, but also to understand the things you read to pronounce it the right way. Maybe an easy spelling system gives you some feeling of success where there is no success. So you stop leaning in a relatively early phase of leaning, because you came to the conclusion that you're already good, due the ''easy'' spelling system. But you aren't good at all, you just cheat yourself!
eito(jpn)   Thu Dec 22, 2005 6:27 pm GMT
http://www.geocities.com/sswordday/arc05-4Q.html

Thursday, December 22, 2005: "insted" for "instead"

EA is ambiguous. It is most often pronounced long-E (lead, fear, heat) but also pronounced short-E in a number of common words (bread, head, feather). Alas, it has other sounds as well: long-E then schwa (apnea, theater); long-E then short-A (react, preamble); long-E then long-A (create, nauseate); perhaps others. Even related words of similar spelling are pronounced differently: pleasing but pleasant.

Let's make clear which sound occurs in the second syllable of today's word, and save ourselves a letter to boot: "insted".
Bardioc   Fri Dec 23, 2005 3:35 pm GMT
''Freuen wir uns doch darüber, daß unsere Sprache nicht völlig logisch ist! Und haben wir doch ein bißchen mehr Ehrfurcht vor den gewachsenen Strukturen, auch wenn wir sie nicht bis ins letzte durchschauen! Muß man denn das? Lernen kann man es allemal. Das ist doch vor 1996 zur Genüge bewiesen worden.''
Karin Pfeiffer-Stolz

My humble attempt to translate that into English:

Let's be pleased with that our language isn't completely logical! And let's have reverence for the grown structures, even if we don't see through them down to the final ground. Is there a need to do so? It always was possible to learn it (the classical german orthography). This was proven well enough before 1996.

I think this also holds for the english language and orthography!
Merry Christmas to you all!
mya   Wed Jan 04, 2006 6:07 pm GMT
hi
mya   Wed Jan 04, 2006 6:07 pm GMT
hi
Guest   Fri Jan 06, 2006 6:48 pm GMT
Bye mya....
eito(jpn)   Thu Feb 16, 2006 8:56 pm GMT
http://spellingsociety.org/kids/index.html

This is not only for kids. This is also for lerners.

http://spellingsociety.org/kids/print.htm

>>Most of our irregular spellings come from the first modern English bible. It was illegal in 1526 to possess or print an English bible (they had to be in Latin) so the first English bible was printed in Germany. Most of the type setters who arranged the letters in the press knew no English - imagine yourself type-setting a German bible without knowing a word of German from a hand-written copy!

English people bought that bible - often the first book they had ever possessed. So they learned to read from it and to write from it too, copying and learning the spelling mistakes it contained! This gradually made many English spellings very weird.

How silly is that - our dictionaries say we must still use those spelling mistakes and we are corrected and even laughed at when we use more logical spellings?<<
Eric   Fri Feb 17, 2006 1:54 am GMT
Excellent link eito.

What I think one should remember is that the spellings (though not all) reflects the way they should be pronounced. In that respect, it makes some sense. In addition, when one is taught (vocally) how to pronounce the words correctly, it makes the job in learning how the words are supposed to be spelt, a bit easier.

Regarding the dictionary, I view it as a “double edged sword”. It not only lists the words, the way they are spelt, pronounced. And there definition. In a way, it also serves as a “guard” for the language itself by assuring the cohesion and conciseness of the language. Which I think is important. One could argue that if there would be no standard (dictionary) then that would “permit” “speakers” listeners and readers to invent a language that would understand independently, of commonly definitions (the dictionary) and as a result lead to less concise and less precise language. And as a result adding needless confusion. That is something that we all have encountered at one time or another, even within our own languages.
Travis   Fri Feb 17, 2006 3:33 am GMT
The main practical problem is that there is no single formal "standard" off which a new English orthography could be based, and furthermore the English dialects have diverged too much for easily creating a "standard" artificial averaged dialect would be highly nontrivial. Even if only a single preexisting standard would be selected for such, the problem is that to use Received Pronunciation would be almost certainly unacceptable to many Americans, and not only would General American likely be unacceptable to many Britons, but also it is too vague of a concept to base any kind of specific standardized orthography directly off of.

Furthermore, any artificial standardized variety for orthographic purposes would tend to strongly tend towards maintaining phonemic distinctions rather than omitting them, as non-NAE English dialects often have many distinctions in many positions which have been lost in most NAE dialects via vowel phoneme mergers. The consequences of this is that for most English-speaking North Americans, who form at least a majority of all English-speakers (with NAE-speakers in general forming a supermajority of all English-speakers), many vowel distinctions in writing would have to be simply memorized. Furthermore, as it would be at its most moderate approximating a rhotic northeastern American English dialect phonologically, it at anything other than its most moderate would likely to be perceived as little more than a rhotic English English variety with some compromises with NAE patterns, such as not reducing or eliding vowels in places where vowels are reduced or elided in most English English dialects but not in many NAE dialects. Due to such, there likely would be political problems with such a method of forming a literary standard to base an orthography off of, as much as such would probably be the most methodologically sound method which is practically doable.

Due to all these issues, it is consequently likely that it would be very difficult to truly bring about a single orthography that practically suits all of English, even if the legacy and infrastructural issues with such were surmounted. Furthermore, these problems will only become more intractable with time, due to the steady divergence of English dialects today, contrary to popular notions of such converging. As such is already very intractable at the present to begin with, it is difficult to ever see a single new orthography ever being established for all of English in the future. Also, except in some potential context of massive political upheaval, it is unlikely that any local new English orthographies only pertaining to specific English dialect groups (such as North American English) would be established either, due to the massive amount of common literature written in the current orthography.

As a result, the only point where any real systematic orthographic reform in any significant groups of Anglic dialects would likely to become possible is after the future dissolving of English as a single unitary language, due to the aforementioned dialect divergence, where to at least many speakers of Anglic dialects, classical literary English would have to be effectively taught as a foreign language, akin to Latin during the Middle Ages. However, even under such circumstances, it is not at all certain that any of the newly separate Anglic languages would necessarily be used significantly in a literary capacity, if written at all to begin with. It would not be surprising in the least if classical literary English remained the primary written language in the areas where English had once been spoken, parallel to Latin during much of the Middle Ages, due to its potential as still acting as a written lingua franca, both within and without the former "English-speaking world", and due to the massive amounts of literature already having been written in it.