The English spelling shall be reformed

English reformer   Wed Aug 16, 2006 4:46 pm GMT
Whay can someone claim English spelling shall not reformed?
Because they are lazy doing reform works, they will claim it
Because they are fooled by Ancient British Noblemen, they will do it
Because they hate to be changed, they will do it



See why many English speakers claim that English spelling shall be reformed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform
zxczxc   Wed Aug 16, 2006 4:57 pm GMT
If you can't even speak the language properly yourself then I don't think you should be calling for its reform. If you want to learn real English, learn its idiosyncracies and irregularities. If you want a nice easy job learning a language then I suggest you try something less fulfilling.
Benjamin   Wed Aug 16, 2006 5:03 pm GMT
Ancient British Noblemen... LMAO.
a.p.a.m.   Fri Aug 18, 2006 1:28 pm GMT
English spelling must become more uniform. The spelling must change. English should become more phonetic. It's bad enough for millions of immigrants to arrive in a new land and experience the culture shock. It's even worse when the language is derived from two language families (Germanic and Latin), and is worse still, when the sounds of the words don't match their spelling.
Guest   Fri Aug 18, 2006 1:46 pm GMT
a.p.a.m. Fri Aug 18, 2006 1:28 pm GMT
English spelling must become more uniform. The spelling must change. English should become more phonetic. It's bad enough for millions of immigrants to arrive in a new land and experience the culture shock. It's even worse when the language is derived from two language families (Germanic and Latin), and is worse still, when the sounds of the words don't match their spelling.


I agree with you:)
Guest   Fri Aug 18, 2006 2:00 pm GMT
En france, une certain université a terminé d'accepter des oevres sur le sujet du pepetuum mobile! Je crois qu'il faut aussi terminé d'accepter des ''postings'' sur le sujet de réformer des orthographies.
casanova   Fri Aug 18, 2006 7:47 pm GMT
I agree english is very irregular. who knows why, but alot of people dont speak english well, native speakers have a hard time too with their own language its incredible.
JakubikF   Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:13 pm GMT
I can't agree with you. English is just what it is. In my opinion, these are the unique features of English that it isn't phonetical, irregular in some cases etc.

It's nonsense to say that English is hard because it comes from two language families. I think that it's an advantage! All languages in Europe more or less base in some cases on Latin. I think it helps a lot because we learn english vocabulary faster. Acctualy part of words in English we already know because they are similar in many languages.

Something more about phonetic. For instance, I find polish very phonetical. But I wouldn't porpose this language as a international one because of complicated grammar.
sino   Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:32 pm GMT
Let us take Chinese as an example to show the advantage.

In China, there are 9 main dialects. People speaking different dialects will find difficult, if not impossible, to communicate with each other. Fortunately, all these 9 dialects can be expressed in the same Chinese characters, which means that the materials are writen in the same charaters, thus people can easily communicate through written media. This advantage make it possible for china to keep united for more than 2 thousand years.

Now Chinese are coming to speak the same dialcet of Chinese language, which is known as madarin. In this way they keep both advantages: symbol character language and phonetical language.
JakubikF   Sun Aug 20, 2006 1:37 pm GMT
Considering your idea of changing polish alphabet... Could you imagine English, French or German written in Cyrilic? I suppose not. So let me tell you that I cannot imagine Polish written in Cyrilic, though I like writing in Cyrilic very much, I like Russian. Yes, I agree that in Cyrilic, Polish could find right sounds (but not all of them!), however Polish has never been written in Cyrilic since its birth!

By the way, Polish uses latin alphabet adapted to its sounds. This adaptation creats polish way of thinking. For instance Russian people hear similar sound ć as ть. Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serb use (for this sound) the letter "c" Russian т.
sino   Sun Aug 20, 2006 1:39 pm GMT
Brennus,

I admit that Chinese writing system is a bit difficult for adults to learn, but when we were children at primary schools, the chinese character is taught just like pictures, that is really interesting experience for curious children. Acient chinese people created these characters according to several simple and nice rules. If people master these rules, they will find learning chinese character is a fantastic discovery.

Before 19th, Chinese characters have been widely used in korea and japan although these two languages are grammatically quite different from chinese. All letters and books were writen in Chinese but read in japanese and korean ways. Generally the relationship between Chinese and japanese is much like the relationship between French and English, and Kanji in japanese is like french words in english.

By the way, Chinese grammer is as easy as Englsih one.
JR   Sun Aug 20, 2006 5:10 pm GMT
I have heard that Chinese grammar is easier than English because it doesn't use articles and suffixes/prefixes like English does. In the way that you would not say 'two children', but just 'two child'.

However I do think that spelling reform is a good idea with English, however I would not go so far as to change the spelling of every word as such. I think applying a system of accentuation would be better, because this way the words would get to keep their current spelling, but everyone would know exactly how to pronnounce the word because of the accents.

Î think thìs ìs a bettèr îdêa bêcàùse ìt wòùld help nêw pêòple that are lèàrning ênglìsh mastèr ìt much fastèr and êasièr. And seeing how ìn môst languagès that ûse accents, môst pêòple (especially yòung pêople) dôn't bothèr wìth them in casual writing, ìt wòùld be acceptable for pêòple not tó ûse the accents.
Iberian   Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:21 pm GMT
But Iberian portuguese or 'slum' portuguese (for lack of better term) definitely impairs intelligibility.

>if it is intelligible is because you have slum ears and speak slum spanish.
zxczxc   Tue Aug 22, 2006 2:36 pm GMT
It's unrealistic to use accents in written English. And depending on people's spoken accents the written ones may well be wrong. Why can't people just leave English be?
greg   Tue Aug 22, 2006 6:10 pm GMT
zxczxc : « It's unrealistic to use accents in written English. »

Ah bon. On trouve pourtant des accents (entre autres) dans les mots anglais suivants :

<café> <curaçao> <émigré> <naïve> <bête noire> <doppelgänger> <raison d'être> <piña colada> <déjà vu> <façade> (etc).