A Simple Unscientific Poll

Erimir   Monday, December 06, 2004, 08:18 GMT
Yéy. I also say no more confusions, because a good and internationally accepted spelling reform would eliminate confusions, not create them.
Damian   Monday, December 06, 2004, 15:27 GMT
You are all cordially invited to join SPEL:

Society for the Protection of the English Language

I have promoted it before in this forum as I am dead against any spelling reform of this stupid, illogical, inconsistent, irregular, nonsensical, beautiful, magnificent, expressive, expansive, fantastic, literary, alliterative, romantic, rhythmical, lyrical language!

Membership is for life and there are no fees to join, only a commitment to retain our wonderful ENGLISH LANGUAGE and all it's crazy idiosyncracies! So hands off it! If it's good enough for us natives, then it's good enough for all of you out there in the greater Universe! ;-)

At least you know where I am coming from!
Blacksmith   Tuesday, December 07, 2004, 01:18 GMT
Damian, Why should we keep that stupid silent ''b'' in ''doubt'' and ''debt'' and that silent ''s'' in island that were never pronounce but were adding by some fools that gave the word ''island'' a false etymology.
Freeman   Tuesday, December 07, 2004, 02:30 GMT
Nae, I think a lot of people have already shewn us why spelling reform is a bad idea.

Most spelling reform proposals I've seen totally ignore my accent such as Truespel (which tends to merge many phonemes). I'm not fond of proposals that ignore distinctions that I make. A decent reformed orthography should shew all of the phonemic distinctions made by everyone, no matter how small the amount of people that make the distinctions may be.

I'd much rather see spelling not reformed than see spelling reformed to something that wouldn't work for my accent.

I and most Scots make the distinction between ''when'' and ''wen'' but I don't pronounce ''when'' as ''hwen'' and so wouldn't accept the respelling ''hwen''.
Erimir   Tuesday, December 07, 2004, 08:33 GMT
I don't understand this view. You'd rather keep a system that also doesn't show X (X being the distinctions of your Scottish accent) distinctions, but that also has numerous illogical and irregular spellings, than a system that also doesn't show X, but is much more regular?

As far as I can see, Truespel might not be IDEAL for your English, but it is probably better than Traditional Orthography.

That's a very selfish view, if I might say so.

I'm willing to accept compromises in the interest of the greater good. I'll spell "writer" and "rider" as (in my system) "rayter" and "rayder" even though to reflect my pronunciation (an American raising dialect) I'd prefer "ruyder" and "rayder" along with "spuyder" and "suyder" for "spider" and "cider". In contrast, "spied" is pronounced "spayd", and f there were such a word as "sider" it would be pronounced "sayder". This distinction is made mostly in Northern US cities (esp. on the Great Lakes) and in Canada. But I realize not all dialects make those distinctions, so I don't think I should impose my pronunciation on everyone.
vincent   Tuesday, December 07, 2004, 08:39 GMT
nae

(but for a spelling reform in french language i'll say yae-ouais)
Joanne   Tuesday, December 07, 2004, 10:22 GMT
Nae. Even with all our different accents, and all the spelling inconsistencies, blah blah, we still manage to communicate efficiently with English as it is, don't we?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Erimir   Tuesday, December 07, 2004, 11:27 GMT
Not everyone does, b/c English-speakers have a higher rate of illiteracy and dyslexia than speakers of more regular languages in developed countries.

So, Italy has half the incidence of dyslexia.

We also waste time teaching spelling, about four times as much time is spent teaching children to read and write as is taken in Italy.

It also creates difficulty for foreigners, and with English as the new lingua franca, it seems a bit unfair to them.

And most spelling reforms result in slightly to much shorter spellings, saving time, money and resources (less paper and ink for new books, etc.).

The 40 million functional illiterates in the US, and 7 million in the UK would probably disagree with you that we still manage to communicate efficiently with English. And illiteracy has numerous detrimental side-effects. Decreasing illiteracy would increase educational standards, for one.

In other words, there are a number of benefits to a reformed writing system.
Joanne   Tuesday, December 07, 2004, 11:59 GMT
Ummm.... since we're using numbers....

English has 300 million native speakers, 300 million more who speak it as a second language, and 100 million who use it as a foreign language. So at least 1 billion agree that they communicate efficiently in English as it is.
To the 47 million functional illiterates in the US and the UK: life's tough, what can I say?

I'm not saying this to be obnoxious or unilateral. Since English isn't my first -- or even my third -- language, I will be the first to acknowledge that learning how to spell in English is friggin' hard and frustrating.

And my vote is still nae to spelling reform.
Easterner   Tuesday, December 07, 2004, 12:09 GMT
>>Not everyone does, b/c English-speakers have a higher rate of illiteracy and dyslexia than speakers of more regular languages in developed countries.<<

I guess the education system is to blame here, not the spelling.

>> It also creates difficulty for foreigners, and with English as the new lingua franca, it seems a bit unfair to them.<<

No average educated foreigner I know of has had really big problems spelling in English apart from the usual difficulties encountered by all language learners. In my experience foreigners even spell better in English than many native English speakers.

>>The 40 million functional illiterates in the US, and 7 million in the UK would probably disagree with you that we still manage to communicate efficiently with English. And illiteracy has numerous detrimental side-effects. Decreasing illiteracy would increase educational standards, for one.<<

Functional illiteracy has to do with the lack of a regular habit of reading and coping with complex texts, not spelling. It is also a problem in Hungary, where there is a phonemic spelling. Less TV and more books (or written materials in general) would help cure this.

So I agree with Joanne. ;-)
Jim   Wednesday, December 08, 2004, 01:28 GMT
With its unashamed US-centricity Truespel is not what I'd call a very good example of a spelling reform proposal. Truespel merges "Mary", "merry" and "marry". Truespel completely ignores /o/.

The other flaw with Truespel is one that it shares with all phonetic/phonemic spelling reform proposals. It ignores morphology. This is no small problem. The way we read and write has more to do with the shape of the word than the connexion between grapheme and phoneme.

I'll add another set of words to my list.

parent ==>> përønt
parental ==>> pørentøl

nation ==>> nášøn
national ==>> næšønøl
nationality ==>> næšønæløtý

jewel ==>> jül
jeweller ==>> jülør
jewellery ==>> jülrý

In traditional orthography it's easy to see how more complex words are built up from their base words by adding affixes. This is lost in the phonemic spelling.

A far better example of a spelling reform proposal is cut spelling. Though I wouldn't go so far as to support CS.

http://www.les.aston.ac.uk/book/cutspelhb.html
http://www.spellingsociety.org/pubs/leaflets/cutspelng.html
Keep spelling the way it is.   Wednesday, December 08, 2004, 01:33 GMT
Jim, Here's Erimir's argument against morphemic spelling. What do you think about it,

Quote-''I'm pretty sure everyone would be able to realize that:''

''néyshen & náshenel
''fowtegráf & fetagrefí''
''plíz & plézher''

''are related words. Expecially when you realize that similar vowel changes occur in many words beside nation/al and photograph/y, therefore one would be familiar with such patterns.''

''So it's slightly obscured.''

''But other words would become more similar:

''bayt and bayti&#331; are more similar than bite and biting
tay and tayi&#331; are more similar than tie and tying''

''Also, the things you're complaining about never caused anyone any trouble with the roots not being the same in the words "ordain" and "ordin-ation", "abound" and "abund-ant", "fool" and "folly", "receive" and "reception", etc. Did you ever get confused because you couldn't tell that "deceive" and "deception" were related? Probably not. Just as I imagine you would be rather unfazed by "neyshen"/"nashenel".''

Source- http://www.antimoon.com/forum/2004/6011-2.htm
........................................   Wednesday, December 08, 2004, 01:45 GMT
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Freeman   Wednesday, December 08, 2004, 01:50 GMT
''parent ==>> përønt''

''nation ==>> nášøn''

Jim, aren't the ''a's'' in ''parent'' and ''nation'' the same sound. They sound the same to me. I'm from Scotland. If they are the same sound then why is that sound shewn with two different symbols?
Mi5 Mick   Wednesday, December 08, 2004, 01:57 GMT
In Jim's accent and mine (Australian) :

the 'a' in "parent" sounds like "air" (monphthong)
the 'a' in "nation", like "ay" (diphthong)