True, but at least we could read a translated version without having to, like I said, waste hundreds of hours learning to read and write correctly. I mean, no offense, but your idea of speaking how words are written is a tad more dramatic.
Spelling reform idea.
Written word probably won't matter so much in the future to our daily lives as it has before the inception of the mass media. Paper should become almost obsolete as electronic forms become the favored media for recording information. Media technologies and their miniaturization will push video and audio formats to be preferred over text forms, at least when they are as practical and accessible as pen and paper.
Electronic forms will contain written words just as paper does today. It is much more efficient to read a written language than it is to listen to it spoken: few people can speak for long periods at more than 200 words per minute, but many people can read at four times that speed or beyond, and 450 wpm for reading is quite routine.
Thus, while printing on paper will decline somewhat as a percentage of total media (even though it may continue to increase in absolute terms), there is little chance that video or audio will eliminate the written word. Spoken language is just too inefficient and ambiguous.
In fact, we see the written word more often today than at any other time in history. For much of history written language was so rare that hardly anyone even bothered to learn to read it. Today, an illiterate person is at a huge disadvantage no matter what his position in society.
As for Shakespeare, I need a translation in any case because the colloquial English of Shakespeare's time was dramatically different from English today, and I can't figure out what he's trying to say most of the time. However, the written words are easy enough to make out.
Those who believe spelling reform makes more sense than pronunciation reform have not thought the matter through; to some extent this proves just how pervasive the written word is compared to the spoken word, because people tend to forget the latter entirely when thinking of reform.
Thus, while printing on paper will decline somewhat as a percentage of total media (even though it may continue to increase in absolute terms), there is little chance that video or audio will eliminate the written word. Spoken language is just too inefficient and ambiguous.
In fact, we see the written word more often today than at any other time in history. For much of history written language was so rare that hardly anyone even bothered to learn to read it. Today, an illiterate person is at a huge disadvantage no matter what his position in society.
As for Shakespeare, I need a translation in any case because the colloquial English of Shakespeare's time was dramatically different from English today, and I can't figure out what he's trying to say most of the time. However, the written words are easy enough to make out.
Those who believe spelling reform makes more sense than pronunciation reform have not thought the matter through; to some extent this proves just how pervasive the written word is compared to the spoken word, because people tend to forget the latter entirely when thinking of reform.
Electronic forms of written language will serve a secondary role to video and audio forms for most users. Video and audio will most likely predominate because of usability and ergonomics (ease of use), as in speech; in relation to technology, distribution via television and telecommunications illustrate these notions to some extent.
How fast humans are able to speak matters not, since much of this task would be undertaken by the technologies through some degree of synthesized speech. And in terms of video, a picture can "paint" a thousand written words, or significantly aid understanding, where the shady side of writing can fail communication. Writing, like its spoken counterpart, is also prone to ambiguity and human deficiencies.
Perhaps it is more efficient for SOME to read a written language but comprehension and reinforcement of ideas are often more effective (and perhaps ultimately more efficient) through the use of visual and audial means, irrespective of literacy.
How fast humans are able to speak matters not, since much of this task would be undertaken by the technologies through some degree of synthesized speech. And in terms of video, a picture can "paint" a thousand written words, or significantly aid understanding, where the shady side of writing can fail communication. Writing, like its spoken counterpart, is also prone to ambiguity and human deficiencies.
Perhaps it is more efficient for SOME to read a written language but comprehension and reinforcement of ideas are often more effective (and perhaps ultimately more efficient) through the use of visual and audial means, irrespective of literacy.
It is more efficient for everyone to read rather than hear. Visual input has much greater bandwidth than aural input. While voice synthesis may allow speech to be accelerated, there are still severe limits on how quickly speech can be understood; it is still faster to read the written word.
Additionally, a great deal of information is not pure text, but formatted text. This formatting cannot be communicated in speech in any efficient way. For example, a telephone bill read aloud is much more difficult to understand than a telephone bill on paper, and it is much slower to absorb the information aurally than visually. Furthermore, visual input allows a degree of random access that audio input does not. You can skip around a printed page looking for the text you want, but you cannot do this with a speech recording.
Almost all the language-based information I take in each day comes to me visually, through reading. Very little is spoken. And the trend in many environments is towards more writing, not less. The advent of the Web, for example, has dramatically increased the amount of reading (and writing) that many people do each day. E-mail has had a similar effect.
If people wanted to hear rather than read, they'd do everything by telephone, or they'd e-mail voice recordings to each other. In fact, the current trend is just the opposite.
The ability to read and write is more important now in developed civilizations than ever before in history. It's almost impossible to function in the industrialized world without reading and writing (especially the former). And while speech is used as much as ever, it is extremely ephemeral, often forgotten only moments after it occurs.
This is why written language should be maintained as the standard, with pronunciation tracking written forms, and not the other way around. Most speech disappears into thin air immediately after it is uttered; but the written word remains for centuries or millennia, and so it is in the best interests of humankind to keep the written word as constant as possible.
Additionally, a great deal of information is not pure text, but formatted text. This formatting cannot be communicated in speech in any efficient way. For example, a telephone bill read aloud is much more difficult to understand than a telephone bill on paper, and it is much slower to absorb the information aurally than visually. Furthermore, visual input allows a degree of random access that audio input does not. You can skip around a printed page looking for the text you want, but you cannot do this with a speech recording.
Almost all the language-based information I take in each day comes to me visually, through reading. Very little is spoken. And the trend in many environments is towards more writing, not less. The advent of the Web, for example, has dramatically increased the amount of reading (and writing) that many people do each day. E-mail has had a similar effect.
If people wanted to hear rather than read, they'd do everything by telephone, or they'd e-mail voice recordings to each other. In fact, the current trend is just the opposite.
The ability to read and write is more important now in developed civilizations than ever before in history. It's almost impossible to function in the industrialized world without reading and writing (especially the former). And while speech is used as much as ever, it is extremely ephemeral, often forgotten only moments after it occurs.
This is why written language should be maintained as the standard, with pronunciation tracking written forms, and not the other way around. Most speech disappears into thin air immediately after it is uttered; but the written word remains for centuries or millennia, and so it is in the best interests of humankind to keep the written word as constant as possible.
Reading for humans is more efficient in the sense that one can see more information, bandwidth-wise, than one can hear but the breaking down of complex information is more involved than just eye-scanning data. It is often easier mentally and practically for one to simply communicate an idea audially and by use of visual imagery/motion than it is to encode it in a written language and decode it--machines are better at this than human brains.
The idea behind voice synthesis is not the ability to accelerate speech but to increase the volume of audio content available. Formating and other features attributed to writing will find their way into AV technologies. Voice activation through voice recognition will be used to randomly access information content and is more efficient than skimming through copious amounts of text to find something.
Whatever features can be found in written language will inevitably be applied to these technologies, and they'll be better applied, since audio adds an extra dimension to communication, as video and audio compliment each other synergically. Text is ordinarily "black-and-white".
When it's more practical and extemely efficient to do so, AV technologies will give written language a backseat in information distribution, such as in E-mail and Web designs. This doesn't mean written or machine encoded language can ever be made obsolete; they are required for the said technologies to function.
The idea behind voice synthesis is not the ability to accelerate speech but to increase the volume of audio content available. Formating and other features attributed to writing will find their way into AV technologies. Voice activation through voice recognition will be used to randomly access information content and is more efficient than skimming through copious amounts of text to find something.
Whatever features can be found in written language will inevitably be applied to these technologies, and they'll be better applied, since audio adds an extra dimension to communication, as video and audio compliment each other synergically. Text is ordinarily "black-and-white".
When it's more practical and extemely efficient to do so, AV technologies will give written language a backseat in information distribution, such as in E-mail and Web designs. This doesn't mean written or machine encoded language can ever be made obsolete; they are required for the said technologies to function.
This is a very interesting little discussion that has started. Although I agree with Mxsmanic that the written word is easier to use, their idea to reform the spoken language rather than the written language is just a tad silly, since almost everyone can agree that written language REPRESENTS spoken language, and not the other way around. Either way, we could continue on with the same writing system so that eventually our words will be superficially as legible as chinese; or, we could do something that almost every other language on Earth has done, and modify our written system to more closely represent our spoken language, so as to allow native speakers to learn the written system just by learning the alphabet (and not the individual spelling of every single word), and allow non-native learners (the majority of English speakers) to be required to learn just one language, not two, to get a head-start in business or whatever their motive for learning the language is.
I have heard that reading aloud is an effective way to master English. If so, however, we have to use a dictionary to check the correct pronunciation of each word. It must be wonderful if we can learn correct pronunciation thru a fonettic spelling system.
Of course there are many spellings that new learners can easily read aloud correctly because of the Magic E. They should not be changed. Spellings such as "date", "fake", "time", and "joke" have to be regarded as phonetic, because these are not irregular. Furthermore, we need "frate", "hite", and "slite", for example.
I learned the correct pronunciation of "closet" thru the spelling "clozzet". In the middle of a word, the rule of consonant dubbling after a short and stressed vowel must be graet if it is strictly kept.
But simplifyed spellings are not given in dictionarys.
caracter (!) See CHARACTER
frate (!) See FREIGHT
hite (!) See HEIGHT/HIGHT
naber (!) See NEIGHBOR
nife (!) See KNIFE
slite (!) See SLIGHT/SLEIGHT
We do not have to create a new sistem. Refine the traditional orthografy. Very sad to say, too late for me!
Of course there are many spellings that new learners can easily read aloud correctly because of the Magic E. They should not be changed. Spellings such as "date", "fake", "time", and "joke" have to be regarded as phonetic, because these are not irregular. Furthermore, we need "frate", "hite", and "slite", for example.
I learned the correct pronunciation of "closet" thru the spelling "clozzet". In the middle of a word, the rule of consonant dubbling after a short and stressed vowel must be graet if it is strictly kept.
But simplifyed spellings are not given in dictionarys.
caracter (!) See CHARACTER
frate (!) See FREIGHT
hite (!) See HEIGHT/HIGHT
naber (!) See NEIGHBOR
nife (!) See KNIFE
slite (!) See SLIGHT/SLEIGHT
We do not have to create a new sistem. Refine the traditional orthografy. Very sad to say, too late for me!
Je ne suis pas sûr que les graphies utilisées pour <date>, <fake>, <time> et <joke> puissent être considérees comme phonétiques dans la mesure où toutes les voyelles incriminées sont des diphtongues et que les monographes associés peuvent, par exemple, être respectivement réalisés [A:] dans <vase> (du moins en anglais classique), [i:] dans <machine> ou [O:] dans <more>.
Quant à savoir si ces graphies sont régulières, c'est un autre problème : la notion de régularité en phonétique anglaise est un concept tout relatif...
Quant à savoir si ces graphies sont régulières, c'est un autre problème : la notion de régularité en phonétique anglaise est un concept tout relatif...
I'm not aware of any evidence at all that spoken language is inherently superior or more efficient or better suited to communication than written language. If written language is inferior, why does it continue to grow in popularity? More writing takes place every day today than took place over periods of centuries earlier in human history, and the pace is only accelerating.
I also see no evidence at all that audio or video technologies are gaining on the written language. We are all constantly surrounded by written language all day long; it is inescapable. And there is more and more of it every day.
The best Web sites tend to contain quite a bit of written content. The best-selling books typically have no illustrations. And our communication in this very forum is entirely written, with neither pictures nor sounds to accompany it.
It is true that there is a functionally illiterate underclass of significant size that depends exclusively on audio and video communication, but it is self-limiting and not very important in the long-term scheme of things. Illiterates cannot accomplish very much in an advanced society because of their illiteracy, and that same illiteracy tends to prevent them from leaving anything of lasting import behind.
Anyway, if we force pronunciation to conform to written language, then the two will always be synchronized, and the written language will never become obsolete. If we force the written language to conform to pronunciation, which is a constantly moving target, historical documents will become unreadable with amazing speed, and even old audio recordings will become unintelligible, because pronunciation will have drifted too far to leave them otherwise in fairly short order.
This seems so painfully self-evident to me that I wonder why I must explain it again and again in a dozen different ways to get the point across.
I also see no evidence at all that audio or video technologies are gaining on the written language. We are all constantly surrounded by written language all day long; it is inescapable. And there is more and more of it every day.
The best Web sites tend to contain quite a bit of written content. The best-selling books typically have no illustrations. And our communication in this very forum is entirely written, with neither pictures nor sounds to accompany it.
It is true that there is a functionally illiterate underclass of significant size that depends exclusively on audio and video communication, but it is self-limiting and not very important in the long-term scheme of things. Illiterates cannot accomplish very much in an advanced society because of their illiteracy, and that same illiteracy tends to prevent them from leaving anything of lasting import behind.
Anyway, if we force pronunciation to conform to written language, then the two will always be synchronized, and the written language will never become obsolete. If we force the written language to conform to pronunciation, which is a constantly moving target, historical documents will become unreadable with amazing speed, and even old audio recordings will become unintelligible, because pronunciation will have drifted too far to leave them otherwise in fairly short order.
This seems so painfully self-evident to me that I wonder why I must explain it again and again in a dozen different ways to get the point across.
Hello, greg
I suppose we *have to* regard "date", "fake", "time", and "joke" as phonetic, in terms of learning English. More precisely, "regular".
You may have a point. "Vase" could be pronounced like "vaaz". "Machine" is pronounced "almost" like a French word. In French, these two words are not irregular in terms of pronunciation. That's why learners of English have to be doomed to assume a little knowledge of French, in order just not to be puzzled. Personally, I'd like to pronounce "vase" according to the American way. And some reformers spell "masheen" instead of "machine". As for "more", my understanding is that vowels in general are a little difficult before R.
When it comes to English, there is no absolute concept of being phonetic. If ever, no learners would suffer!
I suppose we *have to* regard "date", "fake", "time", and "joke" as phonetic, in terms of learning English. More precisely, "regular".
You may have a point. "Vase" could be pronounced like "vaaz". "Machine" is pronounced "almost" like a French word. In French, these two words are not irregular in terms of pronunciation. That's why learners of English have to be doomed to assume a little knowledge of French, in order just not to be puzzled. Personally, I'd like to pronounce "vase" according to the American way. And some reformers spell "masheen" instead of "machine". As for "more", my understanding is that vowels in general are a little difficult before R.
When it comes to English, there is no absolute concept of being phonetic. If ever, no learners would suffer!
Mxsmanic - I understand where you are coming from, but yet again, I have to repeat that the spoken language is the natural language, with the written language, however useful, being an artificial representation of the spoken version.
Either way, would you rather be able to read Shakespeare, in its original form (which, btw, is still practically impossible without formal learning), or would you rather have all the hundreds of millions of English-speaking wannabes around the world be able to merely learn one form of the language, not two?
As far as reform, it doesn't need to be a drastic change, it could be based off of the most basic phonetic rules, while getting rid of the thousands of exceptions.
Either way, would you rather be able to read Shakespeare, in its original form (which, btw, is still practically impossible without formal learning), or would you rather have all the hundreds of millions of English-speaking wannabes around the world be able to merely learn one form of the language, not two?
As far as reform, it doesn't need to be a drastic change, it could be based off of the most basic phonetic rules, while getting rid of the thousands of exceptions.
>>I'm not aware of any evidence at all that spoken language is inherently superior or more efficient or better suited to communication than written language. If written language is inferior, why does it continue to grow in popularity? More writing takes place every day today than took place over periods of centuries earlier in human history, and the pace is only accelerating.<<
The problem here is that you are thinking in terms of "better" or "worse" in the first place. The matter is not that written language is "inferior" to spoken language, but rather that it is an abstract *representation* of such. The written language is derived from spoken language, not the other way around, as much as certain orthographies may obscure the various pronunciations used for various words, and as much as the grammar in such used may reflect forms which are not generally used in speech at the present.
>>I also see no evidence at all that audio or video technologies are gaining on the written language. We are all constantly surrounded by written language all day long; it is inescapable. And there is more and more of it every day.<<
Neither do I see any evidence of such, but to me that still is not evidence of some reason why we shouldn't have a phonemic orthography that at least approximates formal speech, if not most speech in general.
>>Anyway, if we force pronunciation to conform to written language, then the two will always be synchronized, and the written language will never become obsolete.<<
Good luck. Then we should revert English pronunciation back to that of Late Middle English, as the spelling of most words that are native or have been nativized in English today reflects specifically the phonology of such; current English spelling is actually a relatively good phonemic orthography for such, all things considered. Hence, we will end up pronouncing "knight" as /kni:xt/, "meat" as /mE:t/, "book" as /bo:k/, "mine" as /mi:n/ or maybe /mIn@/, "keen" as /ke:n/, "hoarse" as /hO:rs/ or maybe /hO:rs@/, and so on. You get the picture.
>>If we force the written language to conform to pronunciation, which is a constantly moving target, historical documents will become unreadable with amazing speed, and even old audio recordings will become unintelligible, because pronunciation will have drifted too far to leave them otherwise in fairly short order.<<
We already can't read written Old English, and mostly cannot fully read written Middle English, and I don't hear many who are making a big deal out of such.
The problem here is that you are thinking in terms of "better" or "worse" in the first place. The matter is not that written language is "inferior" to spoken language, but rather that it is an abstract *representation* of such. The written language is derived from spoken language, not the other way around, as much as certain orthographies may obscure the various pronunciations used for various words, and as much as the grammar in such used may reflect forms which are not generally used in speech at the present.
>>I also see no evidence at all that audio or video technologies are gaining on the written language. We are all constantly surrounded by written language all day long; it is inescapable. And there is more and more of it every day.<<
Neither do I see any evidence of such, but to me that still is not evidence of some reason why we shouldn't have a phonemic orthography that at least approximates formal speech, if not most speech in general.
>>Anyway, if we force pronunciation to conform to written language, then the two will always be synchronized, and the written language will never become obsolete.<<
Good luck. Then we should revert English pronunciation back to that of Late Middle English, as the spelling of most words that are native or have been nativized in English today reflects specifically the phonology of such; current English spelling is actually a relatively good phonemic orthography for such, all things considered. Hence, we will end up pronouncing "knight" as /kni:xt/, "meat" as /mE:t/, "book" as /bo:k/, "mine" as /mi:n/ or maybe /mIn@/, "keen" as /ke:n/, "hoarse" as /hO:rs/ or maybe /hO:rs@/, and so on. You get the picture.
>>If we force the written language to conform to pronunciation, which is a constantly moving target, historical documents will become unreadable with amazing speed, and even old audio recordings will become unintelligible, because pronunciation will have drifted too far to leave them otherwise in fairly short order.<<
We already can't read written Old English, and mostly cannot fully read written Middle English, and I don't hear many who are making a big deal out of such.
Phonemic orthography is useful only if you force pronunciation to match spelling permanently thereafter. Otherwise it's just temporary and useless, as pronunciation will rapidly drift until the spelling is no longer phonemic. This is why it makes sense to force pronunciation to spelling, and not the other way around.
There is more written each day in English today than all the literature in Old and Middle English combined. Nobody complains about not being able to read older forms because there is very little to read. But today the situation is different, as writing is easy and more widespread than ever before, and future generations will have mountains of existing written material that they may wish to consult.
We _could_ change pronunciation to conform to current spelling, althought that would be a significant change in many cases. In any case, it makes more sense than changing spelling to conform to pronunciation.
Finally, remember that there's no real requirement that spelling have any correlation with pronunciation at all. Look at languages like Gaelic, which have drifted so far in pronunciation that the written language is hardly more than an identifier to remind you of which word is to be pronounced, with relatively few clues to pronunciation. And remember languages like Chinese. The written language need not represent the spoken language in a phonological sense.
Here again, people who whine in favor of spelling reform are typically those who can't be bothered to learn spelling, or even to learn the written language well overall. If spelling were reformed, within a generation they'd be complaining again, as pronunciation drifted and their inherent laziness prevented them from memorizing the differences between the written and spoken forms.
There is more written each day in English today than all the literature in Old and Middle English combined. Nobody complains about not being able to read older forms because there is very little to read. But today the situation is different, as writing is easy and more widespread than ever before, and future generations will have mountains of existing written material that they may wish to consult.
We _could_ change pronunciation to conform to current spelling, althought that would be a significant change in many cases. In any case, it makes more sense than changing spelling to conform to pronunciation.
Finally, remember that there's no real requirement that spelling have any correlation with pronunciation at all. Look at languages like Gaelic, which have drifted so far in pronunciation that the written language is hardly more than an identifier to remind you of which word is to be pronounced, with relatively few clues to pronunciation. And remember languages like Chinese. The written language need not represent the spoken language in a phonological sense.
Here again, people who whine in favor of spelling reform are typically those who can't be bothered to learn spelling, or even to learn the written language well overall. If spelling were reformed, within a generation they'd be complaining again, as pronunciation drifted and their inherent laziness prevented them from memorizing the differences between the written and spoken forms.
A solution to the implementation of phonemic orthography in practice is to not have a phonemic orthography reflect any *real* dialect's pronunciation whatsoever, but rather to reflect solely the pronunciation off a deliberately artificially constructed compromise dialect, which is not meant to be actually spoken by anyone in the first place. The purpose of such is to clearly create a standard for what pronunciations would be reflected in actual spelling, without actually favoring any given dialect over other dialects, due to said compromise dialect being purely artificial in nature and not being a preexisting prestige dialect or like, and being constructed in such a fashion to act as an "average" of existing dialect forms. Furthermore, said artificial compromise dialect could be revised over time, to reflect changes in the overall phonology of the real dialects under consideration, which would then result in new revised spellings, and to take account of the creation of new lexical items, for which standardized spellings had not been already assigned.
Of course, there are some caveats with respect to this kind of method. For starters, it requires a very strong academy, which is something that most definitely does not exist in English or any of the dialect groups within English, such as North American English. Secondly, while the artificial compromise dialect being used is meant to be purely artificial, and is not meant to be any kind of "standard" spoken form, it is still likely that some may take such to represent some kind of "correct" speech form, unfortunately, even when its purpose is solely so that single phonemic spellings can be agreed upon for vocabulary in general, for the sake or practicality. Thirdly, an academy carrying out such a method must have a descriptivist bent, but rather must actually widely survey existing dialectal forms, for the sake of creating a truly "average" compromise dialect, rather than simply recreating some prestige form, but unfortunately many academies are very liable to think in a prescriptivist fashion, which would simply result in such a compromise dialect really just being very close to preexisting prestige forms.
Of course, there are some caveats with respect to this kind of method. For starters, it requires a very strong academy, which is something that most definitely does not exist in English or any of the dialect groups within English, such as North American English. Secondly, while the artificial compromise dialect being used is meant to be purely artificial, and is not meant to be any kind of "standard" spoken form, it is still likely that some may take such to represent some kind of "correct" speech form, unfortunately, even when its purpose is solely so that single phonemic spellings can be agreed upon for vocabulary in general, for the sake or practicality. Thirdly, an academy carrying out such a method must have a descriptivist bent, but rather must actually widely survey existing dialectal forms, for the sake of creating a truly "average" compromise dialect, rather than simply recreating some prestige form, but unfortunately many academies are very liable to think in a prescriptivist fashion, which would simply result in such a compromise dialect really just being very close to preexisting prestige forms.