why is the pronunciation of english so unstable?

It seems there's no solid basis to the pronunciation, there's a huge variation throughout time and space. Moreover it is as though it suffered a slow but constant deterioration. Some sounds are vanishing, others are coming to light (for example in english english la <t> in "better", la <l> in "school", "prayer" pronouced as [prair]). Other languages are much more "stable" on a phonetical plan, i.e. german, turkish, japanese, italian...
But only english seems to suffer such an "erosion". Soon there won't be anymore conformity between english orthography and the pronunciation. The solution would be utter the words the way they're written.

Good! I guess my post is a very interesting one

<<Other languages are much more "stable" on a phonetical plan, i.e. german, turkish, japanese, italian...
But only english seems to suffer such an "erosion". Soon there won't be anymore conformity between english orthography and the pronunciation.>>

It may appear that way but that's not really the case. The kind of phonological developments that have happened to English happen to all languages over time, tho the manifestations are different according to language. For instance, take written German. Written Standard German is a highly idealized form of German which no one really speaks natively but they learn to write. People in German-speaking countries and regions grow up with their regional dialects which can be quite different from written Standard German. Some German "dialects" are so different they are hardly intelligible to speakers of other dialects unless they both switch to Standard German. There are phonological phenomena in German dialects which equate pretty equally to the things you mention in English. Also, it's not like the other dialects are "deviant" but all German dialects have developed for centuries from earlier forms.

Another thing to mention--people don't exist to serve the written form of a language but the other way around. It's not possible for people to "pronounce all words as written"--language is much more organic and changing than that.

I think English is just the most unphonetical modern language - orthography is absolutely different from its pronounciation. Horrible for beginners but tolerable for more advanced learners.

>>I think English is just the most unphonetical modern language - orthography is absolutely different from its pronounciation. Horrible for beginners but tolerable for more advanced learners.<<

Besides your ignoring Chinese characters and literary Tibetan, the issue here is that "fixing" English spelling is actually extremely difficult if wants to have a single unified orthography which serves the entirety of the English-speaking world, rather than just some limited range of dialects, well. Furthermore, from the standpoint of a speaker of some English dialect besides Received Pronunciation and some idealized version of General American, the "badness" of English orthography is actually a *strength* in that it means that English orthography does not have a very strong prescriptive influence, unlike with many languages with far more phonemic (what you call "phonetic") orthographies.

In my lifetime, I hope to see the establishment of An Academy of the English Language, with its main headquarters in Winnipeg or Toronto.

>>In my lifetime, I hope to see the establishment of An Academy of the English Language, with its main headquarters in Winnipeg or Toronto.<<

Why can't we make the single logical choice and choose the Yooper dialect as the one true standard form of English?

Because no one's heard of "Yooper" and maybe only 2 people speak it. What's/Who/Where is Yooper?

Don't worry, I was curious enough to found it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yooper_dialect

<<Why can't we make the single logical choice and choose the Yooper dialect as the one true standard form of English?>>

Hehehe. I knew a Yooper and wow was her accent interesting!

Kirk : « Written Standard German is a highly idealized form of German which no one really speaks natively but they learn to write. »
Dans une certaine mesure, oui. Bien sûr, il existe un fait dialectal très puissant en Allemagne, en Suisse et en Autriche. Mais je suis certain qu'il existe aussi des germanophones dont l'allemand de référence est la langue maternelle — avec quelques variations bien sûr, tout comme le français en France.


Kirk : « Another thing to mention--people don't exist to serve the written form of a language but the other way around. It's not possible for people to "pronounce all words as written"--language is much more organic and changing than that. »
C'est vrai. Néanmoins l'histoire des langues française et anglaise montre à quel point la langue écrite — dont la formation fut un processus complexe et souvent délibéré — a pu influencer la langue parlée non, certes, dans sa phonologie (encore que...) mais certainement au niveau lexical et syntaxique.


Travis : kannst du Yooper sprechen ?

<<C'est vrai. Néanmoins l'histoire des langues française et anglaise montre à quel point la langue écrite — dont la formation fut un processus complexe et souvent délibéré — a pu influencer la langue parlée non, certes, dans sa phonologie (encore que...) mais certainement au niveau lexical et syntaxique.>>

Oui, certainement au niveau lexical (mais syntaxique? chuis pas sûr)--a lot of new Latin terms have been introduced into French and Spanish, for instance, which of course bypass centuries of sound changes which transformed the original words so much. It's like the new Latin words got to time travel :) But of course I meant phonologically speaking.

<<kannst du Yooper sprechen >>

Ich denke, dass Travis kein Yooper spricht. Aber ich muss sage, dass die Mundart von Travis ein bisschen näher (als meine) zur Yooper Mundart ist :)

*Aber ich muss sagen

>><<kannst du Yooper sprechen >>

Ich denke, dass Travis kein Yooper spricht. Aber ich muss sage, dass die Mundart von Travis ein bisschen näher (als meine) zur Yooper Mundart ist :)<<

Ja, ich spreche kein Yooper. Aber meine Mundart schien vieles gemeinsam mit der Yooper Mundart mit Bezug auf Aussprache und das Wort "ja" zu haben, wenn auch die Wikipedia-Artikel über Yooper nicht sehr gut wäre. Aber wenn man in die Diskussionsseite von die Wikipedia-Artikel über Yooper guckte, sah man, es soll sein, dass viele solche Merkmale häufig in ländlichen Teile von dem Upper-Midwest sind.

Das sollte "in ländlichen Teilen" in meiner Post oben sein.