Yet Another English Spelling Reform Thread

[Thomas Winwood]

Tcru, wic iz wai ai wónt bi siriusli yúzing enithing obnogzus lík dhis in publik.

Why do English spelling reforms insist on fixing things that aren't broken? In this short sentence alone we've got murdering the vowels without warrant (manhandling English into a continental vowel system DOESN'T WORK, people), orthographically indicating epenthetic sounds (like the [š] in <true>) which aren't necessarily features of all dialects of English but which are completely predictable when they do occur, orthographic distinctions between identical sounds (why are <why> and <I> spelled with |ai| while <like> is spelled with |í|?) and orthographic representations which make no sense (does anyone have a voiced /gž/ in <obnoxious>?).

Has anyone made an English spelling reform which doesn't make me want to tear my eyes out, but doesn't completely ignore this page which points out that a lot of English spelling IS predictable - there's no need, for instance, to change the general orthographic pattern <CVC/CVCe> which allows English to distinguish "short" and "long" vowels (mat/mate, pet/Pete, kit/kite, dot/dote, cut/cute) nor the extension <CVCC-/CVC-> for forms with a suffix (matted/mated, petter/Peter, kitted/kited, dotting/doting, cutter/cuter).

[bulbaquil]

My recommendations:

- Remove unwarranted silent letters made during the prescriptivists' "OMG LATIN IS TEH AWSUM LETS MAKE ENGLISH LUK LYKE IT!!11!1!1" phase; e.g. the <b> in "debt", the <s> in "island", etc.
- Correct some of the more egregious spelling discrepancies with respect especially to vowels, except those that need to remain spelled distinctly for dialectical reasons (horse/hoarse et al). Make "bury" "barry", etc.

[Aurora Rossa]

I have been working on ideas for a reformed orthography that aims to balance significant changes with concessions to tradition. I can understand the desire, for instance, to keep Romance loans recognizable and various morphophonological stuff.

[Bob Johnson]

Why do English spelling reforms insist on fixing things that aren't broken?

Well, it is English spelling reform, after all.

[Ziz]

(manhandling English into a continental vowel system DOESN'T WORK, people)

By this, do you mean, using values of <a e i o u> that at least approximate [a e i o u]? If so, I don't really know why you think it's so impossible. English vowels are certainly no harder to write than those of Swedish or Dutch, yet both do a better job of it than English, at least to a certain degree. The only problem with spelling English with less idiosyncratic values of the vowels is the dialectal variation, whereby, for example, the LOT vowel is a-ish in most American dialects and o-ish elsewhere.

In any case, I think one the biggest barriers to spelling change is that any radical respelling looks absolutely heinous. Skill at spelling is so heavily ingrained in Anglo culture as a kind of written shibboleth to distinguish between the educated and the stupid/uneducated/foreign. Thee ownly way too overcum weerd Inglish spelling and not luk like a dumass iz, perhaps, too yuze a diffrint riting sistum awltoogether.

~~

(does anyone have a voiced /gž/ in <obnoxious>?)

No.

[Nortaneous]

(manhandling English into a continental vowel system DOESN'T WORK, people)

By this, do you mean, using values of <a e i o u> that at least approximate [a e i o u]? If so, I don't really know why you think it's so impossible

Bices that wud mek things hardar tu rid.

[Sevly]

(why are <why> and <I> spelled with |ai| while <like> is spelled with |í|?)

I suppose that Tropylium⁺s dialect, like mine, exhibits Canadian raising, so <why> would be [waɪ] whereas <like> is realised as [lʌɪk]. Which, of course, is only evidence of one of the other big problems in spelling reforms--I'd actually want to be able to read a book published in London without being battered by the intricacies of Received Pronunciation, thank you very much.

[Yng]

- Correct some of the more egregious spelling discrepancies with respect especially to vowels, except those that need to remain spelled distinctly for dialectical reasons (horse/hoarse et al). Make "bury" "barry", etc.

Why would you make 'bury' 'barry' when they are not homophones for a large number of us?

[Ċeaddawīc]

I think spelling reform should go all the way, so the sentence "I didn't eat it" or "I didn't need it" or "I did need it" would be Ay di'nn iyr it, and "The man who went to the store" or "The man who went in the store" would be Dhmman uw ĩ ni dhstor.

I feel this is best.

[Astraios]

I think spelling reform should go all the way, so the sentence "I didn't eat it" or "I didn't need it" or "I did need it" would be Ay di'nn iyr it, and "The man who went to the store" or "The man who went in the store" would be Dhmman uw ĩ ni dhstor.

I feel this is best.

I hope you're being sarcastic.

[Ċeaddawīc]

Dherz now wey yuw cm pruwvit. Ay cbbiy cmpliytli siyriyos.

[Nortaneous]

a kẽẵr̃ iiyɱ riydhae'

[Alces]

- Correct some of the more egregious spelling discrepancies with respect especially to vowels, except those that need to remain spelled distinctly for dialectical reasons (horse/hoarse et al). Make "bury" "barry", etc.

Why would you make 'bury' 'barry' when they are not homophones for a large number of us?

I think bulbaquil has the merry-marry merger so doesn't know that the historical vowel of 'bury' is 'e' not 'a'.

[finlay]

(why are <why> and <I> spelled with |ai| while <like> is spelled with |í|?)

I suppose that Tropylium⁺s dialect, like mine, exhibits Canadian raising, so <why> would be [waɪ] whereas <like> is realised as [lʌɪk]. Which, of course, is only evidence of one of the other big problems in spelling reforms--I'd actually want to be able to read a book published in London without being battered by the intricacies of Received Pronunciation, thank you very much.

I don't think it's even that complicated – I think he's being facetious. He's also Finnish, so it's anyone's guess as to what dialect of English he speaks.

[Mbwa]

Has anyone ever considered a spelling reform that marks stress?

[Aurora Rossa]

Has anyone ever considered a spelling reform that marks stress?

I have, although I concluded it would be quite a pain and probably redundant for the most part due to context and such.

[Bedelato]

(why are <why> and <I> spelled with |ai| while <like> is spelled with |í|?)

I suppose that Tropylium⁺s dialect, like mine, exhibits Canadian raising, so <why> would be [waɪ] whereas <like> is realised as [lʌɪk]. Which, of course, is only evidence of one of the other big problems in spelling reforms--I'd actually want to be able to read a book published in London without being battered by the intricacies of Received Pronunciation, thank you very much.

Ey secund ðat. Ðe problem wiþ Ingliš speling rieform is ðat deyulekts difer tue muč; it bikums a mater of čuzing wič wun tu yuze az a baesis, and ðis nesisaerili miens exkluding uðers. A lot of vaerients ðat siem superfluous in wun deyelekt ar mieningful in anuðer.

Ðe trudišinul speling sistem meit bi a pane, but it duz a gûd job of yunifeying ðe našunul deyulekts, bikuz it dates from a teim bifore suč deyulekts existed.

—————————

I second that. The problem with English spelling reform is that dialects differ too much; it becomes a matter of choosing which one to use as a basis, and this necessarily means excluding others. A lot of variants that seem superfluous in one dialect are meaningful in another.

The traditional spelling system might be a pain, but it does a good job of unifying the national dialects, because it dates from a time before such dialects existed.

[jmcd]

My recommendations:

- Remove unwarranted silent letters made during the prescriptivists' "OMG LATIN IS TEH AWSUM LETS MAKE ENGLISH LUK LYKE IT!!11!1!1" phase; e.g. the <b> in "debt", the <s> in "island", etc.
- Correct some of the more egregious spelling discrepancies with respect especially to vowels, except those that need to remain spelled distinctly for dialectical reasons (horse/hoarse et al). Make "bury" "barry", etc.

The first one I definitely agree with but not the second, as mentioned later in thread. I would also say removing rules like "no <v> at the end of a word" (so have>hav) and other things caused by continuing to spell as if we need to take Norman handwriting into consideration, except where homonyms would result so love>luv.

[Curan Roshac]

Has anyone ever considered a spelling reform that marks stress?

Not that I have seen.

Ey secund ðat. Ðe problem wiþ Ingliš speling rieform is ðat deyulekts difer tue muč; it bikums a mater of čuzing wič wun tu yuze az a baesis, and ðis nesisaerili miens exkluding uðers. A lot of vaerients ðat siem superfluous in wun deyelekt ar mieningful in anuðer.

Ðe trudišinul speling sistem meit bi a pane, but it duz a gûd job of yunifeying ðe našunul deyulekts, bikuz it dates from a teim bifore suč deyulekts existed.

—————————

I second that. The problem with English spelling reform is that dialects differ too much; it becomes a matter of choosing which one to use as a basis, and this necessarily means excluding others. A lot of variants that seem superfluous in one dialect are meaningful in another.

The traditional spelling system might be a pain, but it does a good job of unifying the national dialects, because it dates from a time before such dialects existed.

I don't think you needed to put this in two orthographical formats, the first was understandable. In fact, the changes were rather conservative.

[Simmalti]

I dream of a future where lolspeak is the standard

[AnTeallach]

(manhandling English into a continental vowel system DOESN'T WORK, people)

By this, do you mean, using values of <a e i o u> that at least approximate [a e i o u]? If so, I don't really know why you think it's so impossible. English vowels are certainly no harder to write than those of Swedish or Dutch, yet both do a better job of it than English, at least to a certain degree. The only problem with spelling English with less idiosyncratic values of the vowels is the dialectal variation, whereby, for example, the LOT vowel is a-ish in most American dialects and o-ish elsewhere.

English has a system which, though it has a lot of flaws and exceptions, has been used in roughly the same form for several hundred years and a lot has been written in it; if you do an excessively radical reform then you create a problem with reading older texts. Then there are other conversion costs.

Anyway, why is is such a problem that the FACE vowel in English is often written with an a? Yes, it's an unusual sound-letter correspondence, but there are morphophonemic alternations with the TRAP vowel which support it, and lots of languages have unusual sound-letter correspondences: does anyone campaign for abandoning j for /x/ in Spanish?

[thePrince]

English spelling has all the logic and coherence of a London dockside whore's selection of clients. It is a brothel. It is promiscuous. It is unruly. It is a nightmare to teach.

The fundamental problem is that the backward English (they were backward in the 16th and 17th Centuries) decided to write their quasi-Germanic dialect mixed with Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, French, Latin, Greek and God knows what else phonetically ejaculated in the Docks using the Latin character set. However, they did not have the wit to extend the 5 vowel sounds with extra characters or markers (accents, umlauts etc).

As a result you have 12 vowel sounds and 5 vowel characters which fundamentally does not and cannot compute.

Fixing English spelling is a noble challenge but doomed

[spats]

I view English spelling as a little like Hanzi with better phonetic cues. It doesn't need significant spelling reform, and pursuing reform would effectively fragment the language.

[Nortaneous]

HȺ GÍZ LEȾ RÍT IṈLIŚ WIŦ EN ECSTENĆEN EV ŦE SENĆOŦEN URŦAGREFI

W̲ET E FECIṈ GRȺT ÍDIYE

U GOD W̲ET HEV Í DEN

[Thomas Winwood]

HȺ GÍZ LEȾ RÍT IṈLIŚ WIŦ EN ECSTENĆEN EV ŦE SENĆOŦEN URŦAGREFI

W̲ET E FECIṈ GRȺT ÍDIYE

U GOD W̲ET HEV Í DEN

It even has the lower-case s for the third-person singular ending. It's genius!