I'm late to my own party. This thread took off faster than I thought. But anyway, one good reason is that less phonetic languages are correlated with higher rates of dislexia. This is a bit of a lofty claim and I can't back it up on my cellphone right now but the rates of dislexia in English and Danish are much higher than Spanish or Czech last I checked the national rates.Travis B. wrote:The question I have is why should written language follow speech? After all, it is useful to have a written language that does not change much, so that future generations can read stuff written now, while if we change how we write to closely follow how we speak, what is written not that long ago, all things considered, will become dated quickly, and soon enough most people will not be able to read it. Personally, I think the goal should be to have a written language that can survive the breakup of English itself as a spoken language. Latin was able to survive as a written and sacred language for almost two millenia. Should we not aim for the same with English?
And no Sal I don't consider myself some sort of crusader for English, I'm just asking at what point do we recognize that our language changes?
Another point I wanted to address is I believe Vijay's and that is that "gonna, etc," are considered familiar which might be an explanation for why they are not recognized by authorities on grammar and I don't disagree but can't we argue all contractions are by definition familiar? Contractions are advised against in formal writing.