English Orthography Reform

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qwed117
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by qwed117 »

To quote Sean Paul /bɪɾəbɑ̃ŋgbɑ̃ŋg/
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Sumelic
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Sumelic »

Axiem wrote: 18 Nov 2017 01:06 The English spelling system is perfectly fine. Strange, yes, but perfectly fine.
As Xonen says, that's true if you define "perfectly fine" as something like "not entirely unusable", but there are all sorts of fairly obvious ways the spelling of English words could be improved (if we ignore the costs of changing things, of course). Just because the system is not actually composed of ghotis and ghoughphtheightteeaus doesn't mean it's perfect.
I really like the property that English has where a person whose dialect I wouldn't be able to understand in speech can still write a letter that I can understand, and vice-versa. Any reform to English spelling that at all tried to make it closer to modern pronunciations would invariably break this property.
The last sentence of this is false, and even a weakened version of this argument is not very good (see e.g. the counter-arguments given by Justin B Rye). It is well known that some words, such as "debt", "doubt", "receipt", "isle", have consonant letters that don't correspond to any sound in anyone's pronunciation. In words like "island", "aisle", "redoubt", "scythe", "scent", "ache", "ptarmigan", the silent consonant letters don't even serve as guides to the etymology of the words: they actually suggest false etymologies. We could easily do without them, just as present-day French does without "ç" in the word "savoir" (formerly often spelled "sçavoir").

Vowels are more tricky, but in this area also there are words with spellings that are misleading for pretty much everyone, like "heart", "hearth", "hearken", "English", "England", "double", "trouble", "friend", "tongue", "busy", "shoe".

A reform that fixed only the words listed in this post would in fact qualify as "any reform to English spelling that at all tried to make it closer to modern pronunciations" and it would do nothing significant to break the property you are attached to. Present-day English spelling is not actually some kind of perfect diaphonemic/morphological spelling system.
Sumelic
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Sumelic »

Here is the introduction of the Wikipedia article English-language spelling reform rewritten in a reformed spelling I put together today. (It's a major reform, but it does contain some elements based on the current English spelling system.) but I'd be interested in hearing other people's thoughts about this system.
For sentyryz, dhaar haz bin a mouvment tou reform dha speling ov inglish. It seikz tou chaanj inglish speling soo dhat it iz mor konsistnt, machiz pronunsyaasyn betr, and folo'z dhy alfubetik prinsipl.

Komn mootivz for speling reform inkloud maaking it eizyr tou lurn tou reid (dekood), tou spel, and tou pronauns, maaking it mor yousful for intrnasynl komeunikaasyn, redeusing ejukaasynl bujitz (redeusing litrusy teichrz, remeidyaasyn kosts, and litrusy proogramz) and/or enaabling teichrz and lurnrz tou spend mor taim on mor importnt subjektz or ekspanding subjektz.

Moost speling reform propoozlz ar modrut: dhaa youz dha tradisynl inglish alfubet, trai tou maantaan dha familyr shaapz ov wurdz, and trai tou maantaan komn konvensynz (such az sailnt ei). Hauevr, sum propoozlz ar mor radikl and maa involv ading letrz and simblz or eivn kreaating a neu alfubet. Sum reformrz prefur a grajul chaanj implimentid in staajiz, whail udhrz faavr an imeidyut and tootl reform. A mor modrut aprooch advokaatz for a kaarful implimentaasyn dhat wuud bei introdeusd at dha graad wun levl, bai waavz, wun graad at a taim, spaaring kurnt litrut lurnrz from having tou lurn dha neu sistm.

Sum speling reform propoozlz hav bin adoptid parsyly or temporarily. Meny ov dha spelingz prefurd bai nooa webstr hav bekum standrd in dha younaitid staatz, but hav not bin adoptid elswhaar (sei amerikn and british inglish speling difrnsiz). Hary lindgrenz propoozl, es-ar-wun, woz popylr in ostraalya at wun taim.

Speling reform haz raarly atraktid waidspred publik suport, sumtaimz deu tou organaizd rezistns and sumtaimz deu tou lak ov intrest. Dhaar ar lingwistik argyumentz agenst reform; for egzampl dhat dhy orijinz ov wurdz maa bei obskeurd. Dhaar ar olso meny obstuklz tou reform: dhis inkleudz dhy efrt and muny dhat maa bei neidid tou impliment a hoolsaal chaanj, dha lak ov an inglish othority or regylaatr, and dha chalnj ov geting peipl tou aksept spelingz tou which dhaa ar unakustmd.
Parts that I'm not entirely satisfied with:
  • spelling the prefix en- is tricky because while most people merge it with in-, some people apparently use an unreduced "dress" vowel, at least sometimes. I've used en- here, but it might be better on balance to use in-.
  • word-final "aa" looks bad (at least in my opinion), but changing "aa" to "ay" everywhere would look worse (again, IMO; it would make "ation" into <aysyn>), and changing "aa" to "ay" only word-finally or morpheme-finally is too much of a needless complication.
  • Some people pronounce "been" with the fleece vowel, but I chose to go with the kit vowel because the shortened pronunciation is actually quite old and as far as I know is not restricted to any particular dialect (unlike, say, the use of strut in the strong forms of from, of and what, which seems mostly restricted to American English at present).
  • The apostrophe in folo'z looks kind of silly. I could leave it out--although foloz would technically be ambiguous, as it could represent /foʊˈlɒz/, I don' think that's a problem in practice. Another spelling could be "folooz", which is ambiguous about the stress but not about the vowel quality once the stress is put on the right syllable. Using <ow>, as in "folowz", isn't ambiguous, but it seems a bit extreme to have a special digraph just for the unstressed "goat" vowel (or the "grotto" vowel).
  • The use of <u> for schwa in many contexts makes some pretty weird-looking spellings, like <litrusy> and <litrut>. These could be revised to something like <litrasy> and <litrat>, but I'm not sure how much better that looks.
  • I'm not sure to what extent vowel letters should be retained in word-final unstressed syllables before resonants when it's possible to pronounce the word with a vowel other than schwa, e.g. in <sistm> (sistim?), <orijin> (orijn?) and <kaarful> (kaarfl?).
  • The spelling kurnt could be mistakenly taken to rhyme with "burnt". But I think there are only a few cases of ambiguity like this.
  • I'm not sure about the decision to spell function words with the long vowel digraphs. I expect spellings like "tou" and "and" do waste a fair amount of space, but I don't really like the look of special abbreviated spellings like "nd" or "n" and I don't like spelling vowels special ways in function words (that seems like it would be confusing and would quickly become inconsistent, as in modern English with "to" and "so").
Setting aside the fact that it's a quite extreme reform, which I know is not to everybody's taste, does anyone want to comment about any other major flaws in this? I'm also curious if the basic logic of this set of vowel spellings is obvious to anyone, or if it's too convoluted and just comes across as an arbitrary set of respellings.
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Salmoneus »

I don't know if I'd say "abitrary", but I do find your vowels systematically counterintuitive. And given that you go to so much effort, I'm not sure why you retain ambiguities like your "y" standing for either /i:j/ or /jU:/, two totally different sounds.

It probably goes without saying that you've also used dialectical pronunciations that don't apply to me. Like spelling /gr{djU@l/ as "grajul" or /mQd@r@t/ as "modrut".

I guess I also just don't see the point? If you want to make a phonemic spelling for English, why go out of your way to make it hard to read, when the same result could be brought about through only minor and intuitive reforms of the existing system?
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Hominid »

Salmoneus wrote: 01 Apr 2018 17:51 I don't know if I'd say "abitrary", but I do find your vowels systematically counterintuitive. And given that you go to so much effort, I'm not sure why you retain ambiguities like your "y" standing for either /i:j/ or /jU:/, two totally different sounds.

It probably goes without saying that you've also used dialectical pronunciations that don't apply to me. Like spelling /gr{djU@l/ as "grajul" or /mQd@r@t/ as "modrut".

I guess I also just don't see the point? If you want to make a phonemic spelling for English, why go out of your way to make it hard to read, when the same result could be brought about through only minor and intuitive reforms of the existing system?
If someone is completely unfamiliar with the English writing system, they aren't going to find the current system any more "intuitive" (in terms of translating spelling to and from pronunciation) than a completely different system.
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Salmoneus »

Hominid wrote: 01 Apr 2018 21:49
Salmoneus wrote: 01 Apr 2018 17:51 I don't know if I'd say "abitrary", but I do find your vowels systematically counterintuitive. And given that you go to so much effort, I'm not sure why you retain ambiguities like your "y" standing for either /i:j/ or /jU:/, two totally different sounds.

It probably goes without saying that you've also used dialectical pronunciations that don't apply to me. Like spelling /gr{djU@l/ as "grajul" or /mQd@r@t/ as "modrut".

I guess I also just don't see the point? If you want to make a phonemic spelling for English, why go out of your way to make it hard to read, when the same result could be brought about through only minor and intuitive reforms of the existing system?
If someone is completely unfamiliar with the English writing system, they aren't going to find the current system any more "intuitive" (in terms of translating spelling to and from pronunciation) than a completely different system.
True, but irrelevant - the vast majority of English-speakers ARE at least to some extent familiar with the English writing system.
Sumelic
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Sumelic »

Salmoneus wrote: 01 Apr 2018 17:51 I don't know if I'd say "abitrary", but I do find your vowels systematically counterintuitive. And given that you go to so much effort, I'm not sure why you retain ambiguities like your "y" standing for either /i:j/ or /jU:/, two totally different sounds.

It probably goes without saying that you've also used dialectical pronunciations that don't apply to me. Like spelling /gr{djU@l/ as "grajul" or /mQd@r@t/ as "modrut".

I guess I also just don't see the point? If you want to make a phonemic spelling for English, why go out of your way to make it hard to read, when the same result could be brought about through only minor and intuitive reforms of the existing system?
Thanks for the comments.

I had forgotten that affrication of post-tonic "d" in this context doesn't occur in all accents. The spelling of "gradual" in this system actually ought to be "gradyul". Hmm, I might have to fiddle with that, since that spelling kind of looks like it could end in the same sounds as words like "radial", even though it actually can't ("radial" would be spelled "raadyl" in the current system). In general, schwa is not spelled before resonants in this system, so I think the spelling "modrut" should work for all accents. As mentioned in my initial post, I'm having some problems with representing vowels that can be schwa in some accents, but not in others: "centuries" maybe should have been written "sentyuryz" instead.

The idea behind "y" is that it can represent the "happy" vowel, a palatal glide, and/or that the preceding consonant is palatalized, since there is variation between these features in certain words in different accents of English, as well as between related words (e.g. presyus, presyosity). In a previous version of this spelling that didn't have the rule about not writing schwa (or certain other unstressed vowels) before resonants, post-tonic "long u" was always written "yu" or "u" (as opposed to stressed "long u", which is written "eu", "ou" or "you" depending on what comes before it). Maybe it would be better to just use "eu" instead of "yu" even in unstressed syllables, though, since the "happy" vowel is not ever a possible realization of the onglide of "long u".

As for reform of the current system--I agree that it's possible to make a lot of improvements with only moderate reform (and I've tried to identify some targets for that as well). However, more extremely reformed systems are also interesting to me because it's pretty much necessary to do something extreme if you want to eliminate the use of double letter digraphs/trigraphs and silent e, which are two features of present-day English spelling that work OK but that have certain troublesome aspects that I don't think could be fixed without eliminating them, or drastically changing how they are used. (A lot of common spelling errors are related to the use of double consonants--it's true that many of the troublesome cases are pre-tonic, and so could be eliminated by a reform without breaking the current system, but people also seem to find it fairly difficult to learn the system of doubling consonants in the inflected forms of certain verbs, which cannot be changed without some more radical shift in how vowel sounds are represented. "Silent e" is I think a less common cause of spelling errors, but the removal of "silent e" upon affixation in certain derived words, e.g. globe/global, is a somewhat complicated and arbitrary rule, as shown by the words in the current system that have multiple spellings, like "judgment" and "ageing", or common misspellings, like "argument".)

As far as I can tell, the best way to differentiate between the spelling of English vowels without using double consonants or "silent e" is by using digraphs for some of them. But there are a lot of options. I definitely could have stayed closer to the present-day system and gone with something like "ai" /eɪ/ "ee" /i:/ "ie" /aɪ/ "oa" /oʊ~əʊ/ "ue" /ju:/ "oo" /u:/ "ou" /aʊ/. But although this works, I'm little bit bothered by the arbitrary internal construction of each digraph in systems like this; I also felt that it was not ideal for "long u" to have two completely different spellings "ue" and "oo" depending on whether it started with a glide or not.

The idea behind the system used here was that vowels that were similar phonetically would get spelled with the same type of digraph (e.g. the "true diphthongs" /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ are written as "ai" and "au"; the high tense vowels /i:/, /u:/ and /ju:/ are written "ei", "ou" and "eu"; the mid tense vowels /eɪ/ and /oʊ~əʊ/ are written "aa" and "oo") and also that the representation of each "long vowel" that is traditionally associated with a "short vowel" letter (and maybe alternates with that "short vowel" in certain derived words) would contain that vowel letter: so e.g. we have saan~sanity, sleip~slept, toon~tonik, ignait~ignisyn, kondukt~kondeusiv, kruks~krousifi, skoul~skolr. Of course, there are still other kinds of vowel changes between related words even in a system like this (e.g. join~junksyn, saa~sez~sed, draiv~droov~drivn, steil~stool).
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Birdlang »

My reform of English for my dialect would be
/p b t d k g ʔ/ p b t d k g ɂ
/m n ŋ/ m n ŋ
/f v s z θ ð ʃ ʒ h/ f v s z ŧ/insular t đ/insular d ŝ ĵ h
/ts dz tʃ dʒ/ c ȥ/Visigothic z ĉ ẑ
/l ɻ w j/ l r w/ŭ j/ĭ
/iː uː ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ ə æ a ɑː/ ī ū i u è/e ò/o e/ə a/ä o/a ā
/aɪ aʊ eɪ oʊ/ aĭ/æ aŭ/(ao ligature) é/ē ó/ō
The second option for w and j is used before vowels. I know it’s a bit diacritic-heavy, but I was going to put Visigothic z for the dz sound. It’s done in the style of my conlang’s alphabet. The second option for the vowels and other consonants is for more Unicode compliant fonts.
Zé do Rock
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Zé do Rock »

EUROPAN

TESS, The English Spelling Society, is a societee die befor üba 100 jaren fon lords e professoren gründet wurde, es had bis befor wenigen jaren Prinz Philip als shirmherr. They used Nu Speling, a systema dat spele maek, speek, liek, joek, kuet (in some variants cuet), but it was abandoned a few decadas ago. Plus ou moins la moitiee des membres sont appelee de ""full scheemers" (quelque chose comme "totalistes"), cest a dir ils sugerent des reformas completes qui couvrent ales sons. El otre mitad de los miembros son mas moderee - o realistas - y esperan que al menos una reforma parciale pueda ser realizee. Alguns anos atrás nós desenvolvemos o RITE (Redusing Iregularitys in Tradicional English - dont spel right, spel RITE!), que foi un metodo democratico de decidir o que devia ser reformedo e como. Aber es war a mini grupa von a dutzend, der rest des vereins war nit intereseert. A few years later i organized a referendum in the Societee, the majoritee de membres participated e the House Stile was createe, to be usee by ale membres in their correspondence and on our websait. El unique problem était que la directeur ne le voulait pas dans nôtre websait. Ace algunos meses la neuvo director organizó una conference mundial (también con webinar) y en breve va ser decidee cuale sistema va ser utilizee por la Sociedee, House Stile o un otre sistem.

O HS est longe de ser um sistema completo, ja que no é facil de achar regras que a maioree dos membros aprovam. Er hat 4 reglan:

1) Cut redundant lettras
2) Regularise la vocales courtes a-e-i-o-u: scrib a-e-i-o-u pra la sonidos correspondientes, e si tienes una vocal corta, después una consonant y otre vocal, dobla la consonant: hav, happen, let, evver, it, bigger, not, boddy, sum, funny.
3) Regulariz as vocais longas a-e-i-o-u, usando E magico onde possible, exeto o E longo, que é scrito EE: name, ame, peeple, rite, like, hope, bote, cute, fule.
4) F für F: stuf, cof, fase.

Of course dat is a super reducee vercion of the reglas, there ar cuait a few speciale cases. Ici dans ce forum je lintroduis lentement, je suis dans la lettra H, cest a dir je remplace ou enleve ales lettras af A a H, dans la prochain message I, puis J, etc.


ENGLISH HOUSE STILE

TESS, The English Spelling Society is a society that was founded mor than 100 yeers ago by lords and professors, a society that had Prince Philip as a patron until reecently. They used Nu Speling, a system that spells maek, speek, liek, joek, kuet (in some variants cuet), but it was abandond a few deccades ago. Mor or less half the members ar full scheemers, that is they suggest an overall reform that covers all the sounds. The other half is rather moderated - and realistic - and hopes that at leest a partial change comes thru eventually. A few yeers ago we developd RITE (Redusing Iregularitys in Tradicional English - dont spel right, spel RITE!), wich was a democratic way to decide wat should be reformd and how. But it was just a small group of a dozen, the rest of the Society wasnt intrested. A few yeers later i organized a referendum in the Society, the majority of members participated and the House Stile was created, to be used by all members in thare correspondence and on our website. The only problem was, the chairman didnt want it on the website. A few months ago the new chairman organized a world confrence (with webinar) and it will be decided wich system will be used, the House Stile or another system.

The HS is far from being a compleet system, since it is not eesy to find rules that most members agree on. It has 4 rules:
1) Cut redundant letters
2) Reggularize short vowels a-e-i-o-u: spell a-e-i-o-u for the correspondent sounds, and if you hav a short vowel, then a consonant and another vowel, double the consonant: hav, happen, let, evver, it, bigger, not, boddy, sum, funny.
3) Reggularize long vowels a-e-i-o-u, using magic E ware possible, except long E, wich is spelld EE: name, ame, peeple, speek, rite, like, hope, bote, cute, fule.
4) F for F: stuf, cof, fase.

Of course this is a reduced version of the rules, thare ar quite a few special cases. I'm introducing it graddually in this forum, i'm at the letter H, ie i'm replacing or dropping all letters from A to H, in the next message also I, then J, etc.
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Re: How deranged is the English spelling system?

Post by Zé do Rock »

Ahtaitay wrote: 17 Nov 2017 23:24 I am a second learner of English, a pretty good one at that, and the English spelling system is the kinda thing that make me wanna rip my eyes out. It seems not only foreign learners are frustrated with this spelling system, but also native speakers. In the couple of past weeks, I researched this topic, with quite some depth, and I wrote an article about it. It seems that the English spelling system has far-reaching (negative) implications that go beyond the individual learner. Find the original article [http://ahtaitay.blogspot.com/2017/11/th ... -deep.html]. Please, suggest any additions that might be added to this article, and point out any corrections. I would love this to turn into a profitable multinational debate.

Have a good read [:D] [:D]
REFORMADO

Artículo interesante. Eu só vejo um ponto im qui eu nao concordo: du nimmst eine tabelle von Oxford um die (un)regelmäszigkeit der diversen ortografien zu nemen, und ich frage mich, wievil wiski die oxford-leute da getrunken haben, um portugasish in die gleiche gruppe zu stecken wie espanish und italianish. Portugais est beaucoup moins réguliee que cee langues la: italiano tiene 2 medias irregularidades, espaniol 4 irregularidades, portugués (en un contage rápido) 29. A língua devia tar no grupo do meio.

ENGLISH HOUSE STILE

Intresting article. I just see one point ware i dont agree: you take a table from Oxford to show the (ir-)regularity of the various spelling sistems, and i ask myself how much wisky the oxford peeple drank to put portugase in the same group as italian and espanish. Portugase is far less reggular than those languages: italian has 2 half irregularities, espanish 4 irregularities, portugase (in a quik count) 29. The language should be in the middle group.
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Re: How deranged is the English spelling system?

Post by Lambuzhao »

Zé do Rock wrote: 15 Jul 2018 14:12
Ahtaitay wrote: 17 Nov 2017 23:24 I am a second learner of English, a pretty good one at that, and the English spelling system is the kinda thing that make me wanna rip my eyes out. It seems not only foreign learners are frustrated with this spelling system, but also native speakers. In the couple of past weeks, I researched this topic, with quite some depth, and I wrote an article about it. It seems that the English spelling system has far-reaching (negative) implications that go beyond the individual learner. Find the original article [http://ahtaitay.blogspot.com/2017/11/th ... -deep.html]. Please, suggest any additions that might be added to this article, and point out any corrections. I would love this to turn into a profitable multinational debate.

Have a good read [:D] [:D]
REFORMADO

Artículo interesante. Eu só vejo um ponto im qui eu nao concordo: du nimmst eine tabelle von Oxford um die (un)regelmäszigkeit der diversen ortografien zu nemen, und ich frage mich, wievil wiski die oxford-leute da getrunken haben, um portugasish in die gleiche gruppe zu stecken wie espanish und italianish. Portugais est beaucoup moins réguliee que cee langues la: italiano tiene 2 medias irregularidades, espaniol 4 irregularidades, portugués (en un contage rápido) 29. A língua devia tar no grupo do meio.

ENGLISH HOUSE STILE

Intresting article. I just see one point ware i dont agree: you take a table from Oxford to show the (ir-)regularity of the various spelling sistems, and i ask myself how much wisky the oxford peeple drank to put portugase in the same group as italian and espanish. Portugase is far less reggular than those languages: italian has 2 half irregularities, espanish 4 irregularities, portugase (in a quik count) 29. The language should be in the middle group.
To belong to the exclusive Club of English Spellers is quite a privilege.

I have spoken English as my L1 for more than 30 years.
I still get stubbed on they're/there/their; When writing/typing, unless I stop and think about it for a few seconds, I just mindlessly write the wrong one.
[:$]
That always keeps me at the velvet rope to the aforementioned 'Club'. [:3]
Zé do Rock
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Re: How deranged is the English spelling system?

Post by Zé do Rock »

Axiem wrote: 18 Nov 2017 01:06 The English spelling system is perfectly fine. Strange, yes, but perfectly fine.

I really like the property that English has where a person whose dialect I wouldn't be able to understand in speech can still write a letter that I can understand, and vice-versa. Any reform to English spelling that at all tried to make it closer to modern pronunciations would invariably break this property.
EUROPAN

Nach disa definicion de perfeccion is selbst chinesish perfect, und jede sprache is es: if you know how to spell e how to pronounce dose caracteres, you dont hav eni problemas. Mas apprendre deux linguas au lieu af une nist pas perfeccion pour moi. Is como comprar una cerveza par la praicio de dos.

Todas ou cuasi todas linguas ha dialectos, e mesme assim les tem uma lingua standard e uma ortografie qui reflecte mais ou minos esse standard, e assim você ha qui aprender só uma lingua - com mais ou minos irregularidees - im vez de duas. English hat zwai standarddialecte, southern british standard e genral american, aba die ortografie reflectert weda den ainen noch den andren standard, nit ainmal irgendwas dazwishen.

Of course it is impossible to represent all the englishe dialects with a single ortografic sistem, but you can hav a plus logical sistema brits and americans can live with - provided you dont change stuf dat ocurs onli in one of the standardes. Si on ecrit 'eeven, u, spel, caracter, hav', etc, oni fat un mega service pour les parlants et les apprentis des deux standardes. Mesmo ablis nativos van far minos errores cuando lis pronuncian palabras qui solo conocen in su forma scrita, o errores cuando scriben palabras de las cuales lis solo conocen la form ablee.


ENGLISH HOUSE STILE

Defining perfection that way, eeven chinese is perfect, and evry language is: if you know how to spell and how to pronounce those caracters, you dont hav any problems. But lerning two languages ware you could lern one to speek and write is not perfection to me. It is like buying one beer for the price of two.

Neerly all languages hav dialects, and still they hav a standard language and a spelling that reflects mor or less that standard, wich is wy you just hav to lern one language - with mor or fewer irregularities - insted of two. English has two standards, southern british standard and genral american, but the spelling reflects neither the one nor the other standard, nor something inbetween.

Of course it is impossible to represent all the english dialects with a single spelling sistem, but you can hav a mor logical sistem brits and americans can liv with - provided you dont change stuf that ocurs only in one of the standards. Spelling 'eeven, u, spel, caracter, hav', etc, you'r doing a grate service for the speekers and lerners of both standards. Eeven nativ speekers will make fewer mistakes wen they pronounce words of wich they only know the written form, or mistakes wen they spell words of wich they just know the spoken form.
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Re: How deranged is the English spelling system?

Post by Salmoneus »

Zé do Rock wrote: 15 Jul 2018 14:12 Intresting article. I just see one point ware i dont agree: you take a table from Oxford to show the (ir-)regularity of the various spelling sistems, and i ask myself how much wisky the oxford peeple drank to put portugase in the same group as italian and espanish. Portugase is far less reggular than those languages: italian has 2 half irregularities, espanish 4 irregularities, portugase (in a quik count) 29. The language should be in the middle group.
Your reform is, like most reforms, baffling. Leaving aside that you can't decide on 'reggular' vs 'regular', your reform is clearly neither - so, even in one post, you have |u| here indicating /jU/ ('reggular'), /ju/ ('Portugase'), /U/ ('put'), /w/ ('language'), and /V/ ('much'), not to mention being part of a digraph |ou| that indicates either /u/ ('group') or /U/ ('should'). Similarly, you've got |ow|, one of the few genuine 'problems' in English spelling still being unpredictably /oU/ ('show') or /aU/ ('how'). And |a/ can be /eI/ ('same') or /{/ ('irregularities', 'espanish', etc), or even /i/ ('portugase'), and that's all just when it's open!
So the potential problems in English spelling go unaddressed, while you go to a lot of effort to stamp your own dialect onto words like /Int@rEstIN/ and /WIski/ (and indeed /WE/), to make sure that your reform is inappropriate for many dialects, including RP (though SSBE agrees with you on 'whiskey', and is starting to agree with you on 'interesting'). Whereas you for some reason are refusing to bow to the dialect of everyone who's heard of the place and are spelling the schwa in 'Oxford' with |or|...

As for spelling /sp{nIS/ with an initial |e| and /pOtjugiz/ with an |a| in the last syllable, I don't even know <i>what</i> to make of that...

And in another post you weirdly 'correct' the spelling of 'even', even though it's already perfectly regular!
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Re: How deranged is the English spelling system?

Post by Zé do Rock »

Salmoneus wrote: 15 Jul 2018 20:27
Your reform is, like most reforms, baffling. Leaving aside that you can't decide on 'reggular' vs 'regular', your reform is clearly neither - so, even in one post, you have |u| here indicating /jU/ ('reggular'), /ju/ ('Portugase'), /U/ ('put'), /w/ ('language'), and /V/ ('much'), not to mention being part of a digraph |ou| that indicates either /u/ ('group') or /U/ ('should'). Similarly, you've got |ow|, one of the few genuine 'problems' in English spelling still being unpredictably /oU/ ('show') or /aU/ ('how'). And |a/ can be /eI/ ('same') or /{/ ('irregularities', 'espanish', etc), or even /i/ ('portugase'), and that's all just when it's open!
So the potential problems in English spelling go unaddressed, while you go to a lot of effort to stamp your own dialect onto words like /Int@rEstIN/ and /WIski/ (and indeed /WE/), to make sure that your reform is inappropriate for many dialects, including RP (though SSBE agrees with you on 'whiskey', and is starting to agree with you on 'interesting'). Whereas you for some reason are refusing to bow to the dialect of everyone who's heard of the place and are spelling the schwa in 'Oxford' with |or|...

As for spelling /sp{nIS/ with an initial |e| and /pOtjugiz/ with an |a| in the last syllable, I don't even know <i>what</i> to make of that...

And in another post you weirdly 'correct' the spelling of 'even', even though it's already perfectly regular!
REFORMADO

Eu ja apresentei a minha propria reforma, mais o House Stile nao é uma reforma minha, é uma reforma votada por cuasi 100 membros da TESS.

Ich schreib immer 'reggular' mit 2 G's, weil da die hauptbetonung is. Peutetre tu vois une contradiccion parce ke jécris 'regularity', mais sa cest une autre istoir, la laccent principal cest sur le A, ee on ne consider pas accentuacion seconder comm accentuacion.

Reggular, portugase, put, language, much: como e dicho, yo estoy introduciendo la reforma gradualmente, para que la gente se abitue lentamente a la ortografía, aora estoy en el K y asta el U es un largo camino. Mais mesmo ki eu tiveci nu U, num mudaria nada: 'put' und 'language' müssten eigentlich korrigirt werden, aber es gibt keine lösung für die eine merheit der mitglider wär, geschweige denn in der gesellschaft im allgemeinen. Tant ke tu as dee solucions ki on sent comm "correct" (speek, bate, tite, fony), tu peux trouver une majoritee pour eux. Pero en el caso de 'put' tendrías ke crear un nuevo dígrafo - puot? puut? - o utilizar diacriticos - pût? pút? pùt? - o letras nuevas, y cada miembro tiene una solución diferente para el problema, además ello cambia la aparencia de la lengua, ella para de parecer inglish, y pocos creen que se encontraría una mayoría para eso en la populación.

Show, how - cuando eu chegar no W, o W di 'show' vai disaparecer, virandu 'sho'.

Same, irregularity - es gibt fälle wo wir den konsonanten nich verdoppeln: avant -IC, -ITY ee -OGY (parce ke la la voyel avant est toujours (ou presc toujours) courte), ou lee lettres J, Q, X (parce ke cee lettres sont non plus doublee en inglish tradicional).

Portugase - el House Stile no cambia nombres propios y sus derivativos, pero yo los cambio en mis sistemas en otras lenguas y queda mas facil para mi cambiarlos también en inglish (como ves arriba, la palabra es 'inglish' en todas lenguas). I a palavra internacional pra 'português' vai ser 'portugaliano' (i espaniano, franciano, italiano, canadano, algeriano, etc). Ich bin noch nich beim O um portugaliano zu schreiben, aber ich ersetz mal schon das UE durch A...

Intresting, wisky - ce nest pas mon dialect, sa était approuvee par la majoritee dee membres, ee ils viennent de deux douzenes de pei de langue inglish. Quizás en algunos de ellos aya una diferencia en la pronunciación, pero funciona para los dialectos standard. 'Interesting' tem um shwa, i shwas im jeral sao mantidos, mais ants di L ou R elis podim ser retirados - generell zeigen die wörterbücher die aussprache als /int(@)rEstiN/, also kann man es in der aussprache auslassen und auch in der schrift. 'Wisky' est une écrite parfete pour le standar britanic ou american.

Oxford - el House Stile no tiene solución para shwas, y en verdad no existe una solución, por lo menos no una solución perfecta, ya que muchos dicionarios no están de acuerdo donde ay shwas y donde no. Is it /in'tEl@dZ@nt/ or /in'tElidZ@nt/?

Espanish, portugase (later espaniano, portugaliano) - ce pod pronunciar di acordo com a língua local, da manera mais internacional pocívil (espani'ano/), ou com um sotac inglish, si a tua língua materna for inglish (/isp@ni'Anou/, /isp@ni'aenou/ or watever you like).

Eeven - die regel is, langes E wird mit EE geschriben. Comm sa tu sais ke 'eeven' nest pas prononcee comm 'event'.

El House Stile no es una solución ideal y perfecta, pero es una mejora: im inglish, si você conheci as centenas di padroes da língua, ce pod inferir 50% das ortografias das palavras (mas sem ter certeza si é acim ou nao), os outros 50% você tem ki adivinhar. Im House Stile sind 50% durch regeln gedeckt - also da weiss man dass das wort so sein Muss - und auf 30% kann man durch die muster schliszen, bleiben 20%, bei denen man raten muss. Pas parfait, mais meilleur.


ENGLISH HOUSE STILE

Once i had an own reform (and i do hav one, quite a compleet one, but it needs diacritics), but the House Stile isnt my reform, it is a reform voted by almost 100 members of TESS.

I always spell 'reggular' with 2 G's, becaus the stress comes after E. Maybe you see a contradiction becaus of the word 'regularity', but thats another story, the mane stress is on A, and we dont considder seccond stress as stress.

Reggular, portugase, put, language, much: as i sed befor, i'm introducing the reform graddually, so peeple hav the time to get used to it. Now i'm at the letter K, and till U it is quite a way. But eeven if i was alredy at U, it wouldnt change anything: 'put' and 'language' would hav to be corrected, but thare wasnt a solution for wich a majority of members would vote for, let alone in the society at large. As long as you hav solutions that "feel rite" (speek, nale, tite, fony), you can find a majority for them. But in the case of 'put' you'd hav to create a new digraf - puot? puut? - or use diacritics - pût? pút? pùt? or new letters, and evry members has a difrent solution for the problem and opposes the other solutions, besides, they'd change the look of the language, it would stop looking inglish, and not many beleev such a solution would find a majority in the population.

Show, how - wen i come to the letter W, the W in 'show' will be droppd, becoming 'sho'.

Same, irregularity - thare ar cases ware we dont double the consonant: befor -IC, -ITY and -OGY (becaus the preceeding vowel is always (ou almost always - in inglish you never no) short, and the letters J, Q, X arnt doubled either (becaus they'r not doubled in TS (traditional spelling) either).

Portugase - the HS doesnt change proper names and thare derivativs, but i change them in my sistems in other languages and it is eesier for me to change them in inglish too (as you see in the blok in other languages, it is always 'inglish' in all languages). And the international word for 'portuguese' will be 'portugaliano' (and espaniano, franciano, italiano, canadano, algeriano, etc)(A insted of IA only wen the word ends with an A and no vowel befor). I'm not at the letter O yet, to spell 'portugaliano, but i can alredy change UE to A...

Intresting, wisky - its not my dialect, this was approved by most members, and they come from two dozen countries. Maybe in some of them the pronunciation is a bit difrent, but they all speek a standard dialect too and it is fine for them. 'Interesting' has a shwa, and shwas ar usually kept, but befor L or R they can be droppd, as long as it still looks inglish. Usually the dictionaries show the pronunciation as /intrEstiN/ or /intristiN/ or /int(@)r@stiN/, so you can drop it or not in the pronunciation, the same applies for the spelling. 'Wisky' works fine for british and american standards.

Oxford - the HS doesnt hav a solution for shwas, and usually wen peeple say they hav a solution, they'r just ill informd. I'v seen hundreds of difrent spellings for shwa/not shwa in quite a few dictionaries. Just look at the word 'interest' in merriam-webster. Or compare the pronunciation of 'intelligent' in various dictionaries. Discussing about the english pronunciation of unstressd sillables is like discussing if the person in a dark room is a central african (blak) or a west african (still blacker), wich is wy the House Stile doesnt touch that area.

Espanish, portugase (later espaniano, portugaliano) - you can pronounce thees words acording to the local language, in the most international way or with the way the word would be pronounced in your language.

Eeven - the rule is that long E is spelld with EE. This way you know that 'eeven' isnt pronounced like 'event' without T.

The House Stile isnt an ideal and perfect solution, but it is an improvement: in inglish, if you know the hundreds of patterns of the language, you can spell the most likely way and get it rite in 50% of the cases - altho you never know if you'll get it rite - in the other 50% you'll get it wrong, all you can do is memorize. In the HS 50% of the words ar coverd by rules - so you know it Must be a certan spelling - and knowing all the patterns you can get another 30% rite. In 20% you'll get them wrong, so you hav to memorize. Not perfect, but much better.
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Re: How deranged is the English spelling system?

Post by Axiem »

Zé do Rock wrote: 15 Jul 2018 15:29 Defining perfection that way, eeven chinese is perfect
Yes, actually, Chinese is the other major language that has this property, as I understand it: two people can exchange letters and perfectly understand each other, but be unable to communicate with each other vocally.
But lerning two languages ware you could lern one to speek and write is not perfection to me. It is like buying one beer for the price of two.
This statement makes no sense to me. With every language, you have to learn both the phonetics and the writing system. Some writing systems are more adaptable to handling dialectical differences in pronunciation.
still they hav a standard language and a spelling
I'd say that's a pretty debatable statement. I'm not aware of any body that establishes a standard in Portuguese, for example.
English has two standards, southern british standard and genral american
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

(breath)

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Are you talking about major dialects of English? Off the top of my head, there's RP, Cockney, Canadian, Australian (I'm given to understand there's a difference between Northern Australian and Southern Australian, but I'm probably misremembering), South African, and ESL—and that's not even including the American dialects! Of which there's distinctly General American and Southern American and North Eastern American, and increasingly a Northern American and a Western American. And let me tell you, there have been plenty of times where I, as a speaker of GA, have attempted conversations with people who speak Southern American where we could not understand each other verbally.

Also, your "reformed" spelling of "general" makes no sense. You're dropping the vowel that I clearly pronounce between the "n" and the "r".
but the spelling reflects neither the one nor the other standard, nor something inbetween.
That's because the spelling of English words reflects how they were transliterated into English at the time the word was imported into the language.
you can hav a mor logical sistem brits and americans can liv with
Not really. And the Americans tried that once upon a time; it didn't exactly work.
Spelling 'eeven, u, spel, caracter, hav'
These are illogical spellings.

Also, there's a difference between "you" and "oooh" in meaning and intonation that collapsing both of them to "u" would completely elide, which seems deeply problematic to me.
wich
This makes no sense in context. "Witch" is a noun, and you're not using a noun there.

Oh! You meant "which"!

Uh, you _do_ realize that "which" and "witch" are pronounced differently, right? Why does your "reform" break that?
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Xonen »

Axiem wrote: 16 Jul 2018 19:06
Zé do Rock wrote: 15 Jul 2018 15:29 Defining perfection that way, eeven chinese is perfect
Yes, actually, Chinese is the other major language that has this property, as I understand it: two people can exchange letters and perfectly understand each other, but be unable to communicate with each other vocally.
Sure, I've heard of this happening in an anecdote told by a friend of an acquaintance of mine as well, but are there any actual scientific studies on that? Especially the "perfectly" part is something I find somewhat suspicious. Also, learning to speak and write a common lingua franca with a simple phonemic spelling system would probably be less of an effort than becoming fully literate in Hanzi, so I'm not convinced this is a tradeoff that's really worth it. Especially since most people would be expected to learn to speak a common lingua franca anyway; in China currently, that just happens to be Standard Mandarin.

still they hav a standard language and a spelling
I'd say that's a pretty debatable statement. I'm not aware of any body that establishes a standard in Portuguese, for example.
Well, neither was I a few minutes ago, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Ac ... f_Sciences.

English has two standards, southern british standard and genral american
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

(breath)

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Are you talking about major dialects of English?
No, standards. And a bit less derision towards the newbies, please, especially since you're clearly not bothering to do that much fact-checking yourself.

Of course, the statement that there are only two standards in English is also wrong, and standards aren't as important in English as they are in some other languages, anyway. And the argument can certainly be made that standards are unnecessary at best, and evil tools of Satan prescriptivism at worst, to begin with... But still, they are a thing that exists, like it or not.

but the spelling reflects neither the one nor the other standard, nor something inbetween.
That's because the spelling of English words reflects how they were transliterated into English at the time the word was imported into the language.
Well, not always.

Spelling 'eeven, u, spel, caracter, hav'
These are illogical spellings.
No, as far as I can tell, they seem to follow quite logically from the principles presented for this reform. I don't really agree with those principles myself, but simply going "nuh-uh" isn't going to convince anyone here at the big kids' sandbox.

wich
This makes no sense in context. "Witch" is a noun, and you're not using a noun there.

Oh! You meant "which"!

Uh, you _do_ realize that "which" and "witch" are pronounced differently, right?
You do realize that for quite a lot of people they aren't, right? If the purpose of of the reform is explicitly to settle on a single standard pronunciation, then you can certainly disagree with that goal itself (and again, so would I) - but using a minority pronunciation to indicate it somehow failing at that is just silly.
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Axiem »

Xonen wrote: 16 Jul 2018 22:24 Sure, I've heard of this happening in an anecdote told by a friend of an acquaintance of mine as well, but are there any actual scientific studies on that? Especially the "perfectly" part is something I find somewhat suspicious.
Yes, the "perfectly" is hyperbole. Vocabulary choices and other unusual grammatical constructions will get in the way a bit. There are still people whom I can't understand when they speak but can understand when they write.
Also, learning to speak and write a common lingua franca with a simple phonemic spelling system would probably be less of an effort than becoming fully literate in Hanzi
I mean, sure. I'd say any alphabetical writing system is going to be easier to be literate in than Hanzi, simply by virtue of number of characters.
Well, neither was I a few minutes ago, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Ac ... f_Sciences.
Ehn, fair. I'm curious if there's actually statistics out there for how many of the big languages have bodies of people who attempt to standardize the language.
No, standards. And a bit less derision towards the newbies, please, especially since you're clearly not bothering to do that much fact-checking yourself.
This is the first I've heard of these standards. Like, I'm aware of organizations like AP that publish style guides to try to standardize how English is written in journalism, but I'm not familiar with what bodies actually prescribe how words are to be pronounced/spelled in any dialect of English.

Well, not always.
Yeah, I missed a "usually" in there.

Spelling 'eeven, u, spel, caracter, hav'
These are illogical spellings.
No, as far as I can tell, they seem to follow quite logically from the principles presented for this reform. I don't really agree with those principles myself, but simply going "nuh-uh" isn't going to convince anyone here at the big kids' sandbox.
The thing is, I don't see how they're logical. Take for instance, the letter "e". In the first word presented, when doubled it's /i/, but in the second case, it's /ɪ/ or /ə/ depending; but then in the third word, it's /ɛ/.

The letter "a" also takes on the values /ɛ/ (or /æ/), /ɪ/ (or /ə/), and then /æ/ or /a/ depending on the dialect.

I don't see the logic, except to make the already-existing spellings more confusing by removing etymological context that aids in pronunciation.

You do realize that for quite a lot of people they aren't, right?
That's my point. Any attempt at spelling "reform" will pick some set of pronunciation and conform to that, which will end up being exceedingly problematic as soon as you start going outside the many, many dialects that don't conform to that pronunciation. It simply happened to be a pronunciation that happened in the thing being quoted.

A better example would probably be any of the well-known vowel mergers in American English. Should a reform of English spelling choose different spellings for "pin" and "pen"? Or the same? What about "cot" and "caught"? "Mary", "merry", and "marry"?

If you decide to keep them the same because your dialect considers them the same vowel, then you're choosing an orthography with ambiguity on letter-to-phoneme for people who consider them different vowels. If you decide to keep them different, then you have multiple spellings for the same pronunciation for people who consider them the same vowel.

The latter is the state of things currently, but we're at least not laboring under the delusion that the spelling system is regularized or makes sense.
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Re: How deranged is the English spelling system?

Post by Zé do Rock »

Axiem wrote: 16 Jul 2018 19:06 This statement makes no sense to me. With every language, you have to learn both the phonetics and the writing system. Some writing systems are more adaptable to handling dialectical differences in pronunciation.
EUROPAN:
Im italianishe cannst du die spikee lingua lerne (sei wir mal 10 000 wörder), dazu el alfabet, den el informacion, dass /a/ na sinne de 'haben' or /o'tEl/ mit H scribee werd, plus a par wörder mit cea/cia, ki ha la same prononcirung. Dat is, adicionali to la 10 000 wordes you must lerne meibi 50 pieces af information, altogether 10 050. Si tu representa 10 000 com une unitee, une lingua, faut ke tu apprens 1,005 lingua. In inglishe tu can aprender centenas patrones ortograficos, así tu can scribe 50% de las palabras correctli, mas nunca tu sas si una palabra obedece la patrón o no. O ki signifi ki si você ker reali scriver bes medo, você tem ki aprender el ortografie das 10 000 palavras decor, ou seja, você tem ki aprender 20 000 informaciones, o ki result in 2 linguas. Du zale la prais de 2 linguas, ma krigst nur aine.

HOUSE STILE:
In italian you can lern the spoken language (lets say 10 000 words), plus the alfabet, then the information that /a/ in the sense of 'hav' or /o'tEl/ hav an H, plus a few words with cea/cia, that hav the same pronunciation. That meens that aditionaly to the 10 000 words you hav to lern maybe 50 peeces of information, altogether 10 050. If you represent 10 000 as a unity, one language, than you hav to lern 1.005 language, one language and a little fraction. In inglishe you can lern hundreds of spelling patterns, so you can spell 50% of the words correctly, but you never know if a certan word obeys to the pattern or not. Wich meens that if you want to write without feer, you hav to lern the spelling of the 10 000 words by hart, and so you hav to lern 20 000 peeces of information, wich is the same as lerning 2 languages. You pay the price of lerning two languages, but you just get 1.
still they hav a standard language and a spelling
I'd say that's a pretty debatable statement. I'm not aware of any body that establishes a standard in Portuguese, for example.
EUROP
In Brazil it is the Academia Brasileira de Letras, in Portugal the Academia Portuguesa de Letras. Cand elles decident changer algu en el ortografie, elles font una conference, aussi avec des oficial organes af el autres landes de lingua portugalian. Si las otre academies y órganos no ist de acuerdo, un academie can todavía decide si su land fa la reforma solo o deja de far la.

HOUSE STIL
In Brazil it is the Academia Brasileira de Letras, in Portugal the Academia Portuguesa de Letras. Wen one of them decides to change something in the spelling, they make a conference, also with the oficial organs of other countries ware portuguese is spoken. If the other acaddemies and organs cant agree, one acaddemy stil can decide if they make a reform for thare country only or just forget about it.
English has two standards, southern british standard and genral american
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

(breath)

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Are you talking about major dialects of English? Off the top of my head, there's RP, Cockney, Canadian, Australian (I'm given to understand there's a difference between Northern Australian and Southern Australian, but I'm probably misremembering), South African, and ESL—and that's not even including the American dialects! Of which there's distinctly General American and Southern American and North Eastern American, and increasingly a Northern American and a Western American. And let me tell you, there have been plenty of times where I, as a speaker of GA, have attempted conversations with people who speak Southern American where we could not understand each other verbally.
EURO
Mi tiv in 146 landes, generali de caron (e assim mi had multi contacto co la populacion). In 40 von inen is die oficiale lingua inglish: Australia (nord, middle e soud, werking in 3 diferente places), Belize, Botswana (wer mi had a horrible malaria), Cameroon, Canada, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana (de wer mi was deportee), Guyana, China/Hongkong, India, Ireland, Kenya (wer mi was thrown from a bridge), Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia (wer mi was robee), Malta, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritius, Namibia (wer mi got lost na desert), Nauru, New Zealand, Pakistan, Pilipina, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Singapor, Somalia (wer mi was in prison bene frecuentli), Soud Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, UK, USA (in 28 states in ale direcciones). Donc mi sas ki ai plus dan un inglishe dans ce mond. Mas si tu miras con atención a lo ki e dicho, vas vi ki estoy ablando de standardes. Standard é o ki la pessonal lerne na scol e fala na TV. Manche britis mei sei ''one and twenty, two and twenty, three and twenty', as lis wer in Deutshland. Or "i be, you be, he be, we be, you be, they be', in Naijiria they mait sei "Wi go pei fud fo moto a so sofi-sofi wi go chop', in Papu Niugini they mait sei 'pusim' e 'pus-pus', but na scool or na niws, no matter wer in Britain, Naijiria or Papu Niugini they lerne 'twenty one, twenty two, twenty three', 'i am, you ar, he is' etc, e dat sentence is tought as "We'r going to buy tires and then slowly we'l go for eeting", and in Papu Niugini they lerne 'push' for 'pusim' e 'fuck' for 'pus-pus' - in case dat stuf is tought na scool.

HOUSE STI
I'v been in 146 countries, mostly hitchhiking (so i had a lot of contact with the population). In 40 of them the oficial language is inglish: Australia (nord, middle and soud, working in 3 difrent states), Belize, Botswana (ware i got a nasty malaria), Cameroon, Canada, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana (from ware i was deported), Guyana, China/Hongkong, India, Ireland, Kenya (ware i was throen from a bridge), Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia (ware i was robd), Malta, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritius, Namibia (ware i got lost in the desert), Nauru, New Zealand, Pakistan, Pilipina, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Singapor, Somalia (ware i was in jale quite offen), Soud Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, UK, USA (in 28 states in all directions). So i know that thare ar mor than 2 inglishes in this world. But if you look with mor attention to wat i sed, you'l see that i'm speeking of standards. Standard is wat peeple lern in scool and speek on TV. Some britis mite say 'one and twenty, two and twenty, three and twenty', as if they wer germans, or "i be, you be, he be, we be, you be, they be', in Naijiria they mite say "Wi go pei fud fo moto a so sofi-sofi wi go chop', in Papu Niugini they mite say 'pusim' and 'pus-pus', but in the scool or in the news, no matter ware in Britain, Naijiria or Papu Niugini they lern 'twenty one, twenty two, twenty three', 'i am, you ar, he is' etc, and that sentence is taut as "We'r going to buy tires and then slowly we'l go for eeting", and in Papu Niugini they lern 'push' for 'pusim' and 'fuk' for 'pus-pus' - in case that stuf is taut in scool.
Also, your "reformed" spelling of "general" makes no sense. You're dropping the vowel that I clearly pronounce between the "n" and the "r".
EUR
Couper la shwa nist pas obligatoire, mas si tu le lasses, faut lécrire 'genneral' avec 2 N (in HS, evidentli).

HOUSE ST
Cutting the E isnt compulsory, but if you dont cut it, you hav to spel with 2 N (in HS, of course).

That's because the spelling of English words reflects how they were transliterated into English at the time the word was imported into the language.
EU
Certli no las palabras ki los anglis e la sajonis traeron af Alemania, Países Bajos e Danmark, ki pasaron por muchas modificaciones. Mas mi supone ki você teja falando das palavras ki vieram do francian, latin e grek. Nur, auch solche wörder wurden modifikee, mi wette dass es ni formas wi 'reflects, transliterated' or 'imported' in francian, latin o grekian. Or compulsory, vowel, pronounce, reform (new francian reforme, old french and latin reforma). Kelkes mots ha conservee see formas originales, mas la majoritee ha changee.

HOUSE S
Certanly not the words the anglos and the saxons braut with them from Germany, the Nederlands and Danmark, wich went thru menny changes. But i guess you'r talking about words from francian, latin and grekian. Now, eeven such words went thru changes, i bet thare wer never forms like (looking bak in our discussion) 'reflects, transliterated' or 'imported' in francian, latin or grekian. Or compulsory, vowel, pronounce, reform (new francian 'reforme', old francian and latin 'reforma'). Some words hav conservd thare original forms, but most of them changed at leest a little bit.
you can hav a mor logical sistem brits and americans can liv with
Not really. And the Americans tried that once upon a time; it didn't exactly work.
EU
Los funccionaron mas o minos pra los EUA. El inglisis si negaram ou cuasi sempri si negaram, claro. Mas no porkee 'color' ou 'thru' no funcciona pra el inglisis, lis no seguiriam el amerikis in nenhum aspecto, assim como el espaniolis nunca acceitariam una novidee af America Latin. E trotzdem: it took ages, but in the end they switched to la metric sistem - dat is not american, but as you see, sometaimes changes come mem in landes dat ar bene resistale to change.

HOUS S
They usualy workd for the US. The britis didnt follow, sure (or rarely followed). But not becaus words like 'color' or 'thru' dont work for the britis, they just wouldnt follow the amerikis in ennything, as the espaniars would never follow enny modification coming from Latin America. And stil: it took ages, but in the end they switchd to the metric sistem - this is not american, but as you see, sometimes changes come eeven in countries that ar quite resistent to change.
Spelling 'eeven, u, spel, caracter, hav'
These are illogical spellings.

Also, there's a difference between "you" and "oooh" in meaning and intonation that collapsing both of them to "u" would completely elide, which seems deeply problematic to me.
EU
Una vocal final e no átona solo can bi larg: 'pi' tem un I longo, 'go' un O longo, 'u' un U longo (como la nome da letra ja diz). Wenn es /u:/ bi sollte, müsste es 'oo' scriben werd.

HOU S
A final stressd vowel can only be long: 'pi' has a long I, 'go' a long O, 'u' a long U (as the name of letter alredy ses)(and long U = /ju:/). If it was /u:/, it would hav to be speld 'oo'. Although, of course, in inglish evrything is possible...

wich
This makes no sense in context. "Witch" is a noun, and you're not using a noun there.

Oh! You meant "which"!

Uh, you _do_ realize that "which" and "witch" are pronounced differently, right? Why does your "reform" break that?
EU
Mi suppone dat you miene la pronunciacion /hw/. La majoritee dee diccionaris da cuna prononciacion, avec /w/, diccionaris americans parfois aussi la prononciacion avec /hw/, mas cist la prononciacion af una minoritee, mi suppone ki super mini. Na scuela mi had unos 10 profesis, viajé par mucho tempo y unos 10 anos después mai primero contacto con el inglishe lingua aprendi ki uni can pronunce WH también como /hw/. Er un professor in California, ki fazia multíssima cuestion de falar absolutli "correcto". Ainmal mi hörte a ganze stunde CNN, e kain ainziges mal mi hörte a /hw/, e la mega merhait in TESS is der mainung ki das is en uralte prononcierung, ki bai manche künstlich noch am leben gehalten wird. Besaides, "which" doesnt suggest dat olde pronunciacion either, if you wanted it "correct" you'd hav to spel "hwich".

HO S
I suppose that you meen the pronunciation /hw/. The majority of dictionaries giv but one pronunciation, with /w/, american dictionaries sometimes also the pronunciation with /hw/, but it is the pronunciation of a minority, i guess a very small minority. In scool i had something like 10 teechers, i traveld a lot and maybe 10 yeers after i had my first contact with the inglishe language i herd it - it was a teecher in California, who told me that he does evrything to speek the words "correctly". Once i herd CNN for one our, and i didnt heer /hw/ a single time, and the grate majority in TESS, no matter wat country they come from, hav the opinnion that this is an obsolete pronunciation some peeple try to keep alive artificialy. Besides, "which" doesnt suggest that old pronunciation either, if you wanted it "correct" you'd hav to spel "hwich".

EU
Apropos, la prochene critic pourrait etre sur "nord, sud". Eso no tiene nada a ver co la House Stile, mas como mi bi por un internacionalizacion de nombres geograficos, e muchos nombres tienen un 'nord' o un 'sud' (norde korea, sude sudan), decidí tamben internacionalizarlos. E in esse caso claro ki can no bi co TH como no inglish, un son dificile pra la majoree da populacion do mundo. El internationalste formas is 'nord' e 'sud'. In inglish i'm stil writing 'soud', but na nexte messag i come to O and it becomes 'sud/e'. Prononcee /sud/.

HS
By the way, the next criticism could be about 'nord' and 'soud'. That doesnt hav to do with the House Stile either, it is my wish to internationalize geografic names, and quite a few geografic names hav a 'nord' or a 'soud' (norde korea, soude sudan), i decided to internationalize also thees words. And in this case it cant hav inglishe TH, a dificult sound for the majority of the world population. The most international forms ar 'nord' and 'sud'. In inglish i'm stil writing 'soud', but in the next message i come to O and it becomes 'sud/e'. Pronounced /sud/.
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Re: How deranged is the English spelling system?

Post by Axiem »

Zé do Rock wrote: 17 Jul 2018 01:23 In italian you can lern the spoken language (lets say 10 000 words), plus the alfabet,
I'm not denying that English's orthography is much more difficult to learn than other languages, or that there aren't advantages to reading from languages that have a more clear relationship between their orthography and their pronunciations.

However, I think there are things you lose when moving to those sorts of writing systems, as I've noted before.
Standard is wat peeple lern in scool and speek on TV.
These are two different things.
Cutting the E isnt compulsory, but if you dont cut it, you hav to spel with 2 N (in HS, of course).
Sooo...the same word is spelled different ways, then?

The britis
So wait, are you dropping the "h" from "sh" when it's at the end of a word? Or is there an errant "i" in there?
amerikis
I'm not familiar with what word is meant here.
espaniars
This is not a word I'm familiar with.
I suppose that you meen the pronunciation /hw/.
Yes. This is how it was taught to me in grade school on several occasions. Some people care about it, some don't. Languages change.
"which" doesnt suggest that [correct] pronunciation either
<wh> in English generally denotes the /hw/, as opposed to simply <w>, which denotes /w/ especially at the beginning of words (but yes, there are plenty of exceptions). But, I thought it was already clarified that English spelling is not always the most rational in regards to letters-to-sounds.
it is my wish to internationalize geografic names
What do you mean by "internationalize"? I thought this was a spelling reform, not also changing words to something different.
The most international forms
I'm not sure what you mean by this. How are you figuring this out? What sorts of thresholds are you looking at? How are you considering dialects?
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Zé do Rock
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Zé do Rock »

REFORMADO

E necesitado de tanto tiempo para responder, que muchas cosas ya fueron respondidas por Xonen... brigado...

HS

It took me such a long time to answer, Xonen answerd them for me... thanks...
Axiem wrote: 16 Jul 2018 23:47 Ehn, fair. I'm curious if there's actually statistics out there for how many of the big languages have bodies of people who attempt to standardize the language.
REFORMADO

La mayoría de las lenguas nacionales, por lo menos en Europa, lo tienen - órganos permanentes o provisorios. Ce pod dar uma olhada akí: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform.

HS

Most national languages, at leest in Europa, hav them - permanent or provisional ones. Yu can hav a look heer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform.
This is the first I've heard of these standards. Like, I'm aware of organizations like AP that publish style guides to try to standardize how English is written in journalism, but I'm not familiar with what bodies actually prescribe how words are to be pronounced/spelled in any dialect of English.
REFORMAD

Im inglishe gibt es kein gremium oder behörde, die das bestimmt, es läuft alles nach konsens. Y a lee diccioner, ki decident coment un mot doit etre écrit ee prononcee, ee dabitud ils le font suivant lusaj jénéral. Y el echo es que si tu quieres trabajar como vocero en la television y dices "boot" en vez de "but" and /kOm/ en vez de /kVm/ para "come" and /pound/ en vez de /paund/ para "pound", no vas a ganar el empleo, porque todos van a estar de acuerdo que tu ablas dialecto.

HS

For inglishe thare isnt a boddy that decides, evrything is based on consensus. Thare ar the dictionaries, that decide how a word is speld and pronounced, and they'r based on genral usage. And the fact is that if yu want to work as a newsreeder on TV and say "boot" insted of "but", /kOm/ insted of /kVm/ for "come", or /pound/ insted of /paund/ for "pound", yu wont get the job, since evrybody wil agree that yu speek a dialect.

The thing is, I don't see how they're logical. Take for instance, the letter "e". In the first word presented, when doubled it's /i/, but in the second case, it's /ɪ/ or /ə/ depending; but then in the third word, it's /ɛ/.

The letter "a" also takes on the values /ɛ/ (or /æ/), /ɪ/ (or /ə/), and then /æ/ or /a/ depending on the dialect.
REFORMA
O som /i:/ im posissao tonica é scrito 'ee' (eeven). Der laut /E/ in betonter position wird mit 'e' geschriben, aber wenn er von eim konsonanten und eim vokal gefolgt wird, muss der konsonant verdoppelt werden (belo, bello). Cest vrai ke dans le cas de E cest pas nécecer dans la majoritee dee cas, mais parfois il est une ed pour le lecteur: en la ortografía tradicional, una persona que nunca oyó y vió la palabra 'event' no sabrá como pronunciarla: eevent, evvent or i'vent? Com HS a pronúncia é clara: wenn es eevent wär, würde man eevent schreiben, wenn es evvent wär, würde ma so schreiben, also bleibt nur die option, dass dises erste E unbetont is.

HS socupe cavec lee voyel accentuee. En sílabas átonas el E puede ser un shwa, un /I/ o mismo un /i:/ - muchas veces los 3 en una sola palabra, dependiendo del diccionario... o problema aí é ki falta clareza na pronúncia di vogais im posissao átona, como no portugaliano di Portugal.

HS
The sound /i:/ in stressd position is speld 'ee' (eeven). The sound /E/ in stressd position is speld with 'e', but wen it is followed by a consonant and a vowel, the consonant must be dubbled (belo, bello). Its tru that the dubbling isnt necessary in most cases, but sometimes it is a help for the reeder: in TS (traditional spelling), a person who's never seen or herd the word 'event' wont know how to pronounce it: eevent, evvent or i'vent? With HS the pronunciation is cleer: if it was eevent, it would be speld as such, if it was evvent, it would be speld as such, so the only option that is left is that the first E is unstressd.

HS just changes stressd vowels. In unstressd sillables E can be a shwa, an /I/ or eeven an /i:/ - offen all the 3 in a single word, depending on the dictionary... the problem heer is that thare is no clarity in the pronunciation of vowels in unstressd position, as in portugalian of Portugal.
That's my point. Any attempt at spelling "reform" will pick some set of pronunciation and conform to that, which will end up being exceedingly problematic as soon as you start going outside the many, many dialects that don't conform to that pronunciation. It simply happened to be a pronunciation that happened in the thing being quoted.

A better example would probably be any of the well-known vowel mergers in American English. Should a reform of English spelling choose different spellings for "pin" and "pen"? Or the same? What about "cot" and "caught"? "Mary", "merry", and "marry"?

If you decide to keep them the same because your dialect considers them the same vowel, then you're choosing an orthography with ambiguity on letter-to-phoneme for people who consider them different vowels. If you decide to keep them different, then you have multiple spellings for the same pronunciation for people who consider them the same vowel.

The latter is the state of things currently, but we're at least not laboring under the delusion that the spelling system is regularized or makes sense.
REFORM

Der HS is auf der aussprache der wichtigsten wörterbücher basirt. La confusion de 'pen' ee 'pin', tipic pour le sud dés Etats Unis, apparait pas dans lee diccioner principo, donc on peut écrir 'pen' com 'pen' ee 'pin' com 'pin'. Ya en los otros casos ay una confusion jeneral entre cot/caught y mary/marry/merry en los EUA. Tem jent ki pronuncia todas as 3 palavras distintament, outras pronunciam 2 iguais i uma diferent, outras pronunciam todas iguais. In disem fall lassen wir disen bereich unberürt: cot, caut, mary, marry, merry. Cest pas idéel, mais y orait pas une solucion idéel.

Es como si tu mudaras a una casa en ruínas: talveiz você nao possa consertar tudo, talveiz tejam faltando os tubos pra consertar o akecimento i você nao tenha os meios pra fazer um chao novo, mais você pod limpar a casa, consertar o telhado, a canalizassao. Du kannst sagen, ich reparir was zu repariren is, oder du kannst sagen, na, wenn ich nich alles repariren kann, dann lass ich das haus wie eine ruine und won da drin. Cest ta méson, fo ke tu abites la.

HS

The HS is based on the pronunciation given by the major dictionaries. The confusion of 'pen' and 'pin' is tipical for the sud of the USA, it is the fenommenon of a cleer minority, limmited geograficly, and so we can spel 'pen' and 'pin' as 'pen' and 'pin' (as it is speld ennyway). In the other 2 cases thare is a genral confusion between 'cot' and 'caught', between mary, marry and merry in the USA. Thare ar peeple who pronounce all the 3 words in a difrent way, others pronounce 2 the same way and the other word difrently, others pronounce the 3 words the same. So we cant change this area, since watever yu say wont be considderd wrong. It's not an ideal solution, but thare wouldnt be enny.

This is the same as if yu moved into a house in ruins: maybe yu cant repare evrything, maybe thare aint the tubes to repare the heeting and yu dont hav the meens to make a new flor, but yu can cleen the house, fix the roof, the sewerage. Yu can say, i repare wat i can repare, or yu can say, no, if i cant repare evrything i wont repare ennything, and move into the house in ruins. Its your house, and yu hav to liv in it.
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