----- Original Message -----
From: Iain
To: "thewonderer2004@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"
Subject: Re: Why Reform?
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 07:45:05 -0700
thewonderer2004@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>
>
> Newsgroups: alt.language.english.spelling.reform, alt.english.usage
> From: "Derek Jensen"
> Date: 12 Jan 2005 15:35:46 -0800
> Local: Wed, Jan 12 2005 3:35 pm
> Subject: Re: Why Reform?
>
> Iain--
>
> A complete overhaul of English spelling is probably both mechanically
> and socially impossible, but that's no reason to give up trying to at
> least improve it. It's true that pronunciation is always changing, but
> it doesn't change so quickly that the spellings can't eventually catch
> up. It's also true that pronunciations differ from place to place, but
> we live with different US/UK spellings now; there's no reason we can't
> have "labratory" in the US and "laboratry" in the UK. That would make
> more sense than "color" and "colour."
> >
>
> i tend to agree with you on most of your points. is it really
> impossible to do a complete overhaul of english spelling? that's
> actually almost what's needed to bring it into a truly logical system.
> now, i'm just a layperson and not ejumacated in all the ins and outs of
> linguistics, but i did test with an above average iq and i think i can
> think at least as logically as the next person. why should we have to
> put up with silly things like the silent "h" in "why"
"Why" does not have a silent H for me, that's why.
~Iain
>but where do you put the "h"? i suspect you pronounce it "hwie" and not
"w-hie".
<It used to be Hwat -- about 1000 years ago -- "Wh" is arbitrarily
different and denotes the same sound.
> no reform will be perfect for all dialects all over the world. i think
we need to consider all dialects as reform moves forward, but the majority
pronunciations around the world should win out over minority
pronunciations when there is a conflict. just my opinion. i'm from the
southeastern us and wouldn't expect the world to conform to my southern
drawl.
That statement shows a double standard, though, because the
pronunciation denoted by the text is just another dialect, no different
from modern pronunciation than the various British pronunciations are
from one another. It is fundamentally Elizabethan, albeit polished a
little by Dr.Johnson's clique. It is therefore a platonic dialect with
approximations in Ireland and Western England. "Tail" has a cockney
sound whilst "Pale" rhymes with French "Appel", and the vowel in
"Reason" sounds like how a York****reman says "cake", "sugar" has a hard
S, the vowel in "you", rhymes with that in "house", the former word
sounding more like American "Yo!".
To hear it is like hearing a British man of mixed background within the
Isles, and nothing stranger.
The way I speak in Scotland and the way you speak in Southern North
America are both merely an accent's worth away from this. Complaining
that text isn't quite like how you speak is like complaining that my
speech isn't quite like yours.
Note also that about a million people in Scotland still say the "gh" in
"thought", and that probably four million put the same vowels in
"House" and "You". Highlanders, yet another accent, maintain "blood" as
rhyming with "road", which in turn sounds like an elongation of "rod".
My point in all of this is that the distinction between old and new
pronunciation is matched by existing diversity, and so the issue is
hollow.
Thirdly, English is a multimedia language, and has been even since
Medieval writers used a C where S would suffice, to add a Romance
look(one might even say, ever since we started putting spaces between
words)Building blocks apparent in un-con-sci-ous are valuable -- the
worst thing it can produce is "unkonsyoos", which is close enough. It
only takes the rhyming system of a poem to bring out the awareness in
us that "consequence" has that second-last "E", and not always a
neutral sound. We resort to talking more "textually" when we choose to,
so the spelling is not useless just because it isn't normally manifest
in speech.
Incidentally, I sort of meant to reply to the group :) So feel free to
throw this usenet-wards.
~Iain>
ok, here it is.
--tw
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