English Spelling Reform

[iolair]

English spelling sucks .... and I think we've tortured our children and foreign learners of the language enough, in some words there's minimal connection between spelling and pronunciation, and we need a new, modernised set of spellings that make more sense...

A few examples of the current system...
-ough .. how do you pronounce this sound if you see a new word containing it? There's no real way to tell! consider...
tough,rough,enough - bough - through - thorough
-ng- ... another one that can have different values
engulf - singe - sing,singer - England, English
not to mention the spelling nightmares that are ... laugh, Edinburgh, leisure and so on.

So I'm not going to argue that we need a spelling reform, in fact I think it's long overdue. In some senses it's already started, people often "naturally" use some simplified spellings in their web posts. But if we are going to reform English spelling, how should we do it ... what should it look like?

[iolair]

I would say that as a first point, for ease of use, we need to use characters available in the standard ASCII Latin character set, and minimise use of characters that are not available on a standard keyboard... otherwise it has no chance of catching on!

[iolair]

OK, for a start we can eliminate the current use of the letters c, q, x and use them for something more useful...

--> Eksit, Taksi, Topik, Kat, Kween

on second thoughts, maybe we should keep x ... those first two just look too wierd! How about akseptable, axeptable.

th represents two sounds at the moment (soft in the, that and hard in thin, thug); it would be a lot clearer if there were two seperate ways of writing this, I'd suggest dh for the soft version.

--> I think dhat dhe thick thugs are dhere

g and j are a little bizarre, in it's soft form (Jack) it represents a "d" followed by the "s" from casual,leisure. If you have "g" always hard and "j" always as the "s" above, you can just write "dj" when you need this sound ...

--> Djak, Djentlemen, Kajual, Leijure

As we rescued c earlier, we could use that for the "sh" sound. The sound we use for "ch" now is really "t"+"sh". So "ship" becomes cip and "chop" becomes tcop. On the other hand, "sh" is nicely predictable, so it would probably be simpler to keep it.... in which case "c" may as well be the "t" + "sh" sound that we currently use "ch" for

--> curc, shelter, shame, parcment

[[BuF]Blorgg]

I fink dhat's a gh00d idie
But seriously, changing the english language like that would get a lot of pple into "trouble". I for one would make even more typo's then I already do :/

[iolair]

Vowels are a nightmare ... we have (I think?) 11 vowel sounds in English represented by 5 vowel symbols (and occasionally the 2 semi-vowels "w" and "y"). (not to mention dipthongs...)

We also desperately need a symbol to represent the "urgh" sound as in transfer, attention, hook, put, student....

[phil]

i say we switch to "newspeak" >:)

[Fluid]

Originally posted by [BuF]Blorgg
I fink dhat's a gh00d idie
But seriously, changing the english language like that would get a lot of pple into "trouble". I for one would make even more typo's then I already do :/

*cough*Groene Boekje*cough*

[iolair]

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty´s Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (EuroE for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly sivil servants will reseive this news with joy. Also the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters and keybords kan have one less letter.

There will be growing puplik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the state where more komplikated changes are possible. Gorvernments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always been deterent to akurate speling. Also al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and they wil go.

By the fourth year, people will be reseptiv to steps such replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vordz kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil have a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultie and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru!

[Mohamz]

I think you should discuss this with Danger_Dude I consider him with respect as our english teacher.

[D66]

Originally posted by war-ped
i say we switch to "newspeak" >

That would be double plus ungood

[tarquin]

you could write in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but AFAIK, some of the symbols aren't available in ASCII. Might be in Unicode though.

the problem with phonetic spelling is that people in different parts of the UK, let alone the world, don't pronounce things the same way.
Let's suppose you bring in symbols for all the vowel sounds. (well, the IPA has them already, but bah).
How do you write "grass"?
which vowel do you pick?
I say "grass" to rhyme with "*rse" but many English speakers rhymer with "mass".

[_Zd_Phoenix_]

Changing spelling is a bad idea. It just confuses what is already there,as seems to happen in Germany every few years

[+Meat+]

If you don't like it move to China and try that for a while

[iolair]

Originally posted by tarquin
the problem with phonetic spelling is that people in different parts of the UK, let alone the world, don't pronounce things the same way.
Let's suppose you bring in symbols for all the vowel sounds. (well, the IPA has them already, but bah).
How do you write "grass"?
which vowel do you pick?
I say "grass" to rhyme with "*rse" but many English speakers rhymer with "mass".

I'd say that you have alternate spellings; there's already alternate regional spellings in the English dictionaries, and this isn't a problem compared to the difficulty of English spelling in general.

so ... here we have gras (Northern England) or graas (Southern England) ... I can't think how the assorted USAers would say this, whether they'd fit into these 2 spellings or require another?

[iolair]

Originally posted by +Meat+
If you don't like it move to China and try that for a while

It's not that dissimilar, as it happens. Generally, a chinese learner has to learn around 1000 symbols ... in English we have to learn how to interpret 500 different combinations of letters into 40 different sounds... (compare to Spanish with around 60 combinations of letters into 25 different sounds)....

[Fomhoire]

What is the problem? I like strange spellings.

Actually, the odd spellings that don't make sense are from the influence of other languages. In reality, we have several sets of rules for spelling.

Confusing? For some. If you dig a little deeper into the origin of words you will see a logical pattern.

[tarquin]

Originally posted by iolair

I'd say that you have alternate spellings; there's already alternate regional spellings in the English dictionaries, and this isn't a problem compared to the difficulty of English spelling in general.

but then you'd no longer have a single language.
BTW, which alternate regional spellings are you thinking of?

[iolair]

Originally posted by tarquin
but then you'd no longer have a single language.
BTW, which alternate regional spellings are you thinking of?

I'm not sure when you consider a difference to be dialects, and when different languages ...

anyway, the obvious spelling differences are UK vs US...
colour / color, travelled / traveled, catalogue / catalog, realise / realize, ageing / aging, anaemia / anemia, centre / center, soppy / sappy, draught / draft, grey / gray, judgement / judgment, sceptical / skeptical, sulphur / sulfur, tyre / tire, etc, etc

[iolair]

Originally posted by Fomhoire
What is the problem? I like strange spellings.

Actually, the odd spellings that don't make sense are from the influence of other languages. In reality, we have several sets of rules for spelling.

Confusing? For some. If you dig a little deeper into the origin of words you will see a logical pattern.

Don't get me wrong, I'm the office spelling guru that everyone always asks how many c's and m's are in accommodation... and I love languages. However, English spelling is daily and routinely murdered by native and non-native English speakers alike. This DOES NOT HAPPEN in Spanish, Italian, German and doesn't happen much in French. English is a bizarre bodge, and it would simplify things for a lot of people if we used a phonetic system.

[LordKhaine]

I really dont see a problem with spellings in different regions. The point of a language is to understand what someone says. And, amazingly enough, I can understand what an american means when he says "color"