AH Cſallenj: Mor extensiv Ingliſh spelling reform

[chrispi]

What is ðe leitest POD ðæt will allau for ðis reformd Ingliſh alphabet? Hier ar ðe extra letters you can ues:

ð þ æ ſ (as well as "yogh")

[Straha]

norse world empire

[chrispi]

You þink so?

[Straha]

yes I do think so

[DuQuense]

Welkam tu a nu wae uv rieting Ingglish — a raashanal wae. Witth tha taebool givan beelo (imeedeeyatle aafter "What's New" and the Intradukshan), eneewun kaan riet ene werd in the Ingglish laanggwaj so thaat eneewun els hu aulso noez tha sistam kaan reed it witthout ene kweschan about hou ene uv tha werdz iz pranounst. He wil eevan noe hwut aaksent yu speek, Amairikan aur British, bi hou yu riet werds liek "skejool" aur "shejool", "kaan't" aur "kon't", "eether" aur "iether", "tamaeto" aur "tamoto", etc. But I'm geting ahed uv mieself. Let us reetern tu staanderd speling tu eksplaen this projekt. (If, houwever, yu'd ferst liek tu se maur Fanetik tu test yaur abilite tu reed Fanetik witthout beeying toeld tha ruelz, klik heer. Tu go direktle tu tha taebool thaat givz tha ruelz, klik heer.)

[DuQuense]

Truespel conversion
This iz u leenk tue u tranzllaeter paej, fun tue plae withh

http://www.foreignword.com/cgi-bin//transpel.cgi

[Straha]

wut wood ummairiku bee liek in u koeld wor uggenst u rightwing enimee liek Naatsee germany


mie thoguhts
-a good wor that haz thu saem stiel proesseedeengz liek koreathe kweschin iz wair)
-a left weeng stiel uv Mccarthyism withh thu rillijis riet
-a liberttaireeyin kounterkulcher
-an aulmoest liberttaireeyin riet weeng and u mor soeshoolee nuetral "rillijis left"
-civil riets muevmint naat needid becasue Eisenhower gaat them eekwool riets in thu erlee 50's
-no wor aan drugz
-a difrintlee naemd verzhin eekwool riets ummendmint in thu 50's pooshd bie prezidint eisenhower
-fidel castro geteeng Us support and Batista geteeng naatsee support
-a sloewer but earleir paes tue soeshool and sekshuewool revullueshinz
-the left supports thu spaes proegram
-an erleeyer and mor wel manijd spaes proegram
-president Maartin Luthor Keeng jr
-carter in 1980 manijeeng tue bee u leftwing verzhin uv reagan withh u leftwing soeshool paalisee but u haukish forin paalisee
-carter beeyeeng raenkd az wun uv thu naeshinz graet prezidints
-political kurreknis appearign in thu 50's and dieyeeng in thu laet 60'sits lesineeng nou, it wasway wrose in thu 90's)

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

There's no way I can muster the concentration to read all this. But I will say that our system of spelling IS rational, and allows us to see the etymology of our extensive vocabulary.

To prove that our spelling system rocks, ntoe the rlue taht you can awlyas indeitfty a wrod if the frsit and lsat ltetres are crorcet.

[Grey Wolf]

The problem with a phonetic alphabet is that people don't say the words in the same way

Take for example "ummairiku" from below - it took me quite a while to work out that it presumably means 'America' . There are two reasons for this, one is that I saw the word as being pronounced 'oo-mary-kyoo' which doesn't sound at all like 'America', and the second that when I did work out what it meant I do not pronounce 'America' as 'uh-mare-rikker' but as 'a-me-rikker'

Grey Wolf

[mishery]

Originally Posted by Abdul Hadi Pasha

To prove that our spelling system rocks, ntoe the rlue taht you can awlyas indeitfty a wrod if the frsit and lsat ltetres are crorcet.

Have a look at...

www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~matt.davis/Cmabrigde/index.html

[DuQuense]

Mie tranzllaeter leenk iz oenlee fer Ummairikin eenglish. but thu sistim iz suppoez tue werk aan British Eenglish, withh thu difrint speleeng shoeweeng thu aksent.


My translator link is only for American english. but the system is suppose to work on British English, with the different spelling showing the accent.

[carlton_bach]

Originally Posted by DuQuense

Mie tranzllaeter leenk iz oenlee fer Ummairikin eenglish. but thu sistim iz suppoez tue werk aan British Eenglish, withh thu difrint speleeng shoeweeng thu aksent.


My translator link is only for American english. but the system is suppose to work on British English, with the different spelling showing the accent.

Can we get one for Scots, Scouse, Cockney, Home Counties Accent, and the Rhondda Valley?

Seriously, English has a wonderful breadth of pronunciation. I doubt phonetics will catch on, though if they do it is more likely in the United States than in Britain. After all, there's more folk across the Atlantic who don't speak English like everyone in their neck of the woods has for generations, largely because generations ago everyone in that neck of the woods spoke Lakota.

I know it's unfashionable, but habits *do* get ingrained over centuries.

[NapoleonXIV]

More people speak Klingon than Esperanto

[Flocculencio]

So the initial reform stated includes 'eth' 'thorn' and 'ash' eh? This would mean that the reform makes the language revert to the letters of Old English.

Maybe we could have this reform in the 19th century what with the interesting ideas floating around the British Empire about the supremacy of the Saxon race over the effeminate and weak Latins and Orientals:

A fashion, maybe proposed by Tennyson, Dickens and other prominent and popular literary figures as well as political personages, might arise in Victorian England to return the spelling of English to its "pure, Saxon roots" allowing for the reintroduction of the runic letters used in Old English.

This becomes widespread and in time the standard throughout the Empire and also in America (the WASPs wishing to prove their own pure, Saxon roots) by the late 19th century and persists to this day.

In the post-Colonial period, many former colonies (led by India) use pre-Victorian letter forms, claiming that the runic letters are a hallmark of colonialism. In the West, there is some debate about the runic letters with some printers and writers dropping them. The controversy has not yet been resolved.

[chrispi]

Say, somebody from Iceland emigrates to America in 1810-1820, let's call him Sigurd Þorsson, and has difficulty understanding written English, and comes up with his own alphabet. This alphabet has some minority appeal, especially with the new immigrants who tend to settle the frontier. With eventual full independence from Britain, some of the Realms (Lacustria, Pennsylvania, and to a lesser extent New England) adopt the Þorsson Alphabet (in an Old-Saxon mania you could say.) The interesting thing about this is that Lacustria and Pennsylvania are the places that industrialize the fastest and gain the most immigrants, so there could be a reaction against it, strangely enough, in places like Virginia that don't have the great immigrant influx.

What happens by 2004 is that there are two parallel modes of writing English that are greatly intermingled. In other words, an even more irrational system of spelling!

[tom]

I once saw a letter copied in the Reader's Digest, "supporting" spelling reform. Each sentence it implemented the next suggested change, until it degenerated into pure gibberish. This would have been around the late 60s.

[Adam Parsons]

Aaahhh...my brain hurts.

(Mind you, my success at reading French is about 50/50).

[tom]

In French you need five letters to spell one sound. The only languages worse are the non-phonetic ones like Chinese, and English (where each sound is spelled five ways, while each letter has five sounds).

[chrispi]

Of course, for any spelling reform to work, there needs to be instituted a "Received Pronounciation"--a one, true way of pronouncing the language. Will this RP work? (FYI I tried it and I sounded half upper-crust British and half-Swedish Chef! )

[monkey]

How about you have no norman invasion leading to less foriegn influence on the english language. Also if you have movable type invented in england rather than the continent you will have fewer printers coming over and introducing spelling conventions from there own languages.