Webster's New Alphabet

Yankoslavian · #1 January 26th, 2004, 12:10 AM

What if the change in American spelling was far more extensive? For instance, the Great Vowel Shift would actually be recorded, so that words like right, beer, road, broad and so forth become raiht, bier, rood, brad, and so forþ...

ABCDEFÐGHÞIJKLMN£OPQRSTUVWXYZÆ
abcdefðghþijklmnſopqrstuvwxyz

DuQuense · #2 January 26th, 2004, 01:11 AM

People have been trying since B Franklins time to Rationalize the english Alphabet, with 38 & 42 charaters, to do this U need a POD back in the 13~1400's before the Alphabet Became Set due to the Printing Press.

Wiggy · #3 January 26th, 2004, 01:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuQuense

People have been trying since B Franklins time to Rationalize the english Alphabet, with 38 & 42 charaters, to do this U need a POD back in the 13~1400's before the Alphabet Became Set due to the Printing Press.

But you think maybe there's half a chance now with all the etext devices floating around? Teachers are noticing in the classroom that etext and internet literate young folks are using a different brand of English with a ton of shorthand and rationalization as it creeps into their work from time to time.

I think the evolution gets cut short if etext evaporates or evolves into something else. Probably stillborn due to the march of technology. But the possibility lurks in the background right now.

Yankoslavian · #4 January 26th, 2004, 01:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuQuense

People have been trying since B Franklins time to Rationalize the english Alphabet, with 38 & 42 charaters, to do this U need a POD back in the 13~1400's before the Alphabet Became Set due to the Printing Press.

I disagree. The spelling of High German changed sometime in the 1700s and 1800s, well after Gutenberg's printing press.

Abdul Hadi Pasha · #5 January 26th, 2004, 03:01 AM

Not that long ago, the educated were expected to have a working knowledge of Greek, Latin, and French, so the spelling was not as opaque.

wkwillis · #6 January 26th, 2004, 04:51 AM

I think there are about 120 consonants and vowels. Different people on this board use all of them. The US hard and soft th (theatre and they) are matched by the hard and soft Arabic dh which I can't hear at all, etc.

NapoleonXIV · #7 January 26th, 2004, 08:08 AM

American spelling was standardized by Webster's Dictionaries in the early 19thc. This was, as I've been told, something of a remarkable innovation, for it prevented the development of true dialects in the US. (While we definitley have regionalisms we can all understand each other fairly easily. In England, a much smaller area, people sometimes have difficulty communicating even over the city of London.) It thus gave us the advantages of a living language without the effort and inconvenience of 'policing' as in French.

While I know little about alphabets, I do know there are cultural and psychological problems that were never anticipated by those who tried the more 'rational' languages around 1900. Today, more people speak Klingon than Esperanto

tom · #8 January 26th, 2004, 04:38 PM

Interesting that Esperanto was designed to be as "easy" for Indo-European speakers to learn as possible, while Klingon was designed to be as "hard" (ie different) as possible.

HelloLegend · #9 October 11th, 2006, 09:11 AM

The American English language has already achieved dominance.

No sense in trying to fight manifest destiny.

Nicole · #10 October 11th, 2006, 02:32 PM

Who pronounces "Road" as "Rood"?

Max Sinister · #11 October 11th, 2006, 02:38 PM

But that's how it's pronounced - the same vowel as in "forth", only longer. In German (which is quite close to phonetic) one would use a "oo" for that sound too.