WI Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet had been adopted for American English?

MrP

Banned
Among Benjamin Franklin's many interests was spelling reform, and in 1768, while in London, he designed a phonetic alphabet for English that did away with six letters he considered redundant (c, j, q, w, x, and y) and replaced them with new ones.

800px-Benjamin_Franklin%27s_alphabet_-_sample_letter.png


What if, in the wake of independence, the nascent US had adopted it?
 

MrP

Banned
Would the lower inter-intelligibility of British and American English in their written forms result in lessened cultural contacts between the US and UK before the rise of radio and television, and might it also result, over time, in divergent evolutions of their oral forms as well?

Of course, as the quote goes, we're already divided by a common language as it is.
 
well ... some of that question could probably be answered by looking at how the relationship between Danish and Norwegian changed post 1814 as previously Norwegian, specially in urban speech and the elite, was effectively a dialect not really all that much more different from standard danish than heavily accented South Jutlandic or Bornholmian is.

so with the larger population, and much higher immigration from pretty much anywhere, I'd wager that they'll still be mutually intelligible. but as soon as you leave the standardised American and Standardised English it can quickly lose the intelligility
 
M S doesn't seem to think it a great idea.

I transcribed his message as:

Dear Sir
I have transcribed your alphabet, etc. which I think might be of service to those, who wish to acquire an accurate pronunciation, if such could be fixed; but I see many inconveniences,as well as difficulties that would attend the bringing of you letters into common use. All our etymologies would be lost, consequently you could not ascertain the meaning of many words; the distinction, too, between words of different meaning and similar sound would be useless, unless you living writers publish new editions, In short, I believe you must let people spell in ?their old ?way, and (as you find it easiest) do ?they seem ourselves.

I don't entirely agree, but I think in English you can have either a standard spelling our a phonetic spelling, but you can't (for long) have both.
 
As a side note his ng symbol did make it into the IPA.
Perhaps rather than used for published writing it gets used for secretarial and transcribing foreign languages, then used for dictionaries, and later forms the basis of an alt-IPA
 
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