Write "Regina", but read "Queen". "Kunnyomi" in English?

I've been watching a Japanese drama this weekend and was intrigued by the way they use Chinese Characters. They can either pronounce it the original Chinese way (on'yomi/音読み), or they keep the Chinese writing, but read it in native Japanese word (kun'yomi 訓読み). For instance, the female protagonist had the surname “黛”, pronounced "Dai" in Mandarin, meaning a blackened eyebrow. I half-expected the Japanese pronunciation to be somewhat similar (たい/tai), but it turned out the name was pronounced "Mayuzumi", or "Eyebrow-Ink", in native Japanese words.

Middle Persian had a similar phenomenon, whereas they could write the Semitic word "MLK", but pronounce it "shah" (both meant "king").

Ancient Akkad used the Sumer writing writing system in a similar way.

Was it possible for similar phenomenon to occur more often in English? For instance, an English scribe wrote down "rēgīna", but pronounce it as "queen", and conveniently shift between "reˈdʒiː.na" and "kwiːn" depending on circumstances?
 
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You would have to completely change the formation of the English language. The way English is written stems all the way back to the original Phoenician alphabet in which a letter represents a sound not a concept. If he went back that far and change things English wouldn't be an English anymore, at least not in any way recognizable as such.
 
The only way I could see it happening would be if Latin remained the language of state documents but nothing else, so that every time a state document was read out, it was auto-translated by the reader into English.

Thus snippets of Latin like Victoria Regina would be read as Queen Victoria

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
You would have to completely change the formation of the English language. The way English is written stems all the way back to the original Phoenician alphabet in which a letter represents a sound not a concept. If he went back that far and change things English wouldn't be an English anymore, at least not in any way recognizable as such.

Thank you for replying.

Whereas English is more phonetic than many other languages, it doesn't mean it is completely so.

“etc. (et cetera)” can often be read as “and so on” or “and so forth”、

“i.e. (id est)”can be read as “that is”

“lb. (libra)”is usually read as “pound”.

In other words, I was asking for some Latin (Or French) words to serve a logographic function while also preserve its phonetic root. There were already a small number of latin words used this way, I am only asking for its logographic role to expand more.

As per the examples I gave in the first post, Middle Persian was written in Aramaic-derived script, a phonetic script. But this didn't stop the Persians from using the script as a logogram.
 
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Thank you for replying.

Whereas English is more phonetic than many other languages, it doesn't mean it is completely so.

“etc. (et cetera)” can often be read as “and so on” or “and so forth”、

“i.e. (id est)”can be read as “that is”

“lb. (libra)”is usually read as “pound”.

In other words, I was asking for some Latin (Or French) words to serve a logographic function while also preserve its phonetic root. There were already a small number of latin words used this way, I am only asking for its logographic role to expand more.

As per the examples I gave in the first post, Middle Persian was written in Aramaic-derived script, a phonetic script. But this didn't stop the Persians from using the script as a logogram.

Well, those are a bit debatable. Etc. is understood to mean 'and so forth' but I've usually seen it pronounced 'etcetera'. I.e. only ever seems to be read out as 'eye-ee' even if you understand it being 'that is', and using lb. for pounds is frankly just using scientific notation like W for Tungsten.

We may use a Latin word for these cases, but it's only in the same way of using 'aquarium' and everyone understanding it to mean 'large fish tank'.
 
In other words, I was asking for some Latin (Or French) words to serve a logographic function while also preserve its phonetic root. There were already a small number of latin words used this way, I am only asking for its logographic role to expand more.

I think what you're looking for is the good old ampersand, or & sign. This is basically a highly stylised representation of the Latin "et" written as a single pen stroke, technically known as a ligature. Although it's called an ampersand and represents a Latin word, it's always pronounced "and" when written text is spoken aloud. Such ligatures were apparently extremely common in Classical Latin and functioned as a sort of shorthand - the ampersand is simply the only one to have survived in common use. It seems to me that your challenge could be met by simply preserving the use of a much wider range of Latin ligatures in successor languages.
 
I think what you're looking for is the good old ampersand, or & sign. This is basically a highly stylised representation of the Latin "et" written as a single pen stroke, technically known as a ligature. Although it's called an ampersand and represents a Latin word, it's always pronounced "and" when written text is spoken aloud. Such ligatures were apparently extremely common in Classical Latin and functioned as a sort of shorthand - the ampersand is simply the only one to have survived in common use. It seems to me that your challenge could be met by simply preserving the use of a much wider range of Latin ligatures in successor languages.
Is not @ another example?
 
With the English language speech comes first. We write down the spoken word.
With the Japanese language text comes first. They speak the written language.

When a Japanese person reads a kanji they often don't just read the spoken word as English speakers do. They read the meaning of the kanji, and from there they then parse whichever reading they think is the one to use.

It's quite interesting how the languages developed in such totally different ways. I've often pondered what things would be like if the Greeks and Romans had used a kanji like writing system.
 
Note that English is amongst the languages with an alphabetic script who follow phonetics the least in writing. A many words are actually written down in a way that more closely follows their etymology (esp. when French or Latin) then their actual pronounciation (this part of why a good English pronouciation is so difficult to acquire for non-native students). So, to some extent, this happens, except that, of course, the written and spoken word are still the same (better said, the writing is a very imperfect way to render the spoken). Extending the double pronounciation to something like Japanese and Ancient Persian is relatively difficult because, well, alphabet. While English doesn't use the alphabetic principle to its fullest potential, it still far more practical to use letters to note the actual pronounciation if you have them.
Persians didn't do that, partly because because they had an abjad, and probably because that sort of script was the patrimony of restricted community of scribes and fairly limited in use, probably mostly if not solely bureaucratic at first; since for official documents one had to know Aramaic anyway, it was not much of a hassle, and had the bonus of making writing more obscure to the general population, which seems to have been a feature of the system, not a defect.
If writing in English remains the patrimony of a Latinate clergy who wants to discourage the spread of literacy, you might get something like that, but that would require changing English history in fairly fundamental ways. The resulting language might be not really that similar to our English I suppose.
Btw, ligatured abbreviations were more a feature of Medieval Latin than Classical Latin.
 
Hmm... That has potential. People keep writing in Latin with nobody seeing for to write in English, yet reading the Latin into English is common.
 
Hmm... That has potential. People keep writing in Latin with nobody seeing for to write in English, yet reading the Latin into English is common.
If it is somehow extended to the rest of Western Christian world, we get a Sinosphere situation (China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam all used Ancient Chinese characters for formal communication until the 20th century, so that a Korean official document was easily deciphered by a learned Viet, but totally incomprehensible for illiterate Korean masses).

Of course, Medieval Catholic Europe was mostly this way in OTL anyway, what with dominance of Latin in writing, but here this state of affairs survives longer (maybe even into the third millennium?), and people read Latin texts not in Latin, but in their mother tongues. The effort needed to learn to do it may make mass education systems far more difficult to establish, but if it works, we will have entire Europe (and the Americas) using same language in writing. Will it make political and economic integration more likely? (It did not in OTL's Sinosphere, mind you).
 
If it is somehow extended to the rest of Western Christian world, we get a Sinosphere situation (China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam all used Ancient Chinese characters for formal communication until the 20th century, so that a Korean official document was easily deciphered by a learned Viet, but totally incomprehensible for illiterate Korean masses).

Of course, Medieval Catholic Europe was mostly this way in OTL anyway, what with dominance of Latin in writing, but here this state of affairs survives longer (maybe even into the third millennium?), and people read Latin texts not in Latin, but in their mother tongues. The effort needed to learn to do it may make mass education systems far more difficult to establish, but if it works, we will have entire Europe (and the Americas) using same language in writing. Will it make political and economic integration more likely? (It did not in OTL's Sinosphere, mind you).

The problem if that, of course, Latin is alphabetical as well, and pretty close to phonetical to boot. Keeping it in the written use turning its words into logograms would make for an extremenly roundabout way to learn it (not to mention, particularly ill-suited to its grammar), one that could only last if tied into strong social mechanisms. A "church" could do it, probably, with sufficient determination, but I can't see any obvious motivator.
However, I don't see how ease European integration relative to OTL. Western Europe largely shares the same script (Latin alphabet) and there are recognizable graphemes common to several language that represent a related meaning (usually a Latin or greek morpheme). The elites wrote and spoke (although the pronounciation varied a bit)Latin for a long time as the language of the cultivated use.
This situation would bring commonality in script to the extreme, while reducing the one in speech. Sounds hardly practical.
 
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