tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5457 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 65 of 72 11 April 2010 at 12:13am | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
I don't think we need to reinstate eth and thorn -- radher we can introduce a DH digraph for
dhe voiced sound, by analogy to TH and consistent with the distinction between T & D. Much easier with the
computers we have dhese days dhan adding two new letters, don't you think? |
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The entire English speaking world could just buy keyboards made for Icelandic.
Another simplification could be to always write F for the f-sound instead of F, PH and GH.
But, I don't think we will see an English spelling reform in our lifetime.
Edited by tractor on 11 April 2010 at 7:41am
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 66 of 72 11 April 2010 at 1:14pm | IP Logged |
tractor wrote:
The entire English speaking world could just buy keyboards made for Icelandic. |
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Have you any idea how many keyboards dhat would be? Besides, you're forgetting about dhe fact dhat laptop keyboards aren't dhat easy to replace, and dhat dhere's no "standard" laptop keyboard anyway....
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Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6772 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek
| Message 67 of 72 11 April 2010 at 5:08pm | IP Logged |
For some laptops at least, the keyboard is an option you can switch out at the store. It would be model-specific of
course, but as long as we're imagining the possibility of English welcome some long-lost letters…
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Vinlander Groupie Canada Joined 5825 days ago 62 posts - 69 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 68 of 72 11 April 2010 at 5:41pm | IP Logged |
It's amazes me in the internet age how there's not a larger community of people doing spelling reform for English. I mean as I said before netspeak is clearly on that level. Just think if there was a English reform wikipedia. I mean even if just this board did the reform I think it would catch on in a couple of years. It would be interesting to see if someone could figure out how to make a translater that put English into reform English.
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tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5457 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 69 of 72 11 April 2010 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
tractor wrote:
The entire English speaking world could just buy keyboards made for
Icelandic. |
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Have you any idea how many keyboards dhat would be? Besides, you're forgetting about dhe fact dhat laptop
keyboards aren't dhat easy to replace, and dhat dhere's no "standard" laptop keyboard anyway.... |
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It was a joke.
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Kyrie Senior Member United States clandestein.deviantaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5733 days ago 207 posts - 231 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 70 of 72 11 April 2010 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
I'd like to see the combination 'th' represented by the letter þorn or 'þ', as it used to represent in Old English. I'd also like to see macrons and breves over vowels to indicate the sound it makes. ("Is it pronounced clandestīne or clandestǐne?") Accents would be beneficial too for words that don't follow the regular stress pattern of English. (If there even is one.)
Edited by Kyrie on 11 April 2010 at 8:10pm
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Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5426 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 71 of 72 13 April 2010 at 6:05am | IP Logged |
tractor wrote:
Cainntear wrote:
I don't think we need to reinstate eth and thorn -- radher we can introduce a DH digraph for
dhe voiced sound, by analogy to TH and consistent with the distinction between T & D. Much easier with the
computers we have dhese days dhan adding two new letters, don't you think? |
|
|
The entire English speaking world could just buy keyboards made for Icelandic.
Another simplification could be to always write F for the f-sound instead of F, PH and GH.
But, I don't think we will see an English spelling reform in our lifetime. |
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Change the keyboard to the international English setting, that's what I did.
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chanjhj Bilingual Diglot Newbie Singapore Joined 5453 days ago 7 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* Studies: Japanese, Spanish
| Message 72 of 72 14 April 2010 at 5:31pm | IP Logged |
English probably needs a reform (that wouldn't happen). The differences between
American and British spellings are extremely annoying. Its fine when you speak it, but
whenever you read or spell it, that's where the problem lies. And half of the English
spellings make no sense since consonants here and there are not pronounced.They could
definitely be simplified.
Actually, the F for PH sounds have been already implemented, sort of. For example,
sulfate, sulfite, sulfur. Even though I still end up writing 'ph' anyway.
Another thing would be Chinese characters. China- Simplified Chinese. Taiwan-
Traditional Chinese. Japanese- Kanji which looks exactly the same and usually means the
same thing but with a different pronunciation.
This makes for some very confusing cases.
Its just...infuriating, especially Japanese Kanji because I know the meaning of the
word but I have no idea how to pronounce it so whenever I see Kanji, I'm just...stuck.
And traditional Chinese because I know the word, and how it looks like in Simplified
Chinese but I just cannot recognise traditional Chinese characters.
But I don't suppose it is possible to suddenly reform the English language
overnight...(which would be a little annoying since we would have to learn the new form
too.)
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