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Reforms that you want to see in languages

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72 messages over 9 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 8 9
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?

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
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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.

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
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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.

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....

It was a joke.
1 person has voted this message useful



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.
Change the keyboard to the international English setting, that's what I did.
1 person has voted this message useful



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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