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Spelling reform poll | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5926 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 1 of 25 06 June 2009 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
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While reading some other threads about the difficulty of learning specific languages, I thought about spelling reforms and what polyglots and aspiring polyglots think of them. I have read, and responded to, some threads about whether or not the lack of phonetic spellings in English makes it a difficult language to learn and I know there many who think French, and other languages present similar challenges.
I know other Indo-European languages, like German, Dutch or the two written forms of Norwegian have reformed their spelling systems a few times in the last 100 years or so and was curious what if anyone thinks these changes or helpful or not. I also wonder if those who speak or are learning languages, such as Mandarin or Japanese, that have character sets rather than an alphabet think these languages would be better reperesented in written form if they used some kind of alphabet instead. I know a little about pinyin and romanji, but I was told most native speakers don't really use these romanizations. To quickly answer my own question, I'm voting No, it gets too confusing. I know a few people in the USA occasionally propose that English spelling should be reformed to reflect how people actually speak, but this idea never gets very far. I don't think phonetic spelling of English is entirely practical though because I am uncertain which accent or dialect should be considered the "official standard". N.B. Discuss any language/dialect you wish to. I hope this post isn't too long. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bob Greaves Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6681 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 2 of 25 06 June 2009 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
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My father, who came from Lancashire (England), always thought it would be a good idea to reform. However what he failed to realise was that, since accents (let alone dialects) vary throughout the English speaking country (let alone the English speaking world) it would end up with so many variants. For example in a great part of England the final "R" in "CAR" is not pronounced, except for a pocket in Lancashire and Kent (about 300 miles apart); the rest do not pronounce the final "R". The result would either be to have various spellings or for everyone to modify their pronunciation.
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| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7013 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 3 of 25 06 June 2009 at 3:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I voted "yes", but not because I want to speak write the way I speak. I'm all about _consistency_, and the recent (1990) French spelling reforms basically reduced the number of exceptions people had to remember. Pity nobody really uses them. All of my courses use the old spelling, and even books published last year still use the old spelling. It's only _very_ recently that they're been any movement for people to start using the new spellings. I think a lot of people are concerned (and this is important for the French) that people will think the new spellings are wrong and the writer doesn't know the correct spelling. As for me, I try to use the new spellings. However, I have had some people on lang-8 correct my posts back to the 'old' spellings...
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| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7013 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 5 of 25 06 June 2009 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | ||
That would remove some of its consistency. One letter, one sound. Removing the diacritics now gives one letter two sounds. You're talking about changing how all the existing speakers talk _or_ forcing peple to remember that 'c' in this word sounds different from 'c' in this word, something Esperanto was specifically trying to get away from. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6374 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 25 06 June 2009 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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No, I like the spelling as it is.
I see this system as good because it reminds me more of Kanji. The letters give a clue to the word they represent and usually with time you can guess the pronunciation. New words are spelled phonetically so it's fine. This spelling system is extremely good with a language such as English which has no many varieties. We all write the same way though so that's great. "Yes, I want to write the same way I speak" - As I just said this is ridiculous. With so many dialects and accents you'd need to rewrite the spellings for all of them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5925 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 8 of 25 06 June 2009 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I like it, even though it's a pain to teach. Why change it? It's not as if it's something that can't be learnt.
People who speak "phonetic" languages still can't spell 100% correctly. As this article suggests, even a "phonetic" language like Spanish has spelling problems. http://www.linguism.co.uk/language/spanish-spelling 1 person has voted this message useful |
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