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Alternative English Spelling | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Glossaphile Pentaglot Newbie United States youtube.com/TranslatRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4549 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin Studies: Ancient Greek, German, Old English | Message 1 of 17 25 October 2014 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Over the past year or so, I have developed and refined an experimental system of reformed spelling for modern English that seeks to restore many vowel/diphthong correspondences that are more in sync with those found in most other Roman-script languages. Other potentially interesting features are:
1) Three letters that were used in older forms of written English have also been revived, like <ð> for /ð/, <þ> for /θ/, and <æ> for /æ/. 2) A few familiar letters have been re-assigned in order to get maximal use out of the current alphabet and thereby minimize the need for digraphs as well as unconventional characters. For example, since we have the perfectly good letters <k>, <s>, <g>, and <z>, which we can combine to spell words like "extract" and "exact" (e.g. <ikstrækt> and <igzækt>) the letter 'x' is used instead for /ʒ/. 3) Consonantal digraphs have been eliminated due to the potential confusion with sequences of independent monographs. For example, how is a child or non-native learner to know that "adulthood" is not pronounced /əˈdʌlθʊd/? This was the main reason behind the restoration of <þ> and <ð>, the reassignment of lone <c> to /tʃ/, and the importation of <ç> for /ʃ/ and <ñ> for /ŋ/. 4) The third import, <ø>, is the dedicated symbol for schwa. If you're interested in learning more, I invite you to visit my website, where you can learn the rules. Any questions or other feedback (be it positive or constructively critical) is welcome! Comments from non-native English speakers will be especially appreciated! For now, here's a couple of brief sample texts. I'd be interested to know how easily you can figure out the source of each. Ðei kæn bi ø greit pípøl, Kæl-El. Ðei wiç tu bi. Ðei ounli læk ðø lait tu çou ðø wei. For ðis rízøn øbav ól, ðeør køpæsiti for gud, ai hæv sent ðem yu, mai ounli san. Ðis iz mai taimi-waimi ditektør. It gouz diñ wen ðeør'z staf. Ólsou, it kæn boil øn eg æt þérti peisiz, weðør yu wont it tu or not, ækçüøli, sou ai'v lérnd tu stei øwei from henz. It's not priti wen ðei blou ap. Edited by Glossaphile on 25 October 2014 at 10:34am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4063 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 17 25 October 2014 at 10:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Shouldn't "be" be "bí"? Also I only saw a list of orthographies when I clicked your link.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4940 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 3 of 17 25 October 2014 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
Why would you spell these two words with an "ik" or "ig"? That betrays the words' etymology with that spelling. Also, that's a very inexact representation of how the initial vowel ("e") is either supposed to be pronounced or is actually pronounced in many dialects. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4044 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 4 of 17 25 October 2014 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, this looks rather intriguing, and also solves the eternal problem of English spelling, but it would be freaking hard to try to use it widely. A language so fixed and used so much everywhere is hard to reform.
It's hard to do these revolutions in any case, it think if someone would decide to get Russian spelling right, things would change dramatically (but, well, not that dramatically as in English or French). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Glossaphile Pentaglot Newbie United States youtube.com/TranslatRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4549 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin Studies: Ancient Greek, German, Old English | Message 5 of 17 25 October 2014 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you all for your comments!
Henkkles, please try this link: http://www.hsmespanol.com/RestLatSpellSite/Index.html Hrhenry, if you look up the words "extract" and "exact" in the Cambridge Online Dictionary, you'll see that the respective pronunciations are simply /ɪkˈstɹækt/ and /ɪgˈzækt/. There's nothing inexact about that. As for other dialects, RLS was designed to be flexible with respect to regional accents, but for the purposes of easy international communication, most texts would probably be written according to my proposed hybrid of General American (the standard US accent) and Received Pronunciation (the standard UK accent). Regarding etymology, if spellings like <igzækt> bother you, you'll probably hate ones like <saikoløji> for "psychology." But I must ask: so what? Why should etymology be sacred? Undue reverence for etymology is a large part of what messed up our spelling in the first place, so I see no reason to continue this pedantic tradition. Don't get me wrong. As you can see on my profile, I've studied both Latin and ancient Greek, and I find etymology/philology utterly fascinating. I just don't see the need to foist that interest on the average Joe/Jane via a needlessly archaic orthography. Etymology is a specialized field. Leave it to the specialists. The fact is that other languages have managed to thrive without such an etymologically obsessed orthography. Would you say that, for instance, all Spanish speakers are more historically deprived than English or French speakers simply because they don't spell their language as if it were still Latin? I doubt it, so what makes English so special? Via Diva, your position mirrors that of my linguistics professors. The prevailing opinion among linguists seems to be that spelling reform is probably a good idea, but public persuasion is hopeless. Edited by Glossaphile on 25 October 2014 at 6:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5046 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 6 of 17 25 October 2014 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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"I have nothing but contempt for anyone who can spell a word only one way." - Attributed to Andrew Jackson.
:) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3909 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 7 of 17 25 October 2014 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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While I don't want to be discouraging, I am not a fan of this sort of project in any language for one simple reason:
I don't like being told how to pronounce something I already know how to pronounce. More specifically, I hate being told to pronounce something differently from how I am already (correctly!) pronouncing it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4331 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 8 of 17 25 October 2014 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Using ø instead of ə for the schwa looks weird and quite confusing. What's the reasoning
behind this? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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