From: utzoo!watmath!rvpalliende
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: Re: rvpalliende still reforming
Article-I.D.: watmath.3134
Posted: Fri Jul 30 01:55:53 1982
Received: Fri Jul 30 07:00:23 1982
References: nsc.202

Just a few comments:
The children I mentioned reading in grade 2 (it actually was grade 1)
like five graders were reading phonetic spelling. It turns out that
switching to normal spelling is easy,
and children taught in phonetic spelling actually
are like everybody else, despite the "handicap" ov being taught two
spellings instead ov one.

It's easier to learn French, Spanish, French, Italian and Roumanian?
(What about Catalan?)
Compare:
English		French		Spanish		Italian		Portuguese
philosophy	philosophie	filosifi'a	filosofia	filosofia
chemistry	chimie		qui'mica	chimica		qui'mica(?)
chorus		choeur		coro		coro		coro
analysis	analyse		ana'lisis	??		ana'lisis(?)

It turns out that Latin spelling for Greek words is used only in French
(whose spelling is about as bad as English's)

I've thought that people should pronounce the way they spell. But then:
Have you ever said "kat-as-troaf" instead ov "kat-as-tro-fy"?. I have, and
people react as surprised as when they see the spelling "ov".
Other time I said "im-MAE-cher" and was corrected: "im-ma-CHOOR". People
get more annoyed at strange pronunciation than at strange spelling.
(Who can spell now, anyway?)