From: utzoo!decvax!cca!hplabs!menlo70!nsc!miker@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: rvpalliende still reforming
Article-I.D.: nsc.202
Posted: Mon Jul 26 19:13:26 1982
Received: Thu Jul 29 00:48:17 1982

Re: . . .watmath!rvpalliende, "Rational spelling"

Why do people think that changing spelling means having phonetic spelling?
	Good point.  As has been pointed out by several people,
	we might have rational spelling but it could not be phonetic.
Anyway, all people who object
phonetic spelling because ov the problems that homonyms would generate
never complain about homographs, like read (reed, red),
tear (tir, ter), record (rekerd, rikurd), etc.
	Other problems include accents.  My high school English teacher
	always used to say "We will re'cess for recess'" (or was it the
	other way around).  There is also rec'ord and record'.
	However, no one seems to have thought that homonyms can 
	be distinguished even in a phonetic spelling system
	by having more than one spelling pronounced the same way.
On the other hand, although there are some reasons not to have a (completely)
phonetic spelling, there is no reason not to make spelling more rational.
	If we can't even get people to use the metric system, which is
	about as rational as you can get, how easy do you think it would
	be to get everyone to change spelling?  And who would do it?  We
	don't have an organisation that sets language standards like the
	Academie Francaise.  There is nothing to stop you spelling words
	however you like, as you have already shown.
The following variants are in current use today:
catalogue 	catalog
centre		center
defence		defense
colour		color
sceptical	skeptical
None ov the spellings in the right hand side is "phonetic", but they
are better than the ones in the left hand side.
	I don't see that the right side is all that much better. The final
	e in "centre" is not pronounced anyway, so where you put it is
	largely irrelevant.  "Defense" looks to me as if it should be
	pronounced "defenz".  All you are really saying is that you
	prefer American spellings.  In view of the vast morass of 
	spelling irregularities, this is like bailing the Titanic with
	a teaspoon.  I prefer to use English spellings simply to retain
	some small portion of my life which is not dominated by Americans--
	there isn't too much left these days.
Why can't more variants ov this form be in effect?
	They probably will be, judging by the spelling standard exhibited
	by most Americans.  The latest one seems to be the strange habit
	of forming plural's of word's with apostrophe's.
Note that backwards compatibility isn't the source ov all spelling difficulties.
 Johnson and other no too learned
scholars are responsible for respelling:
ache	It was thought that "ake" derived from Greek.
island  It was thought that "iland" derived from "insula". This word was
	actually respelled, to make it more "etymological". Actually the
	spelling ILAND is correct (although not socially accepted)
sovereign People thought that it had something to do with Latin
	  "regnus".
Therefore, the etymological argument is unsound as a reason to leave
spelling the way it is now.
	Just because some errors occur in the application of a method
	it is not necessary to discard it entirely.  This is what is
	generally called "throwing the baby out with the bath water".
	Surely the correct spelling is the one that most people use,
	since there is no clearcut method of deriving a correct spelling.
	"Iland" was correct in the fifteenth century (as much as anything
	was) but it is not correct now, because it is not socially
	acceptable.
Double consonants were introduced in a frustrated attempt ov indicating
the length ov a vowel. "Latter" and "later" are good examples where this
works. But the rule isn't used in all English words. If we had the
pair ov words "finite" and "infinnit" probably nobody would pronounce
in-fie-nite (Webster records the latter pronunciation as a variant, which
I'm certain, was developed due to the spelling)
	But as well as obscuring the relationship, you would probably
	have people pronouncing it "infinn'it" on the basis of the
	spelling.  Actually, in-fie-nite is a more "rational"
	pronunciation.  Perhaps we ought to encourage its use.
	In fact, maybe we could solve the whole problem by getting
	people to pronounce words the way they are spelled instead
	of vice versa.
"ch" instead ov "k", "ph" instead ov "f", and "y" instead ov "i" were
introduced in Latin for phonetic reasons. "ch" attempted to represent
a hard "h" sound (as "Kh" in Khomeini or "J" in La Jolla) "ph" was
the Greek "f" which used both lips instead ov only the upper lip and
the lower teeth (I can't hear the difference, but it seems that Romans could)
	I can hear the difference.  It's just one of those things like
	r and l in Japanese.
Why are the phonetic reasons the Romans had, more important than the
ones that people ov today may have?
	One reason for retaining Roman spelling is that it makes
	it considerably easier to learn French, Spanish, Italian,
	Portugese and Rumanian.
To finish this a simple statistic: children taught to read in a
phonetic alphabet acquire 5th grade proficiency (by English standards)
by the middle ov grade 2. If a rational (and international) spelling
were adopted, this could be worsened, but probably not too much.
	Which children where?
	I have a friend who was taught phonetic spelling in grade school.
	His reading proficiency and general educational background
	is about the same as anyone else, but his spelling is TERRIBLE.
	I learned most of my spelling not from spelling classes, but
	from reading a lot and becoming accustomed to the way words
	look.

				Michael Robinson

P.S.  Some of my best friends are Americans!