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From: pkaiser@jaws.DEC (Pete Kaiser HLO2-1/N10 225-5441)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Phonetic spelling isn't practical
Message-ID: <4147@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Nov-84 20:38:26 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.4147
Posted: Tue Nov  6 20:38:26 1984
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Re phonetic spelling
--------------------

Any natural language exists in a matrix of extents in time, space, and culture.
Within these contexts the language may change in grammar, vocabulary, customary
usage, and phonetics (and undoubtedly in other respects I haven't thought of
here).  So any language widely-enough spread over any chronological, spatial,
or cultural extent will be impossible to represent in any static form --
phonetic alphabet, dictionary, or grammar book.  Any such static form will
always be inadequate to describe all a language's legitimate utterances.

Of course, none of that applies to proscriptive forms, but such forms are
widely agreed to be, at best, of limited use -- the Academie Francaise and
Webster's Second notwithstanding.  Any attempt to proscribe a language by
describing it authoritatively is an attempt to freeze it, without respecting
that all natural languages differ from day to day, from place to place, and
from one set of social circumstances to another.  If you describe a language
as of today, it will have changed by tomorrow, by adapting to its users' needs
as of tomorrow.  Or it will be the same in this place, but different in that
place, and in each location the natives will consider the others the devia-
tionists.

Perhaps conditions are different for "small" languages (I understand that
Hungarian is actually written phonetically), but it seems unlikely to me that
any old, widespread, culturally diverse language like English, Spanish, French,
Chinese, Portuguese or Russian can possibly be accurately described in a static
form.  

I can imagine some advantages to non-phonetic orthography.  The cognitive
faculties involved in using such an orthography must be different from those
using a phonetic orthography, since you must understand deep structure to
be able to pronounce the non-phonetically-written word.  Children (or anyone
learning to read) may profit by the exercise of those faculties.

---Pete