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From: mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Credibility (really 'phonetic' spelling schemes for English)
Message-ID: <770@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 4-Jul-85 05:59:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.770
Posted: Thu Jul  4 05:59:29 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Jul-85 05:40:10 EDT
References: <271@sri-arpa.ARPA> <483@oliveb.UUCP>, <380@spar.UUCP>
Organization: U Chicago -- Linguistics Dept
Lines: 46

[][][]
	Michael Ellis and I have now both independently posted argument
number 3 against a one-sound-one-symbol scheme for reforming English
spelling (independent postings that crossed.  I agree with michael so
often here, why do I think he's so wrong in net.philosop?  I'm
counting as follows:
	1. 'Lyrical qualities'.
	2.  Preserve historical heritage.
	3.  Loss of indications of synchronic relatedness.
Rather than `phonetic' I'm calling the proposals `one sound one symbol' to
be neutral about whether the proposal would be narrow phonetic, broad
phonetic, phonemic, or something else.  The objections apply to all of
those variations; and they don't apply to more modest, piecemeal reform
schemes.

	Now I'd like to add argument #4:

	What regional / social dialect would you take as the standard
on which spelling would be based?  Then what about children from other
dialects?  Are they going to miss out on all the supposed benefits of
of the reform scheme?  I suppose they'll just have to learn to spell
according to someone else's pronunciation.  Or better yet, get them
to talk according to the new standard dialect that's been enshrined in
the spelling.  After all, everything would be so much neater and
cleaner if we all spoke the same way.

	Possible attempted response:  The symbols would have different
values for different dialects.  Consider people who say `pen' with a
rather high vowel, like 'pin'.  For them, the symbol chosen to represent
the "epsilon vowel" would just mean a higher vowel than for the, um,
majority dialect.  But everybody would still have a self-consistent system,
with one-sound-one-symbol.

	Answer to possible response:  Nice try, but phonological variation
isn't that regular.  The way a sound varies from one dialect to another
depends a great deal on its phonological environment within the word.  In
other words, you cannot simultaneously attain the following two goals:
	a) uniform orthography for all English speakers (or even all
           American English speakers)
	b) each speaker or each dialect community has a self-consistent
	   system of mapping the uniform symbols one-to-one into local
           sounds.
-- 

            -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago 
               ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar