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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Is Standardized Spelling Elitism?
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
It's supposed to derive from Norse, Sweyn's Eye, or island,
Yes, I had always understood that Swansea was named for Sweyn Forkbeard.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
Are you put out by the fact that French people say 'Londres'?
If there were a political flap in England about calling London "London" instead of "Londres" this might have something to do with this thread. As there isn't, it doesn't.
quote:
For years, the BBC has steadfastly referred to the country east of India as 'Burma',
How odd. I'd have thought they'd call it "Bangladesh."
[ 12. February 2014, 05:01: Message edited by: mousethief ]
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
In regard to Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Kochi, Aluva*, Bengaluru, etc. etc. etc.
(formerly known as Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, Cochin, Alwaye*, Bangalore) etc. etc etc. etc.)
these place name changes have already taken place in India (Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata strongly, others less so).
In Chennai, the Madras High Court still exists, however. I suspect that this is because of the centuries of legal documents and laws referring to it). As for food named after such places (Madras curry powder, Bombay this and that), these things are still understood in India and the world.
*This is more a change in spelling. It has always been known as A-lu-wa.
In all these "new" city names, names and trademarks registered under the old name still exist.
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
Are you put out by the fact that French people say 'Londres'?
If there were a political flap in England about calling London "London" instead of "Londres" this might have something to do with this thread. As there isn't, it doesn't.
But this is my point. We accept that some foreigners have different names for places in Britain. I'm fine with that. I'm applying the same principle but in reverse.
quote:
quote:
For years, the BBC has steadfastly referred to the country east of India as 'Burma',
How odd. I'd have thought they'd call it "Bangladesh."
If they knew where Assam is, they probably wouldn't.
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Burma? Myanmar? Myanma? I think I'd follow Aung San Suu Kyi's line. A bias I am happy to own up to.
I think she still believes (believed) that Myanma, rather than being more respectful of own language use, was in practice more than a little dismissive of the minorities in "Burma".
So I guess that once there is a truly representative government in "Burma" the name to use will get sorted out. Meanwhile, it looks as though we get to offend someone, whichever use we make.
Hence "follow Aung San Suu Kyi", wherever she goes, until there is such a government. The smart move.
Whatever you might think of that, "Burma" is an interesting test case of the sometimes complex moral and political issues involved in the naming of countries.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
Yes, we've all heard the theory about the Vikings being the source of Swansea: only problem is that the Viking settlements didn't include Swansea - and on the whole the norsemen didn't bother naming small, insignificant places they hadn't settled.
They've been searching for years for the signs of a serious Viking settlement around Swansea to back up this theory - no luck so far. The most they've come up with is possibly a temporary staging post to put into when shipping slaves from South Wales back to Dublin.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
Are you put out by the fact that French people say 'Londres'?
If there were a political flap in England about calling London "London" instead of "Londres" this might have something to do with this thread. As there isn't, it doesn't.
But this is my point. We accept that some foreigners have different names for places in Britain. I'm fine with that. I'm applying the same principle but in reverse.
But you're not. You're bridging from an instance where there is no controversy (the French saying "Londres") and saying we should treat instances in which there is (e.g. "Mumbai" and "Bombay") the same way. The mere fact that something is okay when nobody is complaining doesn't mean it's okay when somebody is.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
But if, say, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary and the Prime Minister wrote to the Academie Francaise asking that British place names should always be spelt as they are in English, do you think the French should take a blind bit of notice?
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:
Second, about Istanbul/Constantinople: This is not a matter of changing a city name spelling! (like Peking/Beijing) Turkey changed the city name as part of de-Greeceing that area.
It still leaves a nasty taste in Greek peoples' mouths, and many refuse to use the 'new' name.
"Istanbul" is a Greek name also. Just a different Greek name. And well over a thousand years old.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
But if, say, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary and the Prime Minister wrote to the Academie Francaise asking that British place names should always be spelt as they are in English, do you think the French should take a blind bit of notice?
Depends. Why would they do that? One thing I notice is that there is little subjection/subjectee history between England and France, at least in the last 1000 years. India and Britain, way different story. Context matters. Lots.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Depends. Why would they do that? One thing I notice is that there is little subjection/subjectee history between England and France, at least in the last 1000 years. India and Britain, way different story. Context matters. Lots.
I don't accept your 'subjection history' argument, but you are also clearly not familiar with the history of this little corner of north western Europe since your start date of 1014 and the centuries of national animosities that history has generated.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
Just seen the form "paedofiles"* in a tweet, obvious example of spelling simplification "ph"=f, but made me thing of document storing because the etymology link is lost.**
Carys
*interesting that they didn't go for pedofiles as æ to e much further advanced
**though philia is not really a good term to use as it's not about love.
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
Posts: 6896 | From: Bryste mwy na thebyg | Registered: May 2001
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
Some shipmates might enjoy the tale of how I ended up as a guest at a barbecue held by a workshop of Basque drama teachers (some of whome were very fetching) while pilgriming through the forests east of Guernica/Gernika. Among the many topics of our 2-hour conversation (there was wine on the table) we discussed identity, ideology, and placenames, all of which were very hot issues. I had been walking a few days previously through SAn Sebastian, and asked if it were permitted for me to use that name. Donostia is the Basque name, but no non-Basque knew what it meant. San Sebastian was the Castilian version and they felt that it was an acknowledgement of the centralist authority in Madrid. One of them thought that Saint Sebastian was the best for me to use, as the English was entirely neutral, and not an embrace of one side or the other.
Since then, a Belgian friend tells me that I am wisest using Antwerp as Anvers or Antwerpen would only get me grief from one side or the other.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:
Second, about Istanbul/Constantinople: This is not a matter of changing a city name spelling! (like Peking/Beijing) Turkey changed the city name as part of de-Greeceing that area.
It still leaves a nasty taste in Greek peoples' mouths, and many refuse to use the 'new' name.
"Istanbul" is a Greek name also. Just a different Greek name. And well over a thousand years old.
It's nobody's business but the Turks',
It's nobody's business but the Turks'!
Abbreviated to make sure there's no copyright breach.
[ 13. February 2014, 01:27: Message edited by: Gee D ]
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I don't accept your 'subjection history' argument,
It's hard for imperial countries to accept the desires of their former colonies.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I don't accept your 'subjection history' argument,
It's hard for imperial countries to accept the desires of their former colonies.
I thought that Enoch's original post was clear: he was referring not to the relationship between India and the UK, but rather to that between England and France. No doubt he had in mind the invasion by the Duke of Normandy in 1066, and the subsequent relationships between the English Crown and various duchies, counties and so forth which now form part of France.
Where Enoch's post is subject to some criticism is in 2 areas. The first is that the relationships I have referred to were between the Crown of only one portion of the present UK and the French territories. The second is that while the present French State is pretty clearly the successor to the Kingdom of France, in 1066 and for quite some time before and after then, the Kingdom of France was pretty effectively limited to the Ile de France and some surrounding territory.
And a bit of an aside is that the relationship between the UK and India was never, strictly speaking, that between an imperial power and a colony or even a group of colonies.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
Personally, I'll call a place whatever I damn well like. So for me that's Bombay, Peking (in Finnish it is still called Peking), Constantinople and Bonkersland for America.
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Finnish diplomacy, Ad O?
Or maybe just the finish of diplomacy?
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Also, just because we've done something for centuries is not in itself a good reason to continue doing it.
Personally, I think that's an excellent reason to continue doing it. (Or at least to think very, very hard when thinking whether or not to stop doing it.)
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Peking (in Finnish it is still called Peking).
And in German. I first realised this when watching Deutsche Welle, the German overseas television channel, which alternates English-language and German-language weather forecasts on the hour. In the English forecasts, the city is 'Beijing', in the German forecasts it is 'Peking'.
[ 13. February 2014, 08:25: Message edited by: Anglican't ]
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
Personally, I think that's an excellent reason to continue doing it. (Or at least to think very, very hard when thinking whether or not to stop doing it.)
Even where someone else has specifically asked you to stop? I think that is pretty rude.
I don't think it's rude to write one's own language in one's own way.
The government of the Ivory Coast has asked everyone to refer to the country as 'Cote d'Ivoire' regardless of language, and the government of the Ukraine would like everyone to drop the definite article when referring to the country. While these people can ask, I don't think it follows that everyone should fall into line.
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Personally, I'll call a place whatever I damn well like. So for me that's Bombay, Peking (in Finnish it is still called Peking), Constantinople and Bonkersland for America.
Ad Orientem, a thread on spelling seems an odd place to want to display an inability to read for comprehension, but as you were clearly asked by a host not to post anything that looked like an attempt to start a pond war, it seems that is what you are doing.
This is a violation of commandment 1 (trying to disrupt a thread with deliberately provocative comments) and commandment 6 (doing that after a host asks you to stop). Do not do this again.
Eutychus has already warned you that you were at risk of attracting adminly attention - I would suggest you heed that warning.
Eliab
Purgatory host
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
Personally, I think that's an excellent reason to continue doing it. (Or at least to think very, very hard when thinking whether or not to stop doing it.)
Even where someone else has specifically asked you to stop? I think that is pretty rude.
I don't think it's rude to write one's own language in one's own way.
The government of the Ivory Coast has asked everyone to refer to the country as 'Cote d'Ivoire' regardless of language, and the government of the Ukraine would like everyone to drop the definite article when referring to the country. While these people can ask, I don't think it follows that everyone should fall into line.
It becomes even more loaded when it's people rather than countries. My mother once called my sister pretentious for pronouncing the name of Chilean writer Isabel as "ai-yen-day" rather than "al-en-dee". But surely no-one would insist on addressing that writer to her face using a mis-pronunciation?
Is it OK to willingly mis-pronounce the name of an absent famous person, but not a present famous person, or a present civilian?
At the other end of the spectrum, I probably would giggle if someone announced that they were going to Pareeee for the weekend...
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
Is it OK to willingly mis-pronounce the name of an absent famous person, but not a present famous person, or a present civilian?
I wouldn't have described Anglicisation as mis-pronounciation. To pronounce 'Don Quixote' as 'Don Kwiksot' rather than 'Don Kay-hote-tay isn't to mis-pronounce it, but to give it its Anglicised pronunciation. Using that pronunciation while speaking Spanish would be a little odd, admittedly.
quote:
It becomes even more loaded when it's people rather than countries. My mother once called my sister pretentious for pronouncing the name of Chilean writer Isabel as "ai-yen-day" rather than "al-en-dee". But surely no-one would insist on addressing that writer to her face using a mis-pronunciation?
Doesn't this happen all the time? If you listen to foreigners trying to pronounce English names they often put their own spin on it.
When Michael Schumacher is interviewed in English, he's called My-kel, not Meek-hay-el.
[ 13. February 2014, 13:10: Message edited by: Anglican't ]
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge
I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that people should be able to spell words the way they sound in their own accents, without considering that those who read the words might have an entirely different accent?
I'm thinking of the song from My Fair Lady which is sung by Liza Doolittle: "Wouldn't it be Lovely"
The first lines are:
“All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air”
To my New England ear, Liza's rendition could be spelled as follows:
"Oll Oi wont iz a rheum sumwheh
Fah Rawhey frem the coald noit aih"
People from my state might render it this way:
"Ahl I wunt iz a rum sumwheh
Faah 'away fr’m the cold nite aih"
People from the coastal south US might sing it as follows:
"All Ah wo-ant iyiz a ruom some whe-ah
Foh awah-y fr’m the co-ald naaht ai-ah"
In upper-class Brit-Speak, it might sound (from my point of reference) like this:
"Awl I wont iz a rheum somm wheh
Faah r’away from the coled nite eyuh"
And from the Ohio area, it might go this way:
"Orl I woant iz a rhum some wherrr
Farr away fr'm the cold nite errr"
It might be easier for individuals to spell as they (think) they speak, but it would render written communication -- which, after all, is what spelling is for -- far more complicated. Certainly it would slow our reading down.
There's overlap and similarities among these renditions, but I can't see how it helps us out with communicating easily and effectively.
If I've misunderstood, my apologies. Perhaps you're suggesting that opposite: that we each pronounce one spelling in our various ways.
But isn't that precisely what we do now?
I think this post qualifies as the best example of putting an issue to bed that I have seen on the Ship. AFAIAC, it completely debunks phonetic spelling reform, and the case for the maintenance of the status quo is unanswerable.
And yet - and yet - some languages, with as much diversity in pronunciation as English, do manage to have a far more phonetic spelling system.
It is true that a one to one grapheme to sound relationship that holds for all accents is likely to be impossible. However, a consistent grapheme to phoneme system is possible, and exists in a number of languages.
This is because whilst pronunciation of phonemes vary between accents, in the main they do so in a regular manner. Take for example the short 'u' in English. In the South this represents two different phonemes - the sound in "put", and the sound in "up". In the North this represents a single phoneme as the sound in southern "up" doesn't exist and the "put" sound is used in all positions.
Now if you try to base a reformed spelling system based solely on Northern English, you're going to have a problem. However, you could introduce two symbols to represent the two sounds; in some accents they'd be pronounced differently, in others the same, but the relationship would be consistent and the symbol would always carry the same sound for a particular speaker. It would not always be possible to predict spelling from the sound, if one's own accent doesn't differentiate, but it would always be possible to predict pronunciation (in one's accent) from spelling.
Similarly, it would be perfectly possible to always render the vowel phoneme in "write", "height" and "sigh", because regardless of how that vowel is realised in a particular accent, these words all contain the same sound within that accent. A west countryman doesn't need to respell it "oi", even if he pronounces it that way (to an RP ear), because the phoneme is always realised as that sound in his accent. So we could standardise and spell these words as "wreit", "heit" and "sei" (or whatever grapheme we choose) without having a problem with different accents. It can't be done naively, but English spelling certainly could be simplified. The status quo isn't the only option other than anarchy. It'd still be a standardised spelling, but it'd be a lot more logical and easy to learn that the current system, such as it is.
It works in Welsh, Spanish, Italian, Russian...
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Changing the standard could work. Eliminating the standard, which is what the OP discusses, is madness.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Standard spelling has to be based on a standard accent. And I want it to be mine of course.
Also we run out of vowels. English accents have anything from about 14 to about 28 vowels. We only have 5-8 letters to represent them. So either we invent a whole new alphabet or else set up loads of double-character symbols for vowels. Which means using 3 or 4 for diphthongs.
(5-8 because R, W, and Y often represent vowels. In my accent anyway. If they don't in yours, that just highlights the problem ![[Razz]](tongue.gif) )
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
It works in Welsh, Spanish, Italian, Russian...
Using Tuscan spelling in Italian to represent Roman or Venetian dialect is I think as contentious as using South East England spelling to represent Scots.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Standard spelling has to be based on a standard accent. And I want it to be mine of course.
OK, here's a suggested complete spelling reform! Just to show how unlikely it is to ever work, and how non-useful.
Some principles:
- See if we can make it work for SE English (RP, so-called "Estuary", London) and also General American
- use letters for their current meaning whenever possible
- when we have to use character pairs *either* use them in ways aklready familiar *or* invent new ones (i.e. don't try to re-use "th" or "ea" or "ng" to represent sounds they never represent already)
- recruit the redundant letters to do other things
- when a pair of characters represent a voiced or unvoiced consonant, use a pair for the other too (so we keep "sh" and "th" but add "zh" and "dh" to them)
First vowels, which are much harder to get right than consonants because standard English accents tend to differ by vowel shifts. splits, and mergers, with less diffeence between consomants. To deal with most varieties of standard English (we're not getting into dialects or very strange accents) you need to represent all the vowels from John Wells's "Lexical sets". The idea of this is that you and I may use different sounds to realise the vowel in the word "kit" but the chances are that whichever one we use there we will also use for "ship", "rim", "dim", and "spirit" (or own very close - probably no native speaker pronounces the two vowels in "spirit" exactly the same as each other)
Here is a list of them (mostly copied from that Wikip[edia page in the link): with Prof. Well's key words and a few examples of other words tht have the same or similar vowel (in my accent and others like it)
- KIT - ship, rip, dim, spirit
- DRESS - step, ebb, hem, terror
- TRAP - bad, cab, ham, arrow
- LOT - stop, rob, swan
- STRUT - cub, rub, hum
- FOOT - full, look, could
- BATH - staff, clasp, dance
- CLOTH - cough, long, laurel, origin
- NURSE - hurt, term, work, bird
- FLEECE - seed, key, seize
- FACE - weight, rein, steak
- PALM - calm, bra, father
- THOUGHT - taut, hawk, broad
- GOAT - soap, soul, home
- GOOSE - who, group, few
- PRICE - ripe, tribe, aisle, choir
- CHOICE - boy, void, coin
- MOUTH - pouch, noun, crowd, flower
- NEAR - beer, pier, fierce, serious
- SQUARE - care, air, wear, Mary
- START - far, sharp, farm, safari
- NORTH - war, storm, for, aural
- FORCE - or, floor, coarse, ore, oral
- CURE - poor, tour, fury
- happY - (silly, Tony, merry)
- lettER - (beggar, martyr, visor)
- commA - (China, sofa)
The last few in (brackets) because some over-zealous phoneticians think that all minimal-stress vowels in English are actually schwa. So they would use the same symbol for the "ou" in zealous and the "e" in "brackets". Which is perhaps going too far.
So all we need to represent all these vowels is to choose 28 characters, or character pairs, to represent them.
Start with the most common vowel in English: schwa, the one with no letter at all. As there is no character for it we recruit Y. (as in Welsh) That neatly allows us to use "YY" to represent the NURSE vowel which is a sort of stressed schwa (if such a monstrosity can be contemplated). A vowel character ({v}) followed by Y is a dipthong or glide ending in a schwa - so "Y" participates in no symbol pairs other than "YY"
Other single characters {v} represent their normal short vowel. Because rhotic accents still exist we need {v}R to represent a real consonantal R, so the non-rhotic long vowels need to be double characters. {v}R represents a real "r", not a non-rhotic's vocalised one
So that gives us something like:
- KIT = I
- DRESS = E
- TRAP = A
- LOT = O
- STRUT = U
- FOOT = UU
- BATH = AA
- CLOTH = O
- NURSE = YY
- FLEECE = EE
- FACE = EI
- PALM = AA
- THOUGHT = AW
- GOAT = OE
- GOOSE = OO
- PRICE = AI
- CHOICE = OI
- MOUTH = OW
- NEAR = IY
- SQUARE = EY
- START = AA
- NORTH = AW
- FORCE = AW
- CURE = UE
- schwa = Y
- happY = I/EE (depending on how stressed it is)
- lettER = Y/YY (ditto)
- commA = Y/A(ditto)
OK, that means "air" has to be spelled "ey" ("SQUARE" vowel, something like an "e" followed by a schwa) but there you go. English is like that. I'll represent that change by "air"->"ey"
Consonants are much easier.
Most are as now (unvoiced,voiced pairs)
A pity we can't do dark L but its more or less vocalised in most British English anyway so may not matter much.
C can become "Ch" alongside "J" So "church"->"cyyc" (looks almost Welsh...)
H is as now, SX can be a voiced H, very rare in English these days but exists in a few loan words. And it makes for symmetry
"NG" is hard. It represents both the velar nasal "ing" (possibly followed by a /g/ or /k/) and the separate sounds /n/ /g/ And its different in different accents. Tempting to restrict "ng" to /ng/ but its so common we can't really. So ambiguity creeps in however hard we try.
So new or changed or double symbols:
Oh, and we need a glottal stop. "'" is traditional, but I don't want to use that, because it makes all the worlds look like bad namers from Anne McCaffrey books. So recruit Q.
So "A pint of bitter please" -> "Y paint yv bity pleez" in RP but "Y painq yv biqy pleez" in mine ![[Smile]](smile.gif) North Americans mileage may vary.
[Edited - minor fix to code that was bugging me - Eliab]
[ 13. February 2014, 22:29: Message edited by: Eliab ]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
There is no AA here up north.
Bath and cat rhyme
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
There is no AA here up north.
Bath and cat rhyme
That's the point! That's why an excercise like this prioves that spelling reform can;t work because no useful reform will piss off less than 60% of all English speakers.
For example in the best traditions of the other thread on much the same subject, here is a snippet of That Song in traditional orthography:
quote:
All I want is a place somewhere,
Far away from the cold night air,
With one enormous chair.
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?
And in Kenreformed Superspelling (in the original Cockney):
quote:
Awl Ai wonq iz y pleis sumweyy,
Faa ywei from dhy coed nait eyy,
Wiv wun eenawmus ceyy.
Oe, wuudn iq bee luvyylee?
That would l;ook different if respelled by a Californian. Even using the same spelling system. at least the current version is mildly annoyimng for everyone.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Pancho
Shipmate
# 13533
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
So either we invent a whole new alphabet...
It has been tried before:
Behold the Shavian alphabet.
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“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped to you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’"
Posts: 1988 | From: Alta California | Registered: Mar 2008
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
The word “bath” is little problematic as a pronunciation guide, at least in Amerispeak. Where I live, most people pronounce this word with a vowel that sounds like the exclamation, “Ah!” Midwesterners pronounce “bath” with a vowel more like the one in “hat.” In the Boston area, where I was born, the same sound occurs in bath, can’t, laugh, and calf, but it’s a little different from the Boston Brahmin pronunciation (rarely heard any more), which is more like the exclamation “Aw!” and might be represented in your system with “o”. A larger issue is that many Americans pronounce “palm” and “calm” with that “aw” sound too. But let me give this a whirl (in my own accent, which many people here mistake for British, despite my decidedly rhotic r):
Ol Ai wont iz y ruum sumweyr
Faar ywey frum dhy coeld nait eyr
I can’t quite see how to spell the “wh” sound in “where.” I know many people now say these words as though there were no “h” there, but many others expel a little breath when saying the “w” sound, so “where” sounds different from “wear.”
Don’t know how far off this takes us (my accent is not typical) from the standard derived from your pronunciation.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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RooK
1 of 6
# 1852
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Posted
[adminly attention]
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Personally, I'll call a place whatever I damn well like. So for me that's Bombay, Peking (in Finnish it is still called Peking), Constantinople and Bonkersland for America.
Ad Orientem, a thread on spelling seems an odd place to want to display an inability to read for comprehension, but as you were clearly asked by a host not to post anything that looked like an attempt to start a pond war, it seems that is what you are doing.
This is a violation of commandment 1 (trying to disrupt a thread with deliberately provocative comments) and commandment 6 (doing that after a host asks you to stop). Do not do this again.
Eutychus has already warned you that you were at risk of attracting adminly attention - I would suggest you heed that warning.
Eliab
Purgatory host
Commandment 6: violation.
Commandment 1: added to dossier.
[Shoves Ad Orientem overboard for 2 weeks.]
[/adminly attention]
Posts: 15274 | From: Portland, Oregon, USA, Earth | Registered: Nov 2001
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
I think that Pancho is correct; the double-lettering which English must use to represent sounds is only increased by most spelling reform advocates and the use of aa and q just makes at text seem like furniture assembly instructions in Somali. I had a copy of Androcles in Shavian many years ago but it has since disappeared. While I was able to read it fairly easily, my etymological self missed the word-origin aspects of much odd spelling in English. Another possibility is to import a few extra characters and supplement the 26 (as the Icelandics do).
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
I can’t quite see how to spell the “wh” sound in “where.” I know many people now say these words as though there were no “h” there, but many others expel a little breath when saying the “w” sound, so “where” sounds different from “wear.”
Phonetically, the sound is [hw].
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
That's all very well, but
a. Even in ordinary English, 'aisle' isn't quite the same vowel as 'price'. It's got an extra schwa sound in it.
b. The vowels in 'cure' and 'fury' are probably the same but the vowels in 'poor' and 'tour' aren't the same vowel as those two, and depending on who is speaking aren't always the same vowel as each other. There are a lot of different ways 'poor' is pronounced, but is there anywhere that 'poor' and 'pure' are pronounced the same?
c. Do you include the 'r' that is rhotic dialects or omit it, even though some people are pronouncing it and some are leaving it out? Under the Ken system, is 'part' spelt 'paat' or 'paart'? and
d. There's no 'l' in 'father' but round here, the 'l' in 'palm' and 'calm' is pronounced. And that's leaving aside completely whether there is an 'l' on the end of 'bra' or not.
As for 'a' and 'aa', there are parts of England where 'bath' is pronounced with a short 'a', parts where it has a long 'a' like 'ah' and parts where it has a sound more like the baa that a sheep makes. And even that's ignoring how various 'a's might be pronounced in the USA, Canada, Australia etc.
English spelling at the moment may be illogical, but at least you can read it. And at least we must be about the only language that has managed to produce a spelling system with no accents.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
I can’t quite see how to spell the “wh” sound in “where.” I know many people now say these words as though there were no “h” there, but many others expel a little breath when saying the “w” sound, so “where” sounds different from “wear.”
Phonetically, the sound is [hw].
Local listings may vary.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Ken - I think the problem is that you're still aiming at a phonetic spelling system, rather than a phonemic spelling system. Moreover, as I said earlier, it's probably impossible to create a perfectly phonemic system as well, but I can see why folk might want something a bit less problematic (it's not problematic for me because my brain seems to be wired the right way, but it's definitely problematic for a lot of people) than what we have at the moment.
Even Gaelic has a better grapheme/phoneme correspondence than English ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
We seem to be forgetting that words are primarily used to convey ideas not the sound. Ancient scripts made no attempt to convey the sound of a word.
True, it helps to know how the word sounds to interpret it.
However, if I see 'bath' and pronounce it 'barth' and a northern person makes it rhyme with cat we accept that as an accent difference and soon get to understand.
That might seem like a good reason for leaving the spelling of 'light' as it is. But children have to learn to read. A vast number of ghastly exceptions and rules could (or ought)to be swept aside to make this task easier even if it was limited only to the first thousand most commonly used words in the English language.
Since it was the ignorant that first defined the spelling of words a few simple revisions by the moderately literate would help a hell of a lot.
The professors of language worry about a method of defining pronounciation - it can't be done.
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
pydseybare quote:
.. why can we not also say that a) standardised spelling is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they spell words..?
Because unlike a spoken word, a written word cannot be enlarged upon by the speaker to convey what they mean.
So if someone cannot convey what they mean, in writing, we deem them as unable to write. This in commerce is a totally different catagory to accent which, by and large, is accepted
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
Because unlike a spoken word, a written word cannot be enlarged upon by the speaker to convey what they mean.
So if someone cannot convey what they mean, in writing, we deem them as unable to write. This in commerce is a totally different catagory to accent which, by and large, is accepted
I'm not sure it is about meaning, but about writing in a socially accepted way, where the social norms are dictated by shadowy and mythical figures who may have a point when discussing the finer points of Common Law but have no practical use to the rest of us.
And one can write using standard spelling whilst being impossible to understand. The one is not an indication of the other.
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"If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."
Posts: 812 | Registered: Jan 2011
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
pydseybare quote:
And one can write using standard spelling whilst being impossible to understand.
An art in itself!
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
At the moment, one can read most things published in the last 400 years. There have been a few gradual changes but they don't cause too much of a problem. Words like 'public' no longer end with a 'k'. There will probably be others in the future. Will 'light' become 'lite' or will there still be two spellings, one for when it means an illumination, or 'not heavy' and the other for 'simplified but a bit facile', like at the moment? Will 'doughnut' become 'donut' which conceals its meaning, unless 'dough' becomes 'do' which would be spelt the same way as a word pronounced differently? Or perhaps 'do'nut'?
Don't both 'lite' and 'donut' get some of their verbal force precisely from the fact that they aren't the correct spelling and most people know that? 'Lite' means a lite version of light. 'Donut' is meant to convey that the product is a whizzo, fun sort of doughnut.
Suddenly changing spelling to Ken's model, which I don't think Ken really believes in, would cut everyone hereafter from all that has gone before. So I'd be against it.
[ 14. February 2014, 11:46: Message edited by: Enoch ]
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
OK, so if we're agreed that a) standardised pronounciation is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they pronounce words..
... why can we not also say that a) standardised spelling is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they spell words..?
Because a standardised spelling is practicable as has been demonstrated by the very usage said standardised spelling. Misspelling is more education than region.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
... why can we not also say that a) standardised spelling is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they spell words..?
For children or people just learning English as a second language, sure.
For native speakers in their 50s, fuck no.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
OK, so if we're agreed that a) standardised pronounciation is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they pronounce words..
But have we in fact agreed that? We've certainly demonstrated that pronunciation isn't standardized. I'm not persuaded that means it can't be. In fact, I'd argue that, within the U.S., pronunciation is becoming more standardized all the time. My great-uncle had a pronounced "up country" New Hampshire accent, and that accent was very common wherever I visited among my NH relatives and their friends. It was also very distinctive. That accent, or rather some features of it, have, 30-40 years on, disappeared. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone these days who says "ayuh" the way that great uncle and others did. The sharply-pronounced terminal T-sound in words like "bite" or "eat" has vanished and been replaced by a sort of glottal stop.
While this is partly the result of "flatlanders" moving in-state, I suspect it's far more a product of mass communication, with its universal Middle-American speech coming at us from every television and radio. In my young adulthood, I recall having trouble in other parts of the country achieving mutual understandability due to differences in regional accents. I haven't encountered that problem in at least 20 years.
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
... why can we not also say that a) standardised spelling is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they spell words..?
But inferring things about the speller is not the sole issue. It's also about enabling a reader to accurately understand what the speller is trying to communicate. One of my staff people struggles with words that sound alike but are spelled differently, and it's sometimes hard to decipher what activities she assisted our client with from her reports as a result.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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