We do exactly this in speech every time. I can’t imagine that it’s all that difficult.
whose
Heck with Finnish, go with Hawaiian, with only 13 letters used. And it’s so easy to spell!
Who could misspell humuhumunukunukuapua’a?
only 13 letters? I learn something new every day.
Just learn the international phonetic alphabet and then spell things the way you say them, the way they sound.
Srsly? Spelling reform?
I’d like to introduce you to my buddies Sisyphus and Don Quixote, they have stories I’m sure you’ll find applicable.
Thereby producing text which is only intelligible to people who share your accent.
Noah Webster and the Chicago Tribune have already succeeded in the battle for spelling reform. So it has already happened. If it weren’t for that spelling reform you would be spelling all words like fiber as fibre so all 'er" words as ‘re’ and you would be spelling ‘program’ as ‘programme’. And wouldn’t your rather spell ‘accommodate’ as ‘acomodate’?
Actually it wouldn’t be as bad as people coming up with all kinds of different transcriptions, as it’s done now when representing accents. My cite? Any thread in the Dope about pronunciation or rhyme.
The Chicago Tribune’s influence is limited - please remember that the entire Anglosphere is not American. Go outside America (or the Midwest for Tribune modifications) and you’re back to the older/alternate spelling. So what, exactly, has been accomplished other than having to remember different spellings?
The biggest reason it will never happen was explained by George and Ira Gershwin (with help from Astaire and Rogers): Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.
And that’s a serious point: you say Tamayto, I say Tamahto. Which do you spelling choose? Or do you use both?
I say “murderer.” You say “murdrer.” Others say “mahdrer.” Which do you choose?
Are Mary, marry, and merry spelled the same in the new system? Pronunciation of the three words varies across the US, and in some areas they are the same.
This isn’t trivial – if your goal is to “spell things the way they’re pronounced,” you will create spellings that are not like those usually used in certain areas. And you’re just creating a new version of the problem you’re trying to solve – just with different words.
And the bigger issue is the fact that all English words are spelled the way they were pronounced – at the time the word entered the language. Thus, something like “knight” had all its letters (the “gh” was used to refer to the velar fricative, which dropped out of the language a few centuries later). All the pronunciations for -ough also were caused by the loss of the velar fricative.
And even if you can come up with something that spells all words as they are pronounced (essentially impossible), pronunciation changes happen all the time. And eventually, someone will talk about a new spelling reform to “spell words the way they’re pronounced.” And the circle of nonsense goes on…
If you can understand people when they actually say “tomahto” or “I pahhkt the kaaa ett haavaaad yaaad”, you would be able to understand the IPA rendition. That’s the point: you would spell things the way you would pronounce them and people who read it would ‘hear’ you just as if you’d said it out loud. (Or they would if they could read IPA at any rate).
That is how I spell those words.
I think that the spoken language is disappearing completely with the proliferation of computers and texting and twittering, etc. I think we should adopt a more logical and comprehensive communication paradigm. One that represents the full flavor of information exchange in this day and age. One that we can all understand and use in a clear and concise manner. So, to your proposal to simply rework spelling instead of represent communication properly, I say
<?xml version="2.0" encoding="WTF-8"?>
<language dialect="urban" modifier="geek" preference="science-fiction-fan"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2030/XMLSchema-language"
xsi:namespaceSchemaLanguage=".\LanguageSchema.xsd">
<geolocation>
<coordinates accuracy="85%" altitude="300m"
latitude="32.827455" longitude="-97.050279" heading="90" speed="0" />
</geolocation>
</language>
<sentence>
<structure form="simple" />
<word relation="nominative" form="shrinking" instantiation="pronoun"
multiplicity="singular" reference="self" attributive="me" capitalized="true">
<origin language="middle-english" relation="old-english" reference="ic" />
<origin language="old-high-german" reference="ih" />
<origin language="latin" reference="ego" />
I
<pronunciation>\,ieah\</pronunciation>
</word>
<word relation="intransitive" instantiation="verb">
<origin language="middle english" modifier="refuse" reference="assent" />
<origin language="anglo-french" modifier="des" reference="agreer" />
disagree
<pronunciation>\,dis-e-'grE\</pronunciation>
</word>
<terminal emphasis="standard" urgency="none">
.
</terminal>
</structure>
</sentence>
That’s actually a reworking of an old joke about making English end up more like a thick German accent.
Uh, I pronounce the “ence” words and the “ance” words differently in my dialect.
I frequently encounter word games or dialect representations that I have to struggle to understand, because I don’t pronounce the words the way the person who wrote that example does. Take something like “Wazzup”. That’s a very unnatural butchering. I only know it because of that horrible commercial that made it a pop culture meme.
Or take an example from Harry Potter, “Diagon Alley” for diagonally. The author seems to pronounce the word more like dia GONE uhly, whereas I pronounce it more di AG uh nully.
I doubt that Rowling actually pronounces “diagonally” significantly different from the rest of us; there’s only so much you can do in pursuit of a pun.
One reason for Finns’ superior reading and spelling might be, as I learned a few years back, the huge cultural bias in favour of being literate and numerate. As I understand it, until comparatively recently Finns who did not pass a public literacy test in their mid-teens weren’t allowed to marry. That was enough incentive for most (and possibly bred out the ones who couldn’t be arsed to learn to read).
I’d like spelling reform to happen. It won’t.
We had much better reasons to go metric. We didn’t. (personally, my car gets 300 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it!)
Re Spanish
I agree it’s much easier to spell. Also, being a Latin language and following (mostly anyway) Latin rules it’s easier to learn and to use. Spansih was a breeze in high school.
Re Esperanto
I have some friends who speak it. They even have The Hobbit in Esperanto. Esperanto is easy to spell, has grammar that makes sense, and belongs to no one country or culture. For a while, it seemed that it would overtake French as the language of diplomacy. These days, Esperanto is a footnote and a hobby.
To reform English spelling, all you have to do is convince a super majority of English speakers to follow your lead. Good luck with that.
I think the problem is that there are too many redundant letters in the English language. We should switch to the Decabet.
The Germans have had regular reviews of their spelling, when my mother learned German in the 40s (in England, when they thought German might become more useful than French!) it was “photograph” as in English and street was “straße”. When I learned German in the 70’s it was fotograf but street was still “straße”. Today, it is “strasse”.
Unfortunately there is a problem with different pronunciations. I DO pronounce library and February with 2 Rs and I put a D in Wednesday. As I have a non-rhotic accent I do not pronounce the R in letter so shortening it to LETR is meaningless. The E at the end of many (most?) words actually has a function - it makes the vowel long (vowel has 2 syllables so it’s not VOWL) e.g. made and mad are different.
Sometimes American spelling is more logical, e.g. color. Sometimes it’s not, educated Brits want to pronounce traveling as traveeling (the double L in travelling makes the preceding vowel short - it’s the reverse of the final e and can be seen in e.g. running).
It’s a huge subject, but one where Americans, British, and Commonwealth have to work together. There are more English speakers in India than in the US!!
A better statement is that there are more English speakers in South Asia than in the U.S. And that there are more English speakers in India than any other country else besides the U.S.