Many many many many languages in the world are written phonetically, in that there is a consistency between standard pronunciation and spelling. German, for example, is largely phonetic, and a governmental agency makes sure it remains so (I know, I know, there are exceptions!!)
The larger question here is whether a single dialect of English could be chosen as the standard. Keep in mind that there are a whole lot of languages that have spelling MUCH more phonetic (to a standard) than English that HAVE chosen a standard in spite of dialectical variation equal to or exceeding that found in English: i.e. Italian, Japanese, German, Spanish, Arabic, etc.
English has an odd habit of preserving historic spelling patterns to a degree found rarely – French and Czech do it also. English, however, is historically a voracious consumer of foreign vocabulary, so it appears even more pronounced.
Its interesting how China, a country with enormous linguistic diversity, manages to sidestep the issue!
German is not phonetically spelled. Hochdeutsch is phonetically spelled, and that is from the single northern dialect of the German languages that was used by Martin Luther. There is as much or more variety in the German languages than there is in the English languages.
Well, China has gajillions of dialects, and many of them sound as similar to eachother as Japanese does to French. The only thing they have in common is the written language which is mostly formalized, but not entirely. So while China ‘sidesteps’ the phonetic issue, there are other issues the language must deal with.
Welcome aboard, J-Po. No doubt you can expect some sarcastic comments about your failure to use capitals properly in a thread about English, but I’m sure your point is well taken all the same.
We didn’t “knock the 'u’s out”. Anyone who is not utterly ignorant in the history of English orthography will know that the variants were both acceptable in English spelling and the two styles diverged.
Not only Spanish, but Italian and Portuguese are phonetic. Of cousre the alphabet is insuficient to represent all sounds, that’s why Spanish uses ll ,Portuguese uses lh and Italian uses gl for the same sound, for which no single letter exists. In the same way, phonetic English would need the consonantal group th , but would prescind of ph and we could write fonetic .
By the way, this word is written fonetico in Italian and fonético both in Spanish and in Portuguese.
About the differences in prononciation, some compromise must be taken. Italy used the Tuscan phonetics to standardize it’s writing.
Portugal and Brazil have an agreement for the orthography (we write it ortografia ) although there is difference in pronontiation between the two countries and inside them from region to region.
Phonetic English is not impossible nor difficult. The question is Do you want it?
Unlike the rest of you guys (I’m assuming) I’ve had to deal with the phonetic vs. traditional spelling issue since I was about 5. My name is Laurie, derived from the word laurel, and since I learned to write my name I’ve had to correct people who thought my name was spelled Lori.
An easy mistake to make, as there are plenty of people who spell it Lori, but what always pissed me off was when they remarked that it was strange that I spelled my name the way I did. No, it’s not, it’s spelled the same as the plant it’s derived from, it’s just some idiot decided Laurie was too hard to spell and thought Lori would be easier, and now MY name is spelled “wrong.”
Sorry that’s one of my pet peeves. But another one of my pet peeves is what I see as the breakdown of the English language. Everywhere I look I see someone who apparently forgot all the grammar rules I learned in elementary school. Stupid shit like “it’s” is the contraction for “it is” and “its” (no apostrophe) is possessive. When making something plural you add an -s or an -es. Can someone tell me where the rest of America got it into their heads that you use an apostrophe to make a word plural? I apparently missed that English lesson.
I could go on and on about how the average American can no longer speak or write English, but I’ll spare you. But getting back to the OP, the reason I think we shouldn’t have phonetic spelling is that’s just laziness. Poor grammar, phonetic spelling, that’s all because someone was too lazy to correct kids when they got into the habit of spelling a word wrong or using an apostrophe incorrectly.
But another reason we shouldn’t have phonetic spelling is there’s no way we could convince the British to do it, so eventually American kids wouldn’t be able to read the King’s English. And it would be a big pain in the ass to have to “translate” the newest Harry Potter book into phonetic American English.