Simplifid Speling

[herpguy]

Shuud thar be simplifid speling in the every day English language (yooz this questun for the pol abuv)?

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060705/ap_on_re_us/simpl_wurdz

[Phi for All]

There is a special level of Hell for those who even suggest such a thing.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Let's not. Switching to it would take so much effort it wouldn't be worth it - I could hardly read the phonetic parts of that article myself, because I had to switch between the styles and spellings. If there was a transition, it would suck until everyone got used to it.

[insane_alien]

hey why don't we all just ditch our languages and take up klingon. it'll make things so much easier. we don't even need a written language anyway. /sarcasm

[Dak]

A (truly) phonetic language would be great. Easyer to spell, easyer to read.

 

Also, easyer for foreighners to learn, which would be nice for them.

 

The only problem that i can see is in regional accents. e.g., for me 'lets check into that hotel and get some cucumber sandwiches' would be

 

lets chek int tha otel an geh sum quecumbr sanwijes.

 

for someone else, it might be

 

lez check intee thah otel an ge soom quecombur sarndwidjas.

 

(bonus points for gussing the accents).

 

so, i'm not sure english could be truly phonetic per se. it'd still be difficult to spell proper due to yer accent, loik.

 

anyway, even ignoring accents, it'd be difficult; e.g., i reacon this:

 

Shuud thar be simplifid speling in the every day English language (yooz this questun for the pol abuv)?

 

should be this:

 

shud ther bee simplifyd speling in thee evry dai inglish langwij (yoos this qeschon for the pol abuv)

 

wich is a pity, coz i'd realy liek to see a fonetic inglish langwij, that ie migt actualy bee able too spel proper

[Mokele]

Some simplifications and modifications are inevitable. For instance, if I talk about 'lite' beer, you know what I'm talking about. But I doubt it'll spread to *all* words.

 

Now, what I *am* interested in is if 133t, or aspects of it like 'b4' will ever enter common useage, given the ever-growing prevalence of the internet.

 

Mokele

[SmallIsPower]

America still hasn't adopted the metric system, despite Jimmy Carter's best attempts, and that is much more logical. I'm typing this on a qwerty keyboard, they were designed to slow typists up, so the keys wouldn't get tangled up, 100 years ago. Faster keyboards have been designed, but not adopted. If your going to worry, worry about an asteriod, it's more likely.

[AzurePhoenix]

I've always loved the concept of a phonetic language, with alphabetic symbols for each potentially common or even not so common sound. I've fiddled with the idea myself and came up with an alphabet needing at least 47 letters, and I know I missed a load of obvious and potential ones. The alphabet might be marginally tougher, but I think the whole language (at least from vocabulary's point of view) would get much easier.The only issue would be words that sound alike, like two, to and too, or hole and whole.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Esperanto anybody?

[Dak]

I've always loved the concept of a phonetic language, with alphabetic symbols for each potentially common or even not so common sound. I've fiddled with the idea myself and came up with an alphabet needing at least 47 letters, and I know I missed a load of obvious and potential ones. The alphabet might be marginally tougher, but I think the whole language (at least from vocabulary's point of view) would get much easier.The only issue would be words that sound alike, like two, to and too, or hole and whole.

 

If you only use the letters to represent the basic sounds, i think you can get away with about 35 letters:

 

All the constenents

a,e,i * 3 different ways of pronounsing each

o,u * 2 """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

th, ch, sh.

 

minus c. (it does nothing that k can't).

 

as for phonetically identical words, the context should give it away.

[ydoaPs]

minus c. (it does nothing that k can't)..

May I see your driver's likense?

[Dak]

kertainly

 

Drivers lisens.

 

OK, c either performs the role of s or k

 

The only time it makes a unique sound is in 'ch', in which case 'c' may as well be pronounced 'ch' in the first place, eg 'curc' for the plase you go to pray.

 

One thing to note re: the alphabet, is that it actually contains 52 charectors, 26 of which are redundant.

 

My 35ish letter alphabet, or Aze's 47 letter alphabet, would still be shorter than the current one.

 

On the subject of tinkering with the english alphabet, the main three items on my wish-list for the english language, along with more phonetic spellings, are:

 

terminal s (indicating ownership) to be switched with z. s is a stupid choice, as loads of words end with s anyway; z would have less potential for confusion, and would eliminate the requirement for an apostrophy.

 

No pluralisation. It's unnessesary.

 

No capital letters. People and places don't need capital letters, and new sentances are marked with a full-stop anyway.

[AzurePhoenix]

When I started off I had it around 35ish too, but after a few weeks, when you start to hear certain sounds in words that don't obviously spring to mind, the number slowly grows upwards, and maybe I'm just too attentive to detail, but I think they all fit rather well. I had the list written somewhere, I'll see if I can find it. And yeah, I exiled 'c' too; useless little bastard once you have something for 'ch'

 

the 'ow' sound for instance. or the 'ng' in 'ing'

 

oh, to make it clear, the way I tweaked mine was to suggest that every sound be able to stand alone, without requiring two or more letters to modifiy it into existence.

[Dak]

I guess it depends how accurately you want to portray the sounds, and also wether you favour a short alphabet or short words.

 

I'll try to find my list too. how were you handling the different vowel sounds? iirc, i had e, ee, and E for the shorter, longer, and upper-case pronunciations respectively.

 

e.g.,

 

hed, heer, and hEd (for head, her, and heed), or something like that.

 

the 'ow' sound for instance. or the 'ng' in 'ing'

 

By my way, it would have been something like 'aaw' and 'ng'.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

International Phonetic Alphabet anybody?

[ecoli]

This was suggested on a national level in the early 1900's during Teddy Roosevelts presidency. He rejected most of the words, but a couple of words that were added to the dictionary on a national level were 'thu' and 'lite'

[JustStuit]

A (truly) phonetic language would be great. Easyer to spell' date=' easyer to read.

[/quote']

Latin is the best. Everything is always pronounced the same! Do latin. Do what sounds right.

[subliminal]LATIN[/subliminal]

Yeah, I'm bored.

[YT2095]

Russian is similar it has 33 letters in the alphabet, most all is spelled phoneticly, there are more vowels than we have but they don`t have to use vowel combinations to alter sounds.

once you get around the basic concepts, Russian is quite simple as a writen language.

 

as for ruining the English language, Certainly Not!

[gcol]

The tower of babel must have been a fun place to live, probably why it was destroyed.

 

So much easier to control and censor when everyone is shoehorned into the same dumbed down language.

[Klaynos]

I thought there already was a simplified version, it's called "American"...

 

 

On a more seriouse note, people have been having this debate for around a century, as I see it, it would be quite difficult to bring in, look at 1984, there the discussion of changing to a differnt form of English in that... Most people would just stick with the old method...

 

Then there's those of us who are dyslexic, who would be completely messed up by this...

[Dak]

Actually, i'm dyslexic, and my main problem is in spelling words that deviate from the phonetic rules, or where it's not clear which phonetic rules the word follows.

 

take minute for example. i can only spell it cause i remember it as minute as in tiny. otherwize i try to spell it 'minit'. latin-based scientific words, i hardly ever misspell 'cos they follow their own phonetic rules strictly.

 

kinda related, has anyone looked into 'simplified english'/simplified technical english? It's english with a reduced vocabulary, designed for less ambiguity.

 

e.g. http://www.userlab.com/SE.html

 

Kinda groovy i thought, mainly because i feel that, as the natural speakers of the international language of communication, we should make an effort to make english easyer for foreighners to learn (espescially as this means we get away without having to learn a foreighn language).

[Severian]

take minute for example. i can only spell it cause i remember it as minute as in tiny. otherwize i try to spell it 'minit'. latin-based scientific words' date=' i hardly ever misspell 'cos they follow their own phonetic rules strictly.

[/quote']

 

I must admit, I don't understand that logic. 'minute' sounds nothing like 'tiny' so I don't see how it would help with your spelling. You presumably mean that you learned how to pronounce (or spell) the word 'minute' as in 'tiny' before you learned how to pronounce (or spell) the word 'minute' as in 1/60th of an hour. Does that mean that if you had learned the 1/60th of on hour definition first, you would need a trick to be able to spell the 'tiny' definition?

 

I think phonetic spelling is actually very confusing. For example, I have seen people claim that 'there' and 'their' should be spelled the same way because they sound the same. Bollocks! The words 'there' and 'their' sound completely different!

 

Someone in this thread was claiming that the phonetic spelling of 'hotel' should be 'otel'. Er, no, it would be 'hotel'.

 

Since we all speak differently, only one portion of the community would be able to spell phentically - all the rest would have to figure out what was being said by trying to put on a daft accent.

 

If you get to use phonetic spelling then I should be allowed to call you 'Dick'.

 

Edit: Even the title of this thread does not correspond to the phonetic for the phrase "Simplified Spelling".

[Dak]

I must admit, I don't understand that logic. 'minute' sounds nothing like 'tiny' so I don't see how it would help with your spelling. You presumably mean that you learned how to pronounce (or spell) the word 'minute' as in 'tiny' before you learned how to pronounce (or spell) the word 'minute' as in 1/60th of an hour. Does that mean that if you had learned the 1/60th of on hour definition first, you would need a trick to be able to spell the 'tiny' definition?

 

Minute as in very small. different word, but spelt the same.

 

Whenever i have to spell minit, i just remember to spell it as if i were righting minute (the word that means tiny), logic being that minute (as in small) is spelt phonetically, whereas minute (unit of time) is not.

 

Someone in this thread was claiming that the phonetic spelling of 'hotel' should be 'otel'. Er, no, it would be 'hotel'.

 

Since we all speak differently, only one portion of the community would be able to spell phentically - all the rest would have to figure out what was being said by trying to put on a daft accent.

 

Indeed, this would make it difficult.

 

BUT, if we could all remember the PROPER way of pronounsing stuff, it shouldn't be inpossible to figure out how it should be spelt.

 

 

Umm... dick is in no way the phonetic spelling of my name.

 

'dak' is the phonetic spelling of 'dak'

[GutZ]

You people scare me in all the wrong ways.

[ecoli]

The tower of babel must have been a fun place to live, probably why it was destroyed.

 

The tower of babel was more like a staircase that the people were building to reach God.

 

To stop them, God created different languages so people could no longer communicate with each other, so they couldn't build it anymore.