Simplifid Speling

[Severian]

Whenever i have to spell minit' date=' 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.

[/quote']

 

But that is the point. 'Minute' as in small is not phonetic. A phonetic spelling would be something like 'mynewt'. If you actually pronounce every letter you get 'minute' sounding something like min-nutty

 

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.

 

lol - but then you have to remember the 'proper' pronunciation, which is harder than remembering the spelling!

 

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

 

It is the way I pronounce it. (Although I may mumble 'head' at the end.)

[Dak]

But that is the point. 'Minute' as in small is not phonetic. A phonetic spelling would be something like 'mynewt'. If you actually pronounce every letter you get 'minute' sounding something like min-nutty

 

Ah, i see what you mean.

 

But, it's more phonetic than minute (unit of time) was my point.

 

 

lol - but then you have to remember the 'proper' pronunciation, which is harder than remembering the spelling!

 

Yeah, but then that would have some benifits to it -- people with strong accents being able to speak to each other by switching to the proper pronunciation, for example.

 

 

 

It is the way I pronounce it. (Although I may mumble 'head' at the end.)

 

Oi!

 

From now on, i'm pronounsing 'severian' as 'shit-face'

 

is 'dak' really pronounced 'dick' with your accent?

[5614]

Woa... all of this, 27 posts. It would just be easier to stick with what we've got at the moment.

 

One day, when the whole world speaks English (even those Americans!) no one will worry about things like this!*

 

(*I don't actually think this will ever happen - but I do think it should)

[Cloud]

Esperanto anybody?

 

That's what I was thinking:D

 

No simplified spelling!! English is hard enough as it is.

[ydoaPs]

Woa... all of this' date=' 27 posts. It would just be easier to stick with what we've got at the moment.

 

One day, when the whole world speaks English (even those Americans!) no one will worry about things like this!*

 

([i']*I don't actually think this will ever happen - but I do think it should[/i])

Why English?

[reor]

(Thank you . At least some tidying would be nice.

Not that i mind it, but this doesn't make much sense to me: laugh, tough, through... you get my point. Two examples with a weird combo that almost sounds like "F" and one where the last two letters are totally idle!

 

In germany, we tried changing from the "ß" (ss-sound, looks almost like a "B") character to simply "ss", which is pronounced the same. That was in '96. We're still at it.

[why?]

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

Totally agreed. Why do we Americans want to make everything easier. Sure there are a few hard but WTF can't you just learn them. Are you that stupid. Y dont you just give up on life coz you cant spell a word. No, you just sit there and cry the shit out of yourself coz you cant spell a word like.. bouquet ( hopefully spelling is right )

 

BTW i accidently said yes when i wanted to say no sorry.

 

Oh and another thing: Y the F*** cant we understand metric system. I mean how hard is it really? multiply by 10 or divide by 10. :-O. I mean seriously.. its not like we have to do multiplication or division by 10 in our head ( which isnt that hard if you look at it) but we have calculators.

I think metric system is way easier than the english method.

[J'Dona]

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

[subliminal]LATIN[/subliminal]

Yeah' date=' I'm bored.[/quote']Consentio, omnis nostri linguam Latinam discere creati essemus; non dubito quin omnes illum amarent,

 

which (if the above is proper) translates literally into something like

 

I agree, all we language Latin to learn we should have been made; no I doubt that all that they would love.

 

Actually, I think it's a good idea, but if I want to win the election I'd simply ban mobiles to stop degrading the language. It would be easier, really. But as it is the proposed phonetic spellings don't account for different accents and words which are pronounced identically, so to make the proposed system at least more effective, both of those would need to be corrected, and I doubt inventing a slathering of new words and suppressing cultural variance sits well for many people. And one way to instantly make 60 million Britons militantly against the idea is to note that the American pronunciations and spellings (and chiefly American pressure for the change, it seems) would probably make the change in their favour.

 

I think metric system is way easier than the english method.

The funny thing is, it's not even the system used by the English any more. The only country in the world, other than the United States, which uses the Imperial system is Liberia.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Esperanto, not Latin, would be the ideal "simplified" language, and it's already known by somewhere around 2 million people. We don't need to go on about simplified English or Latin or whatever; Esperanto is incredibly simple - about 900 root words, and allowing you to combine prefixes, roots, and suffixes to make new ones - and easy to learn. If someone started that initiative again, it would be one that most people could handle.

 

There's really no use in trying to simplify English anyways - it'll just screw up the language even more. It's too complicated to start with.

[J'Dona]

You're right about English being too complicated as it is. And doesn't it have the largest number of words of any language?

 

Esperanto is a good choice in that it does use words from various European languages to make up its vocabulary, such as English and Polish and Latin, so people [who speak a European language] are likely to already be familiar with much of it; however, the same can be said for Latin also, as the Romance languages stemmed from it, and massive amounts of English are drawn from it also. I studied Esperanto from the age of 7 to 13 (though I hardly remember any now) and found that I knew where many of the words came from, and the same is true for Latin now (though of course much later, when I have a slightly better vocabulary).

 

I admit Esperanto seemed easier to pick up, and would probably be a better choice (for English speakers at least) as a simplified language. Latin simply has extant literature from over two thousand years ago, and more depth and uses in technical fields. (But then Latin is also a "dead" language, so we can't exactly add words for "computer" or "mobile phone.")

 

 

As a total aside, I'll bet learning both Latin and Esperanto would be the ultimate primer for over a dozen European languages—I'm going to check if I still have the books.