Thread: English & spelling

Originally Posted by Chucaro

Spare a thought for Chucaro and others in AULRO (and perhaps some Australians as well )

English spellings don't match the sounds they are supposed to represent. It's time to change

"If you set out to create the most complicated spelling system in the world, then you could hardly do better than English."

Thit atrilce wis robissh me spelink is fane.

Originally Posted by disco man

Thit atrilce wis robissh me spelink is fane.

And Ron will be proud of it

So are we going to spell "dance" as "darns" or "dans"?

Will it be "tomarto" or "tomaito"?

Will it be "skedule" or "shedule"?

Will we live in "Orstraylya" or "Ostraylia"?

Whose pronunciation will determine the spelling? Oxford educated Englishmen or English speakers from the sub-continent? There are a lot more of the latter.

There are good reasons to keep the current spelling. The current spelling can help with understanding the derivation and meaning of a word.

Can we finally spell Phonetic, FONETIC??

Originally Posted by Chucaro

Spare a thought for Chucaro and others in AULRO (and perhaps some Australians as well )

English spellings don't match the sounds they are supposed to represent. It's time to change

"If you set out to create the most complicated spelling system in the world, then you could hardly do better than English."

I think every school child should have a basic knowledge of Latin. Latin is used as the foundation of many new words in different languages, including English. If you have an understanding of latin, you have a better idea of the structure of language. As demonstrated by this fine example, Bob
[ame]http://youtu.be/IIAdHEwiAy8[/ame]

If they made all those spelling changes, Ron would be pulling his hair out!!!

Originally Posted by digger

Can we finally spell Phonetic, FONETIC??

Not in my lifetime I wont, they can condemn me to gaol and I'll still use English not baby talk American

Originally Posted by bob10

I think every school child should have a basic knowledge of Latin. Latin is used as the foundation of many new words in different languages, including English. If you have an understanding of latin, you have a better idea of the structure of language. As demonstrated by this fine example, Bob
http://youtu.be/IIAdHEwiAy8

Only for Latin based languages like Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French, English is a Germanic language which borrows words from many other languages including from Latin based languages and American.

English has evolved, and English spelling has evolved with it. The spelling we use has never been laid down by any authority, and has changed over the years, and will undoubtedly do so far into the future.

Some bodies have had a lot of influence - the basic spelling conventions of English were established as native French speaking clerics in the eleventh and twelfth century struggled to express the unfamiliar English language using French phonetic conventions. The written forms were spread throughout England by the particular conventions used by the royal court as the legal system started to accept briefs written in English as well as French or Latin. And lawyers soon found that their plaintiff's cases went better if the same spelling was used as that used by the clerk of the court.

Because this form of written English already existed, it was relatively unaffected by the great changes in English pronunciation in the fifteenth century, at least for old words.

Other specific factors have influenced spelling since then, but it has to be noted that no attempts at English spelling reform have had any significant effect. They all fail for the same reason - those people who are learning to spell, or learning English, overwhelmingly want to able to easily read what has already been written, and perhaps most influentially, to be read by those whom are already familiar with existing spelling, without appearing to be uneducated.

The best documented example of this is probably that of Noah Webster. His major work was not his dictionary, but his spelling book, which was the best selling book in the USA for many years, and his major source of income. He attempted to use it for spelling reform, but soon found that significant reforms were unacceptable to his customers, although he did succeed in standardising as American spelling a number of forms that almost all were existing alternatives (e.g. -nse vs -nce, -or vs -our), where the non-American English speaker, who was not exposed to his spelling books, later standardised on the other alternative.

And this was probably the most successful attempt at English spelling reform despite hundreds of proposals dating back to at least the sixteenth century. English spelling changes continually, but only gradually, the same as word meanings change. No authority is able to significantly influence this.

John