Comments on: English spelling reform

By: David

David — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 10:07:45 +0000

There’s a simple problim with most spelling referm preposals, thay try too fix wot ent broken, and end up braking wot’s werking.

Ah sey, let’s jist get a bit mor flexible on letting poeple spell how thay wont too. If ye look at Lewis and Clarke’s expidition diarys, or at William Shakspear’s manuscrips, ye see English spelling all over te place.

But it still looks like English, and we can all still rede it fine.
Most of the problims we hav in moden standerd spelling is cos of numskulls bringin in etimmology, and all that.

Sithe became scythe, and sisours becam scissors, and rime became rhyme.

Anywey. I don’t expect resen to preveil. We’ll jist muddle along til the next dark ages. Then wen everything is fallen apart, we kin start bilding from scratch, and git it rite.

By: Sanford S. Silverman

Sanford S. Silverman — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:12:27 +0000

The following is from the Aug. 15, 2009 Saturday evening Post, transposed into Samspel.

Please read at least one paragraph and see if you think it has any possibilities. Thanks.

Grohing Sweet Melunz
Wiy dohn’t melunz get maireed?
Beecawz tha cant-ulohp
August iz a sweet tiym for melun luverz. Muscmelunz pac up on shuhger in thair fiynl daaz uv grohth. eneething that interfearz in th prahses maa reezult in les taaste frewt. But yew can help biy reemewving ene immuhter frewt that haz uhpeared sins midsumr. Thohz frewts ar unliycle tew deevelup fuhly beefor cewler wether sets in nd wil ohnly sap newtreeunts that cuhd be gohing intew mor deevelupt frewts. Awlso taac cair not tew wawk on th melun viynz or deestroy leevz , az th leevz ar th sors uv th shuhger that sweetnz th frewt. Th mor leevz th betr. A number uv frewts riypuning at wun tiym wil awlso duminush sweetnus. Sum groherz prewn awf awl but wun newly forming melun every tew weecs tew prohviyd macsumum shuhger consentraashn.
Tew flerush melunz preefer severul munths uv temperucher in th aateez or hiyer with niyttiym temperuchers no loher then 55F nd plenty uv sun. Sum gardnerz chewz tew trelus thair cantulohps, tiying up th viynz az tha gro tew get them awf th grownd nd proviyd optumum sunliyt tew th leevz. A trelus maa hav tew be 8 feet hiy by twenty feet wiyd and soludly cunstructed. The grohwing frewts shud be craadled in neting.
Melunz reecwiyr 1 inch uv wawter per week dering th grohing seezn, Stop wawtering them, howevr, ubowt a week beefor yew thinc tha wil be riyp. Ecses wawter in th fiynl staajuz can dulewt th shuhger nd reedews sweetnus.
Yew can tel a muscmelunz riypnus by its skin culr, wich ternz frum gra-green to yelo buf. Jeneruhly a muscmelun iz riyp wen it sepuraats eezly frum th viyn. Riypuning stops wen a melun iz pict, so taac cair not tew pic wun preemuterly. Huneedew riypnes iz a bit mor tricy tew judj. Th melun terns creem culerd nd th blahsm end shuhd giv just a bit when prest. Wawter melunz ar riyp if tha sownd holo wen thumpt.

By: Noel

Noel — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:04:18 +0000

As a facilitator of EFL conversation, mainly in Korea, I have come to realize that the following aspects of English spelling are causes of mispronunciation that can cause confusion:
1. No indication of the exceptional stress patterns, with words like ‘determine’ sounded as “deetermighn”. Using accentuation marks can overcome this situation.
2. Some of the about 300 basic heterophones (without prefix), like ‘live’ and ’separate’. Again, accentuation can be a solution.
3. The ‘ed’ ending in adjectives that are not past participles, like ‘naked’ which I have often heard as “naykt”. How about the dozen or so words like this end in ‘id’, and so we could have ‘nakid’. Already there are adjectives like ‘pallid’ which distinguish themselves from past forms like ‘palled’ (which is another heterophone).
4. The final silent ‘e’ when it is not magic be left out, so that the adjective ’separate’ can be ’separat’ and the verb ‘live’ can be ‘liv’. The present participle can still be ‘living’ with the rule about not doubling for ‘x’ (as in ‘boxing’) being extended to ‘v’. This would affect many words in English, but would not upset dictionary order noticeably.

I believe that using accentuation would draw little opposition, and it can be justified by pointing to many languages that use the roman script using accentuation, and most of those that don’t should.

There are many other causes of mispronunciation, but these are usually understood, and perhaps they could be addressed later. There are some exceptions to adding suffixes, like ‘noticeable’ which perhaps could become ‘noticible’.

There is an aspect of punctuation that could be addressed: the use of the question mark. The reader may have noticed that I put a question in point 3, but didn’t use it. I wanted to, but the final clause of the sentence wasn’t a question. Maybe we should only use the question mark when there is a rising tone at the end of the sentence.

One point about correct spelling: It seems to me that when it comes to writing, Korean students and teachers of English are generally better at spelling than the “native” English teachers who post on the job discussion forums. I know that generalizations are not reliable, but they can be discussed.

By: Remd

Remd — Thu, 27 May 2010 15:28:24 +0000

I don’t really know if English spelling can or should be changed. However, I do know Spanish spelling doesn’t represent EVERY sound of the different dialects at all, but it represents a more or less standard and understandable pronunciation, for example, the s in the coda is elided in a lot of dialects, but we write it since it is a clear way of marking the plural, besides, that s can be pronounced as z if it is within some particular consonant environments, but we don’t change its spelling, and in spite of that, Spanish orthography is considered easy to learn because it represents more or less the way words are pronounced, at least in a way which can be easily guessed. But you think of extreme solutions: having a thousand possible sounds for each letter or having one exact sound per letter. I think an intermediate solution could be possible, this simpel-fonetik reform might or might not be this solution, but I’m sure there’s no need to represent every sound and a simple orthography could still be possible. On the other hand, I think the real problem is the opposition of all the people who can already write English as it’s spelt now, as well as the re-edition of all the books and written material in English.

By: Graham

Graham — Mon, 10 May 2010 21:31:26 +0000

Val – A version of your first point was exactly what I was suggesting in my original post.

By: Val Yule

Val Yule — Mon, 10 May 2010 01:24:57 +0000

Forget about radical phonetic reforms requiring everything to be reprinted and a new system learned. We need to mend the present system, like every other mostly-literate country that has had a writing system reform in the past hundred years.
Turn the reasons given why spelling should NOT be reformed into how it could be reformed. The visual and auditory routes to reading, importance of morphemes in English, links to our culture and etymology, the ‘Chomsky’ line about word families with underlying phonological similarity, the familiar appearance of text, the problem of growing dialects, and the world-wide importance of English. Spelling reform of our present system to remove exceptions can improve all these. The small costs of this reform contrast with the costs of so much illiteracy and semi-literacy. We could start any time with four reforms:
1. Omit surplus letters from words, eg climat, minut, infinit.
2. Keep the 35 most common irregular words as ‘sight words’
3. Dictionaries follow the French reform of 2009, which allows 6000 extra spellings which are easy in the dictionary.
4. Dictionary pronunciation keys as the first learning for beginners to build on, e.g. based on a modified BBC text pronunciation guide. ( lerning, bild)

By: Allan Kiisk

Allan Kiisk — Mon, 10 May 2010 00:51:19 +0000

Yes, I am a member of the Spelling Society. Are you?

By: Graham

Graham — Sun, 09 May 2010 13:12:53 +0000

“1922 O. JESPERSEN Lang. 64, I think I am in accordance with a growing number of scholars in England and America if I..apply the word ‘linguist’ by itself to the scientific student of language (or of languages).” – one of the quotations to be found in the OED. This is the sense in which the majority of practitioners of linguistics would now define “linguist”.
The ability to speak more than one language is probably more common throughout the world than the situation that pertains in the English-speaking world, where bilingual speakers are often looked on as if they had two heads. Most polyglots have not studied linguistics, and so would not consider themselves qualified to try to solve the problem of English spelling. As a graduate of linguistics I have, like you, been trained to analyse problems and find the best solutions. I would not, however, presume to apply my training outside its bounds and suggest that I knew better how to solve difficult engineering problems, such as the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
I wonder if you are a member of the Spelling Society?

By: Allan Kiisk

Allan Kiisk — Sat, 08 May 2010 17:49:17 +0000

Graham, in your previous letter you quoted the English proverb: Let the cobbler stick to his last. And you said that I am an engineer, not a linguist.

LINGUIST is defined in my Random HouseWebster’s College Dictionary as A PERSON WHO IS SKILLED IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES; POLYGLOT.

I finished an Estonian Secondary School (high school, gümnaasium), have written articles for Estonian newspapers, attended German high schools, served as a German translator (even in court proceedings) while serving in the U.S. Army in Germany, taught English to friends and relatives, had four years of Latin and can still recite the first chapter of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, drove my car in Russia and got by with my knowledge of Russian, understand Finnish quite well and am familiar with the country, studied Spanish, etc. I am a linguist.

I am also an engineer. I was trained to analyze problems and find the best solutions. That I did thruout my engineering career, and as a professor of engineering.

I applied the combination of those backgrounds to solving the English spelling problem. I hope this answers your criticism that I “don’t seem to understand how language works” and as an engineer I should stick with engineering .

Even though I was offended by your remarks, I took the time to respond to you mainly because you serve as valuable input to my analysis of why the English spelling is so bad and why there has not been a change to a simple, logical, easy-to-learn-and-use writing method, such as those that are used in Finland and Estonia.

By the way, FACE would be spelled FEIS (or FEISS) and PHASE could be spelled FEIZ. The Simpel-Fonetik alphabet includes the letter Z, but uses it only where absolutely necessary. CALM would be spelled KAAM and COME as KAM. LUKE would be spelled LUUK and LOOK as LUK. Please refer to the website http://www.simpelfonetik.com or my book Simple Phonetic English Spelling for explanations.

By: Graham

Graham — Sat, 08 May 2010 09:13:24 +0000

I have been a linguist, studying language in all its forms, and especially phonetics and phonology, for over forty years. Of course I am familiar with other languages – not as many as I should like to be, but then there could never be enough time to study them all. My work at the BBC involved advising English-speaking broadcasters on the most appropriate pronunciation in English of words, names and phrases taken from any of the world’s languages. To do this, I and my colleagues necessarily had to appreciate the nuances of sound produced in these other languages.
You do not seem to understand how language works. You say “The present spelling has allowed the development of various different pronunciations.” In fact the development of variant pronunciations has little to do with spelling. English was never a language with a single pronunciation for each word, and the spelling conventions we use are a compromise between those of several different dialects, with the heaviest input from the English of southeast England – but not exclusively that form. Since the orthography became fixed, many sound changes have taken place in all dialects/accents/varieties (choose your word) of the language, which have led to the present mismatch between sound and spelling. However, the fact remains that present-day English has between fifteen and twenty vowels and diphthongs, which your proposed system does not recognise. These are not ‘nuances’ as you put it, but essential differences which distinguish words one from another. Similarly, English has twentytwo (or twentyfour, depending how you treat [tʃ] and [dʒ]) consonants. In other words there are about forty phonemes (the exact number and their distribution depends on the accent you are describing) which need to have their own representation in spelling in order to follow the ‘one-sound-one-spelling’ rule. By ignoring the letter Z you are unable to distinguish such words as ‘face’ and ‘phase’, ‘dose’ and ‘doze’ (and in any case I dispute your contention that Z represents [ts] in most of Europe – in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Romanian and Turkish, to give eight examples, it does NOT represent [ts]). Your system does not distinguish ‘calm’ from ‘come’, nor ‘Luke’ from ‘look’. If you consult any of the standard dictionaries which give pronunciations (there are three specifically for pronunciation – the English Pronouncing Dictionary, the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation, all of which give American pronunciations as well as British) – Webster-Merriam if you insist on a dictionary of American origin, you will find that these examples are common to all forms of native English.
Perhaps you only intend foreign learners to use your system. It may help them in the initial stages, but if they want to acquire anything like a native command of the language, which is easily understood by any native speaker, then they will find it a handicap later on. They would be better advised to start with something more rigorous than you have achieved.
There is an old English proverb: Let the cobbler stick to his last. You are an engineer, not a linguist.