4 ms·

The point has been made that different people pronounce English differently. I don't think that's an insurmountable obstacle: if you made a sort of union of RP

by bloak 8y ago

The point has been made that different people pronounce English differently. I don't think that's an insurmountable obstacle: if you made a sort of union of RP and standard American pronunciation, probably the rest of the English-speaking world would be happy to use a spelling system based on that, if they were willing to accept any change at all, that is. A more serious problem, I think, is how the pronunciation of a single word element varies between words even for a single speaker of the standard language. How would a reformed English spelling cope with the vowels in "photograph" and "photography", for example? Perhaps there's a neat solution, but I don't know what it is. At least I'm fairly sure that phonemic transcript isn't it.

seszett 8y ago
Honestly I'm not sure what difference there is between "photograph" and "photography" (now I looked it up and I would never have guessed) but most languages that have sound changes like that just change the letters between variants of a word, instead of keeping the same letters and changing their pronunciation. In Dutch, long vowels that turn into short vowels make things like meer/meren (single/plural). In German, you would have Land/Länder (single/plural as well). French also does it with say, régler/règlement (verb/substantive). English does it too in some cases, with say wife/wives. So it could very well be something like photögraph/phötagröphy. I don't see why it wouldn't work.
- Smaug123 8y ago
  If we only added the schwa (ə) to the script, then in my Received Pronunciation accent, it would be "photəgraph" versus "photogrəphy". On the other hand, English has an astonishing ability to replace vowels with schwas; pretty much every sentence remains comprehensible with every vowel syllable spoken as "ə".
  - psergeant 8y ago
    > pretty much every sentence remains comprehensible with every vowel syllable spoken as "ə" Making learning a language where the vowel sounds are the important one a freakin’ nightmare for Anglophones.
  - vorg 8y ago
    > English has an astonishing ability to replace vowels with schwas That only works with the unstressed vowels [1], so we have "phətogrəphy" because "to" is a full stress and "phy" is a half stress. [1] Except in NZ English, where the ɪ-sound ("i" as in "if") and schwa (ə) are pronounced the same.

by bloak 8y ago

seszett 8y ago

Honestly I'm not sure what difference there is between "photograph" and "photography" (now I looked it up and I would never have guessed) but most languages that have sound changes like that just change the letters between variants of a word, instead of keeping the same letters and changing their pronunciation. In Dutch, long vowels that turn into short vowels make things like meer/meren (single/plural). In German, you would have Land/Länder (single/plural as well). French also does it with say, régler/règlement (verb/substantive). English does it too in some cases, with say wife/wives. So it could very well be something like photögraph/phötagröphy. I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Smaug123 8y ago
If we only added the schwa (ə) to the script, then in my Received Pronunciation accent, it would be "photəgraph" versus "photogrəphy". On the other hand, English has an astonishing ability to replace vowels with schwas; pretty much every sentence remains comprehensible with every vowel syllable spoken as "ə".
- psergeant 8y ago
  > pretty much every sentence remains comprehensible with every vowel syllable spoken as "ə" Making learning a language where the vowel sounds are the important one a freakin’ nightmare for Anglophones.
- vorg 8y ago
  > English has an astonishing ability to replace vowels with schwas That only works with the unstressed vowels [1], so we have "phətogrəphy" because "to" is a full stress and "phy" is a half stress. [1] Except in NZ English, where the ɪ-sound ("i" as in "if") and schwa (ə) are pronounced the same.