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A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likew
by hyperpallium 7y ago
A Plan for the Improvement
of English Spelling
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
- rattray 7y agoIs this original content? It's quite good.
- EamonnMR 7y agoIt's Mark Twain
- setr 7y agoProbably a pointless thing to note, but apparently maybe not. http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html >Note 1: The authorship of this piece is in question. Although frequently posted on the internet as authored by Mark Twain, there are some claims that it is authored by M. J. Shields in a letter by him to the Economist. See http://www.ojohaven.com/fun/spelling.html http://www.ojohaven.com/fun/spelling.html. And from there.. >I did, however, come across one error: the "Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling" that you attribute to Mark Twain is actually (IIRC) a few paragraphs out of a letter to The Economist, written by one M.J. Shields A couple other sites mention the same thing but I didn't bother digging any further
- psadri 7y agoThis reminds me of reading Cloud Atlas
- saagarjha 7y agoHonestly I think the only reason it's hard to read the end is because I can't pattern match those words to ones I already know. People don't sound out words when they read (at least, they don't if they're trying to be fast), they just glance at them and use context and a couple of letters to guess which one it was, the latter of which breaks when we do this.
- mac01021 7y agoI can't for the life of me figure out what "maindz ov ould doderez" means.
- saagarjha 7y agoMinds of old dodderers?
- dragonwriter 7y ago“Minds of old dodderers” (the last “r” presumably going away in this phonetic regularization because it is less pronounced or unpronounced in many English accents)
- pastage 7y agoAs a tangent, I believe the written word have had a great influence on how we pronounce words.
- rjsw 7y agoThat kind of thing has been tried in schools [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet
- meruru 7y agoPretty good results actually. I could read it to the end: >Finally, then, after some 20 years of orthography reform, we would have a logical, coherent spelling in use throughout the English-speaking world. I guess it helps that a lot of those letters are being used in the way I'm used to in other languages.
- fian 7y agoNice! However, your last sentence contains "x" which was supposed to be removed from the alphabet in Year 1.
- jefftk 7y ago"Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli." "By year 15 or so, it would finally be possible to make use of the redundant leters "c", "y", and "x" -- by now just a memory in the minds of old dodderers -- to replace "ch", "sh", and "th" respectively." So "x" is removed as redundant, and then reintroduced for "th".
- stan_rogers 7y agoThat falls apart in year 2, where it fails to recognize that in many dialects, "w" and "wh" are distinctly different. And that's the problem in general with real proposals for English spelling reform: exactly whose English should we be spelling in? Consider, for example, the word laboratory. Labritori, leboratri, or maybe something else? You don't even need to cross the Atlantic to run into difficulty.
- jhanschoo 7y agoIt's possible to design an orthography that distinguishes between phonemes that most speakers distinguish, and the accept all variants (here e.g. lebretri, leboratri) as valid spellings. After all, we already have variant pronunciations reflected in spelling with some common words e.g. (dreamt, dreamed), (knelt, kneeled), (lit, lighted).
- corey_moncure 7y ago>"w" and "wh" are distinctly different Right. Rather than eliminating letters, I'd go the other direction, and add more letters to account for the the various digraphs.
- DonaldFisk 7y agoThat's right. However, some letters are silent, or words are homophones, in all accents of Standard English: rite, write, right, wright could all be spelt rite (and disambiguated by context); the k could be dropped from knight, knave, and knee; the 'b' from debt, doubt, and subtle, and the 'l' from could, should, and would. These changes would work for all accents. There are probably several hundred words whose spelling could be reformed.
- meruru 7y ago>exactly whose English should we be spelling in I know we'll never be able to choose one, but any dialect would be fine to standardize on.
- rishav_sharan 7y agoIs this what a stroke feels like?
- jon_richards 7y agoI've always heard it as: The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English". In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f".. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
- james_s_tayler 7y agoamazing
- intended 7y agoIncidentally - This joke predates the EC.
- AstralStorm 7y agoFinally, you end up with Middle English with regular orthography?