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Problem is English is not a phonetic language. There is not much you can do with only 26 characters. In my native language you pronounce what you wrote.
by mlboss 7y ago
Problem is English is not a phonetic language. There is not much you can do with only 26 characters. In my native language you pronounce what you wrote.
- digitalsushi 7y agoI feel like if we had rules in place from the start, we could do everything with half as many characters.
- bluGill 7y agoActually we need twice as manager characters, but we would need a lot less in any given words. Even decided Capital and lower case were different letters not different ways to write the same letter we would still need more symbols. However that wouldn't help either. As a Mid-westerner I pronounce "about" differently from someone from Boston (they do something like a-boat). We no longer can reform spelling unless we also reform pronunciation as well.
- MagnumOpus 7y agoGerman or Spanish manage to have extremely divergent dialects while still having phonetic spelling of the standard written dialect.
- StavrosK 7y agoThere are phonetic (or near-phonetic) languages that use 26 (or fewer) characters. Spanish comes to mind.
- hellofunk 7y agoHa! The number of letters has nothing to do with it, as evidenced by maaaany other languages that are phonetic with no more letters.