3 ms·
That's the current situation because spelling reflects pronunciation as it was hundreds of years ago. Basically spoken language moved on, but orthography remain
by bonoboTP 3y ago
That's the current situation because spelling reflects pronunciation as it was hundreds of years ago. Basically spoken language moved on, but orthography remained fixed. In languages that standardized their spelling later, or implemented large scale spelling reforms, the discrepancy is smaller. But English is so spread out now with no central authority, so for sake of compatibility, it won't really be reformed now.
- andyferris 3y agoNow GB has left the EU, maybe Europe should create an “international written English”? It’s kinda a joke, but would be kinda cool. They’d only have to negotiate with Ireland, so hopefully wouldn’t get too bogged down.
- rahen 3y agoHave a look at Interlingua, it would make a great official language for the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua Same article written in Interlingua: https://ia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua https://ia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua
- raverbashing 3y agoWay better than Esperanto at first glance
- bonoboTP 3y agoYou might like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English
- kwhitefoot 3y ago> the discrepancy is smaller. You mean like the French who don't pronounce the final consonant? Anyway, fixing the orthography simply privileges the group whose pronunciation matches. And the pronunciation continues to drift anyway so you have to keep on adjusting the spelling.
- bonoboTP 3y agoEnglish and French are the two main well known exceptions. Basically all other languages of Europe are mostly written letter for letter as pronounced.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoPeople always seem to forget that English isn't one language, it is composed of vocabularies from multiple languages all used together. Quite a few words that people think of as English are taken from languages far away, such as shampoo, pyjamas, bungalow. If people want English to have a stronger connection between spelling and pronunciation they can simply go for it, there is no authority that tells you how you must spell a word. Just be prepared for people to not understand what you write and to ridicule you. And be prepared to defend the spelling of homophones that have now also become homonyms, such as straight and strait (strate?), might and mite.
- bonoboTP 3y agoBut then no language is one language in that sense. For example Hungarian is a mix of Uralic, Turkic, Slavic, Germanic etc. vocabulary. This doesn't make English unique. The somewhat unique aspect is then reluctancy to respell loanwords according to their pronunciation.
- dpig_ 3y agoYes, precisely. A language isn't a thing as such. - Chomsky, probably.
- buovjaga 3y agoIt's worse than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform#English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform#English 'On the other hand, many words were refashioned to reflect their Latin or Greek etymology. For example, for "debt" early Middle English wrote det/dette, with the b being standardized in spelling in the 16th century, after its Latin etymon debitum; similarly for quer/quere, which was respelled as choir in the 17th century, modelled on Greek χορός chorus; in both cases, the pronunciation was not changed.'