4 ms·

Wild. I can read this, no problem, and I can see that it is a clear improvement over standard letters and spelling. Latin letters are (quite literally) a poor m

Wild. I can read this, no problem, and I can see that it is a clear improvement over standard letters and spelling. Latin letters are (quite literally) a poor match for the English language. They don't match the sounds required to speak English. I'm not sure if this is a valuable teaching tool, but I think it would be conceptually sound as a general replacement for Latin letters for English text. At this point, though, it's impossible to make such a drastic change. It would have global repercussions.

throw310822 1y ago
I think the issue is that, missing a clear correlation between spelling and sound, there's no unique pronunciation for words across countries and accents. Trivial example: data. It's either "dayta" or "dahta". Or privacy- pri-vuh-see or prai-vuh-see. You'd have to choose one.
- noosphr 1y ago
  Why? We've managed to live with color and colour without destroying the space time continuum somehow.
  - throw310822 1y ago
    Indeed, but there's not just US and UK. In northern Ireland house is sometimes pronounced "hoyse" (rhymes with choice). Time is "toyme" in Australian. Pen is "pin" in New Zealand. Etc. Speaking of which, it seems that the only case of spelling adapting to pronunciation in English is the commonly used spelling "me" for "my" in Irish dialects.
    - ASalazarMX 1y ago
      > Pen is "pin" in New Zealand. I really want to hear a New Zealander quote "The pen is mightier than the sword".
    - lcedp 1y ago
      I wonder if it's possible to come up with an alphabet where different sound clusters are addressed by individual letters. For instance: 'h𐑬se' and 'aut' - where 𐑬 is read as 'au' in RP, but as 'oy' in NI. The downside is that the said alphabet would have more letters and it won't be always easy to guess the spelling based on pronunciation (still easier than currently in English), but the upside is that one can always read any word correctly in their accent.
      - em-bee 1y ago
        you see that to an extent with the use diacritics in some languages. for example "ch" or "cz" in czech is written as č. here is an interesting article listing digraphs in various languages with latin script that have lots of examples where the same sounds have a single letter in other languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin-script_digraphs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin-script_digraphs

throw310822 1y ago

I think the issue is that, missing a clear correlation between spelling and sound, there's no unique pronunciation for words across countries and accents. Trivial example: data. It's either "dayta" or "dahta". Or privacy- pri-vuh-see or prai-vuh-see. You'd have to choose one.

noosphr 1y ago
Why? We've managed to live with color and colour without destroying the space time continuum somehow.
- throw310822 1y ago
  Indeed, but there's not just US and UK. In northern Ireland house is sometimes pronounced "hoyse" (rhymes with choice). Time is "toyme" in Australian. Pen is "pin" in New Zealand. Etc. Speaking of which, it seems that the only case of spelling adapting to pronunciation in English is the commonly used spelling "me" for "my" in Irish dialects.
  - ASalazarMX 1y ago
    > Pen is "pin" in New Zealand. I really want to hear a New Zealander quote "The pen is mightier than the sword".
  - lcedp 1y ago
    I wonder if it's possible to come up with an alphabet where different sound clusters are addressed by individual letters. For instance: 'h𐑬se' and 'aut' - where 𐑬 is read as 'au' in RP, but as 'oy' in NI. The downside is that the said alphabet would have more letters and it won't be always easy to guess the spelling based on pronunciation (still easier than currently in English), but the upside is that one can always read any word correctly in their accent.
    - em-bee 1y ago
      you see that to an extent with the use diacritics in some languages. for example "ch" or "cz" in czech is written as č. here is an interesting article listing digraphs in various languages with latin script that have lots of examples where the same sounds have a single letter in other languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin-script_digraphs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin-script_digraphs