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I want to see English become mor fonetik and mor regular. As I watched my son learn to speak, then later to read and write, I paid attention to his misspelling
by efitz 1y ago
I want to see English become mor fonetik and mor regular.
As I watched my son learn to speak, then later to read and write, I paid attention to his misspellings and they all made perfect sense if you approached the language phonetically.
The first sentence he wrote for me was:
“my daddy and i tocd on d woki toki”
(“My Daddy and I talked on the walkie talkie.”)
At first confusing, but it omits all the silent, or effectively silent because native speakers usually omit the sound, or abbreviate it so much that non-native speakers would miss it if they didn’t know it was there. Like “l” in “talked”.
And don’t get me started on irregular conjugations.
- xanderlewis 1y agoThe impressive part is that he said '...and I' rather than 'me and...'!
- HPsquared 1y agoSpelling preserves a lot of meaning and etymology in words. Phonetic spelling would remove some of this richness from the written language. Logographic systems like Chinese take this to the extreme. I think English strikes a nice balance.
- asveikau 1y agoSpelling can also bridge the gap between phonetic differences between accents. Many variants of English don't even have the same number of sounds as others, but we all "come together" when we write. In English, it would frustrate me if every time I read marry it would be spelled the same as merry, because I say those differently, even if most Americans I come in contact with daily do not. Spanish spelling is much more phonetic than English, but one thing I admire about it is when things are correctly spelled, you can adjust the text for accent based on spelling. The only area I can think of where spelling does not denote contrast in any accent is between b and v. (Edit: and that h is silent.) There are some contrasts that are only kept by a minority of speakers (Ll is merged with Y for most people, but maybe not in Bolivia or parts of Spain; s and z are merged in Latin America), but it's still a meaningful contrast for somebody.
- tim333 1y agoMaybe we could have a separate version that was fonetik and regular and the kids could learn it? They could always use google translate to deal with texts in normal English like I do with most languages. Edit - I looked up and there is a translation thing online. "this is text translated to a phonetic version" goes to "ðɪs ɪz tɛkst trænzˈleɪtɪd tuː ə fəʊˈnɛtɪk ˈvɜːʒᵊn" in British pronunciation and "ðɪs ɪz tɛkst trænˈsleɪtɪd tu ə fəˈnɛtɪk ˈvɜrʒən" in American. Not sure it's going to catch on.
- bradrn 1y ago> "this is text translated to a phonetic version" goes to "ðɪs ɪz tɛkst trænzˈleɪtɪd tuː ə fəʊˈnɛtɪk ˈvɜːʒᵊn" in British pronunciation and "ðɪs ɪz tɛkst trænˈsleɪtɪd tu ə fəˈnɛtɪk ˈvɜrʒən" in American. These samples are using the International Phonetic Alphabet, which isn’t really designed for the purpose of being a practical orthography — it’s used as a language-independent transcription method which can represent any sound. (That’s also why the British and American versions are different: different accents use different sounds, so they’re transcribed differently.) So this isn’t really a ‘phonetic spelling of English’, though it’s easy to see where the confusion comes from.
- madcaptenor 1y agoMy favorite example of a phonetic misspelling - when my older daughter was learning to write, we were potty-training my younger daughter. The older one made a sign "PODE CHRAN FOR [younger daughter's name]" and taped it to the wall over the potty.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoWhat about homophones that are clearly different when written? I suppose that would be balanced out by the heteronyms.
- ericmay 1y ago> I want to see English become mor fonetik and mor regular I don’t. The complexity and history is what makes life fun, and makes English one of the most interesting languages read, written, and spoken today. Similar to Imperial versus Metric. Yes the metric system is better (aside from temperature ranges - Fahrenheit is superior) but it’s not nearly as fun. Why 12 inches in a foot? Who knows!
- fouronnes3 1y ago> Yes the metric system is better You're changing the definition of "better" so you can have your cake (admit X is better than Y) and eat it too (prefer Y over X). It's ok to like fun things! It's ok to like Imperial and weird grammar, but then you can't also claim that you agree it's worse.
- ericmay 1y ago> but then you can't also claim that you agree it's worse. Sure I can. Didn't I just do it?
- cenamus 1y agoThe writing system has 0 to do with that. More the UK and USA being superpowers for ages. There is no reason why English would be more interesting to native speakers than German, Spanish, Finnish or Bulgarian to their respective native speakers.
- HankStallone 1y agoI've always wondered: do speakers of other languages enjoy spelling bees and puzzles based on spelling and wordplay as much as English speakers do? It seems like spelling bees wouldn't be as interesting in a more phonetic language, for instance.
- johannes1234321 1y agoIn Germany spelling bees don't exist. Took me a while to understand why it is a thing in American culture. Not that German is "pure" but even with words you don't know you got a fair chance of being right most of the time
- dwayne_dibley 1y agoah, 'newspeak'
- r_lee 1y agoFinnish is basically 100% phonetic. A raw Finnish English sounds pretty funny but it's basically pronouncing every character as it's written
- efunnekol 1y agoWith the very wide variety of English accents around the world, you would have a tough time creating phonetic spelling in English that everyone would agree to. My mother (a true Brit) might want 'wahtah' for water, where I think it is perfect as is. With that said, there are clearly some things that could be changed.
- madcaptenor 1y agoAs a Philadelphian, that should be "wooder".
- DamnInteresting 1y agoOr perhaps 'Filidelfian.'
- thebruce87m 1y ago> a true Brit There are a wide variety of accents in Britain alone - ‘wahtah’ isn’t recognisable to me for example. It’s a cliche to say brits don’t pronounce “r”, but all you have to do is watch Harry Potter to see all the different accents that do.
- Dwedit 1y agohttps://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm https://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm (Not actually by Mark Twain)
- yboris 1y agoPlug for the Shavian alphabet - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet "a constructed alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonemic orthography for the English language to replace the inefficiencies and difficulties of conventional spelling"
- nielsbot 1y agoCouldn't you use a subset of IPA for this? (Not a language person, so I don't know)
- jlos 1y agoYou want ENGLISH to be more phonetic? English, a language with over 40 different dialects in its country of origin. English, the official language of over 60 countries? English, the bastard child of millenia of Roman, Germanic, and French colonization? English, a language with documented vowel shift that occured over 200-300 years? THAT language would be easier if the words were spelled how they were pronounced?
- Pet_Ant 1y agoI'm reminded of a meme that compared "car keys" with the word "khaki" in a 'Boston'-accent (non-rhotic). Or the "pin=pen" merger of some accents, or "caught=cot". No one speaks "English", it's an ugly compromise of an army of dialects.
- tracker1 1y agoIs there a black purse in here? Is there a black person here?
- makr17 1y ago"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll
- monknomo 1y agoWhich accent should the phonetic representation be based on? Thick lousiana accent? Southeast london accent? Boston southie accent? Mid-atlantic? No matter what you choose, it won't be phonetic for someone
- sorrythanks 1y agotype in your own accent, it works when we talk
- thfuran 1y agoIt sometimes work when we talk.
- tracker1 1y agoThe west-coast US/Canadian accent most likely as it's most prominent in popular media, and likely the largest English speaking accent group. But good luck getting the UK or India to adopt it.
- efitz 1y agoI believe that there is a lowest common denominator for accented English, and it sounds like “sung” English - which sounds like non-regional American English if the singer is singing and doesn’t naturally have a very pronounced accent. This is partially due to cultural effects but partially due to the mechanics of speaking with an accent. By “lowest common denominator“, I mean omitting affectations like non-rotic R (Boston) and dropped g (urban) and exaggerated length of selected vowels (US southeast) and constant syllable length and other kinds of things. There are lots of videos on YouTube about how accents work. But mainly phonetics is about eliminating silent letters, using the most unambiguous letter when there is a choice (eg K or S instead of C), etc. Anyway I’m rambling but you probably get my point.
- WalterBright 1y agoLearning to read phonetically still pays off handsomely, despite the erratic spellings of English. I sometimes discover that I mispronounce words I know very well. The reason is that I never heard those words used audibly, I only encountered them in books. So I "invented" a phonetic sound to them, and long ago forgot that I did that. Until whammy, I encounter it verbally, decades later.
- taneq 1y ago"Ze drem vil finali kum tru." (What was that essay/joke called again?)