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> discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling That’s rich coming from a speaker of French But on a serious note, this discrepancy at this point is entirely

> discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling That’s rich coming from a speaker of French But on a serious note, this discrepancy at this point is entirely unnecessary and wasteful.

krige 12d ago
Yeah but reforming a language is nigh impossible without a very expensive and long term effort from the government, and good luck selling that to those in power. Plus, how do you decide what's changed and what's retained? To quote one Mr. Clemens, 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. Generally, 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 rimeiniing 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” rispektivili. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
- pjmlp 12d ago
  Since my lifetime I went through 2 language reformations, the ones that took part in German speaking countries, and those in Portuguese speaking countries. Needless to say that outside children learning the new ways, and media that has to obey to the new rules, I know plenty of people, starting with myself that kind of don't care. The amount of English speaking people is much greater than those two languages, and then there is even the question of which English speaking countries would even agree with the changes. Note from my two examples above, not every country in DACH or CPLP agreed with 100% of the proposed changes.
adrian_b 12d ago
While in French there is also a great discrepancy between the written language and the spoken language, when reading French the corresponding pronunciation is almost always very easy to predict. Only the reverse can be difficult, because many ambiguous pronunciations are differentiated in writing. There exists no other language besides English where the pronunciation rules are so irregular, with so many special cases and exceptions.
wongarsu 12d ago
As a German, I always found French to be incredibly regular. At least in the sense that from spelling you can easily infer pronunciation. The other way around is trickier. At least compared to German, which tries to strike a balance between the two directions. Compared to English, French is still pretty reasonable on that front too There is a large number of digraphs and trigraphs (do we really need three letters to spell an "o" sound?), but unlike English digraphs they are actually regular: eau is always pronounced the same, while English has at least four different ways of pronouncing gh. French not pronouncing some word endings in most situations is also a bit weird, but that also has pretty regular rules
- williamdclt 12d ago
  > from spelling you can easily infer pronunciation Usually :) But plenty of cases where you can't, the most common one being silent letters: while you can guess silent letters pretty consistently, some words have unusual silent letters ("asthme", "oignon") or usually-silent letters that aren't silent in this case ("huit"). Some words are also homographs: spelled the same, but not the same word and might be pronounced differently ("content": is it someone happy or multiple people counting?). Some letters silentness change depending on plurality of the word: œuf and bœuf, the F is pronounced in the singular but not the plural.
  - Miraltar 12d ago
    multiple people counting would be "comptent" A good example is "fils" which can mean "son" or "strings"
- poulpy123 12d ago
  I'm going to send your comment to a German friend who tries to speak french

> discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling That’s rich coming from a speaker of French But on a serious note, this discrepancy at this point is entirely unnecessary and wasteful.

krige 12d ago

Yeah but reforming a language is nigh impossible without a very expensive and long term effort from the government, and good luck selling that to those in power. Plus, how do you decide what's changed and what's retained? To quote one Mr. Clemens, 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. Generally, 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 rimeiniing 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” rispektivili. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

pjmlp 12d ago
Since my lifetime I went through 2 language reformations, the ones that took part in German speaking countries, and those in Portuguese speaking countries. Needless to say that outside children learning the new ways, and media that has to obey to the new rules, I know plenty of people, starting with myself that kind of don't care. The amount of English speaking people is much greater than those two languages, and then there is even the question of which English speaking countries would even agree with the changes. Note from my two examples above, not every country in DACH or CPLP agreed with 100% of the proposed changes.

adrian_b 12d ago

While in French there is also a great discrepancy between the written language and the spoken language, when reading French the corresponding pronunciation is almost always very easy to predict. Only the reverse can be difficult, because many ambiguous pronunciations are differentiated in writing. There exists no other language besides English where the pronunciation rules are so irregular, with so many special cases and exceptions.

wongarsu 12d ago

As a German, I always found French to be incredibly regular. At least in the sense that from spelling you can easily infer pronunciation. The other way around is trickier. At least compared to German, which tries to strike a balance between the two directions. Compared to English, French is still pretty reasonable on that front too There is a large number of digraphs and trigraphs (do we really need three letters to spell an "o" sound?), but unlike English digraphs they are actually regular: eau is always pronounced the same, while English has at least four different ways of pronouncing gh. French not pronouncing some word endings in most situations is also a bit weird, but that also has pretty regular rules

williamdclt 12d ago
> from spelling you can easily infer pronunciation Usually :) But plenty of cases where you can't, the most common one being silent letters: while you can guess silent letters pretty consistently, some words have unusual silent letters ("asthme", "oignon") or usually-silent letters that aren't silent in this case ("huit"). Some words are also homographs: spelled the same, but not the same word and might be pronounced differently ("content": is it someone happy or multiple people counting?). Some letters silentness change depending on plurality of the word: œuf and bœuf, the F is pronounced in the singular but not the plural.
- Miraltar 12d ago
  multiple people counting would be "comptent" A good example is "fils" which can mean "son" or "strings"
poulpy123 12d ago
I'm going to send your comment to a German friend who tries to speak french