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Written-spoken and spoken-written are interestingly asymmetric problems. In the first chapters of his autobiographical "The Words" Sartre tells of his troubles
by thanatropism 11y ago
Written-spoken and spoken-written are interestingly asymmetric problems. In the first chapters of his autobiographical "The Words" Sartre tells of his troubles learning to spell French, but reading French out loud is not especially hard; there's more of a problem in writing underdetermination than speech underdetermination.
Sooo the simplification of spelling movement may aim to bring these to better symmetry (as is in Spanish, German, etc.) but it's not necessarily about this poem's complaints.
- escherplex 11y agoGiven that English is a hybrid language anyway and historically has demonstrated a willingness to accept loaner words from any source, a solution could be to adopt the 160 symbol IPA. According to Wikipedia, seems like everyday English could get by with around 20 vowel and 24 consonant symbols. Regional variation spellings, for example battery: bat-er-ree (US) v. bat-tree (UK), could be learned as synonyms. But how would you handle homophones? EG Japanese, which is loaded with homophones, had that problem way back when they tried to convert from Chinese hanzi logograms to an exclusively phonetic kana writing system. They wound [homograph] up mixing the two with Chinese ideograms setting the intended theme followed by phonetic kana to particularize pronunciation and grammar.