Re: URL: Paper on English spelling reform - the case against in the Internet age

Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > > > New on-line at www.seikilos.com.ar/Mannheim.pdf
> >
> > have a look at that paper -- it's not about English at all, but it's not
> > uninteresting.
>
> I find the fear that transcription between the old and new spelling
> would entail a risk of concomitant censorship rather unconvincing.
> The very same risk is present even today for each new edition of a
> work, and in fact books are changed for better or worse, but this
> doesn't appear to be a serious problem. It is not clear to me why
> the practice would become more prevalent or troublesome.
>
> An interesting aspect is "the problem of dealing with the fact that
> English is now used by more second-language users than mother tongue
> speakers". Most people who learn English as a second language in
> school approach it through writing. For us, there is nothing wrong
> with English spelling, it's the pronunciation that needs to be
> regularized. So we would kindly like to ask the native speakers
> of English to please make their speech conform to the orthography...

Okay by me! We'd just have to undo the Great Vowel Shift (which Chomsky
& Halle suggest would be no problem at all, since our underlying forms
are pretty much what Chaucer would have said) and the various reflexes
of /x/, right?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: URL: Paper on English spelling reform - the case against in the Internet age
    ... >I find the fear that transcription between the old and new spelling ... >would entail a risk of concomitant censorship rather unconvincing. ... >English is now used by more second-language users than mother tongue ... So we would kindly like to ask the native speakers ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: A non-native ruminates, with some questions
    ... How do native speakers, ... incongruous idioms, spelling, choice of words? ... not fall in the "International English" category.) ... and Canadians that catalog is the US spelling. ...
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  • Re: Learning a language
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    (sci.lang)
  • Learning a language
    ... They complain about English ... >spelling and sometimes don't know how to say unfamiliar words. ... I would accept that some native speakers ... Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University ...
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  • Re: Dweomer,etc.
    ... I noticed that no one mentioned "The Ring of the Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary" by Peter Gilliver, ... While much of this material has been cited, there is this passage on dwimmerlaik from which I quote in full. ... The OED entry is headed with the spelling DEMERLAYK, and the word is defined as 'magic, practice of occult art, jugglery'. ... I think most of us take Eowyn's phrase as a "name" flung at the Witch-King meaning as here "Begone, foul Sorcerer, lord of carrion..." ...
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