Re: Regularized Inglish

Eric Christopherson scripsit:

> > Az for fonetic independence, we in the U.S. aulreddy hav it, but
> > unfortunately mostly in places where it duz no wun enny good at aul.
>
> What do you mean by this?
See my earlier post.  Most Commonwealth vs. North American spelling
differences are useless from the viewpoint of sound-symbol correspondence.

> > Wijk's system is essentially orthografic; he has discovered the most
> > common use of each stressed vowel (or vowel group) and consonant
> > (or consonant group) and sudgests chainging oenly the wuns that
> > conflict.  Unstressed vowels aar left aloen, and their can be up to
> > 8 spellings for a sound (e.g. /ej/ can be spelled "a", "ai", "ei", "aigh",
> > "eigh", and several more).
>
> Hmm. I would still spell it <suggests> in that system :)
The most common use of "gg" is /g/, which he makes standard.  So
"suggest" /s@dZest/ has to change.

> > The digraf "ie" means /ai/ finally, but /i/ elsewhare.
>
> Pretty silly to make them have different pronunciations at different
> positions.
Yes, but it involves the fewest changes.  "Finally", BTW, refers to
uninflected forms:  "die", "dies", "died" are all kept, even though
the "ie" is technically no longer final in the last two forms.

> > Wijk thinks "ph" iz unnecessary, chainging it to "f" everywhare;
> > I suspect this iz excessiv.
>
> I don't think so... at least changing <ph> to <f> doesn't alter the
> appearance that drastically (IMHO).
Yes, but it is always pronounced /f/, so the principle of regularity
calls for leaving it alone.

> > In general, wurds of French or Latin origin tend to be left alone,
> > whereaz Germanic wurds are more offen changed.
>
> Hmm, bizarre. Latinate words can have spellings as weird as Germanic ones.
Most of the oddity is in unstressed vowels, which Wijk's system does not
change.  In general, the purpose of Regularized Inglish is to make
reading easy, not spelling; there may be many possible spellings of a
word, of which only one is correct.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin