Re: Regularized Inglish

Nik Taylor scripsit:

> > and their can be up to 8 spellings for a sound
>
> Is this a typo, or does he not distinguish between "there", "their", and
> "they're"?
I'm not shure.

> > "calf" becomes either "caaf" or "caff", reflecting a genuinely fonemic
> > difference between the dialect groops.
>
> Hmm, so he would further seperate the two dialect groups?
Not really.  We already hav all the useless distinctions between
"-our"/"-or" and "-er"/"-re", whare American spelling basically
collapsed a distinction that British spelling continues to make;
contrariwise with "-ize"/"ise", whare it is American spelling
that preserves the distinction.  At least "laff"/"laaf" iz
useful.

> > A few symbols represent more than wun sound: notably, "oo" can be
> > eether /u/ or /U/, a distinction of low fonemic load in Inglish.
>
> True, but they're still seperate phonemes, it seems to me that there
> should be a distinction between any two phonemes.  Afterall, there's
> very little phonemic load between /T/ and /D/ in English, why not make
> no distinction between them?
My version of Wijk duz not in fact make enny distinction between /T/
and /D/.  He admits that he duz so solely to help the non-nativ
learner; the nativ speaker will aulmost never be in dout.
In addition, though everywun admits that /U/ and /u/ are distinct,
thare is much fluctuation in particular wurds such as "roof", "coop", etc.,
so that preserving the existing ambiguity iz actually useful.

> > Likewise, the traditional alternation
> > between /g/ and /dZ/ for "g", and /k/ and /s/ for "c", depending on
> > the folloeing vauel, is basically preserved.
>
> Interesting, so how does he represent /gIv/?
"Giv".  There aar about 20 wurds that have /g/ written "g" before "i"
or "e", and raather than introducing a new rule for them, he simply
leaves them az anomalies.  These include "get", "give", "girl", and
a few uthers.  Wun coud, I suppose, use "ghet", "ghive", "ghirl"
instead, but in Wijk's system "gh" appears only as part of "igh", "ough",
etc. and is aulwayz silent.  "Ghost" simply becums "gost".

> > On the uther hand,
> > "s" pronounced /z/ is chainged to "z" except in the plural and
> > third person singular endings, which aar left entirely alone.
>
> Then why the spelling {iz}?
Doo yoo really think of "is" as a verb stem "i-" followed by a 3sg
ending?  I shure don't, despite the etymology.

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