Re: American (was Re: Cants)

Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:

> At 17:14 13.12.2003, Greg Johnston wrote:
>
> >American is essentially achieved by simplifying and complexifying English
> >at once. The simplifying is effectively phonetically spelling almost every
> >word, and not necessarily using proper grammar. This also complicates the
> >language, as one does not know if "no" is being used as "know" or,
> >literally, "no".
>
> Well, that complexity is already there in
> the spoken language, so you already know
> how to determine from context whether /now/
> is 'no' or 'know'.  The benefits of keeping
> a traditional orthography full of alternative
> spellings and silent letters hardly outweighs
> the disadvantages.  The only real advantage is
> continuity, but the real reasons English won't
> undergo a spelling reform are political rather
> than linguistic.
I suspect that the eventual solution will be that speakers of regional
variants start to insist their way of speech is a separate language, and
introducing a separate spelling scheme to indicate it.

We could even end up in a "Medieval Latin" situation, in which something much
like today's (written) English is the IAL of choice, but what people actually
speak in today's English-speaking regions is a plethora of "Anglance" language
of varying mutual intertelligibility.

                                                    Andreas

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