Re: CHAT behove etc (was: Natlag: Middle English impersonal verbs)

>>I do *NOT* mean the graffiti of those who spray walls with things like
>>"Kev luvs Shaz"!!!
>
>Ouch, you're yelling at me!  :)  And I asked you politely not to. :)
>On a side note, I think that slang spellings, which abound on brick walls
>and are all over the Internet (U R writting a speach I cant understand) are
>part of the whole experience of using English.  Not "standard" English,
>obviously, but something to muse about.
Nobody asked, but IMO a surprizingly large percentage of these slang
spellings actually work better than the current ones. As a prime example,
"U" versus "you". The former forms a nice analogy with "I", and is also
regular. OTOH "ur" is arguably less regular than "your", so it's still not a
complete solution...


>many of my students are writing (...)
>"theatre" instead of "theater."  I always joke about it, with little pinky
>raised in the air:  "You are geawing to the THEE-uh-TREH, ah you?"
But "theatre" is the more regular one. Since this is a "broken" <ea> - ie.
two vowels, not an /i/ deriving from pre-GWS */E:/ - the spelling "theater"
would suggest that the <a> is /ei/. Meanwhile there're numerous precedents
to spelling final schwa+liquid (or a syllabic liquid) with the <e> final,
even in AmEng - in the case of /l/. Finally, final <e> is /E/ only in a very
small set of loanwords. Off the top of my hed I can only think of "anime",
and even that offen becomes /ei/.

There'd also be "theatter" but I think added double letters look a little
silly; and "theatr" would be an upgrade only for the peepl who use a
syllabic /r/.


>>Apart from 'thru', I consider the other Merkans reforms to be sensible.
Why is that not sensible? It's definitely better than the horrible
"through", and the rule that final single vowels are pronounced "long" in
monosyllabes already exists - extending it to <u> too doesn't seem very
radical.

And there's many, many more words for which the standard spelling is
irregular for 99% of English speakers, like "often", "heart", "hour" or
"laugh". I'm actually surprized how little resistance there is against
those. Isn't anyone really aware enuff of the rules of English spelling to
see what exactly is irregular and what isn't?


>>way back in PIE times the 'proto-subjunctiv' (...)
>
>Okay, Ray, perfect!  If you keep this up, people like Mark and myself will
>eventually copy you, and write "subjunctiv."  What other more visible
>listservs are you on?  How many other fellow writers write it this way?  In
>the meantime, we should consider taking the "e"s off of "claus," "serv" (as
>it is used in daily speech) and maybe even "subordinat."  "Language" and
>"usage", though, need it, in order to get the palatal "g."  Similarly with
>"Romance."
>
>I'm not being aggressiv, I'm correcting what I felt was a too emphatic
>statement on my part last post that American spelling was monolithically
>resistant.
>
>Cheers,
>Sally
Whoa! You have a point there - this list could indeed hav potential to spred
a change of "-ive" to "-iv". Converted!

OTOH the e's in "clause" or "serve" aren't really harming anyone. Not that
there's a benefit either, of course, but my philosophy is to leave the
harmless bugs alone until peepl are more/better accustomed to the idea that
English spelling is horrible. YMMV.

John Vertical

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