Re: USAGE: Diversity and uniformity AND No rants! (USAGE: di"f"thong) -- responses to Andreas and Ray.

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
[Reply to Andreas snipped]

> R A Brown skrev:
[snip]
[snip]
>> and not only in IT environments. One email in this thread listed other
>> occasional spelling simplifications - one imagines some at least will
>> catch.
>
> I'm all for that.  What I mean is rather that a laxing of
> spelling prescriptivism may speed that process.
English spelling is rather less prescriptiv [sic] than many other
national spellings. It does come as a surprize to some people to
discover the number of words where dictionaries do list alternate
spellings. The process will continue, I have no dout], on its own
'self-laxing' way.

> (BTW I found just the other day that _gaol_ ultimately
> derives from VL _caveola_ -- while it kind of explains
> the traditional spelling as a failure to note the Central
> French /ga/ > /dZa/ sound change in the spelling one wonders
> why this word wasn't respelled when _jambe_ and _jardin_ were.)
The French now spell it as _geôle_. I suspect the older English _gaol_
inherited its spelling from a north French dialect where the hard-g was
retained, but picked up the pronunciation from the more common /dZ/
dialects   :)

>> 2. More noticeable in my lifetime has been a drift towards spelling
>> pronunciations. When I was a youngster, 'porpoise' and 'tortoise' the
>> final syllable was (always) /@s/; now one often hears it pronounced
>> /ojz/. The 't' in 'often', which became silent in the Tudor period (as
>> spellings like 'offen' show), is now more often than not pronounced. One
>> finds it increasingly restored in 'moisten' and 'soften'. I have heard
>> it restored in 'apostle' and 'epistle', and IME 'pestle' is now almost
>> always pronounced /pEstl=/ and not the /pEsl=/ of my youth. This trend
>> will surely continue.
>
> I must say I have more mixed feelings about spelling
> pronunciations, or rather about people claiming that
> the old, spontaneously evolved pronunciations are 'wrong'.
They don't do the latter IME. It's just that through universal
education, spelling has affected pronunciation.

> I still happen to feel that speech should be primary to writing.
Yep - but in literate societies the printed word is bound to have an
effect. This has probably been going on in literate societies for millennia.

[snip]


>>> By the same token Americans ought to back down from spelling
>>> _draft_ for both the words which Brits spell _draught_ but
>>> pronounce differently.  It's just that these spellings have
>>> become traditional on either side of the pond, so some
>>> people will figuratively fight to their death over them.
>>
>> Nope - 'draft' ought to gradually supplant 'draught' - see above.
>
>
> Yes.  I was under the false notion that /drOt/ existed as
> an alternative pronunciation for the 'lack of water' sense.
Nope - that's _drought_ /dr&wt/, which we're experiencing in my neck of
the woods, having had two exceptionally dry winters.

> I see now it is not so.
>
>>
>> ..and then reading was not universal. Only a minority were educated &
>> could read. We are now in a world where we aim for 100% literacy. With
>> an educated minority, such variation did not matter. But those who find
>> difficulty in reading simply get confused by having such variation.
>
>
> And they would *not* be confused by spellings like
> _gaol_ and _draught_?
Pardon me - but in my previous email I specifically said that such
people DO find _gaol_ confusing and read it as _goal_. But, as I also
said, that spelling is no longer current on either side of the pond. We
write _jail_. It was precisely the confusion that precipitated the change.

But _draught_ is another matter. We are accustomed to _laughter_ so the
_aught_ combo is not so troublesome. In fact, unlike _ough_, there are
only two ways in which -augh- are pronounced in anyone's dialect. And
the sign "draught-beer" or "beer on draught" is familiar enough  :)

Also, as I said in my previous mail, _draft_ is gradually gaining ground
in the UK. In fact, in current British usage, both spellings occur with,
theoretically, different meanings - but there is a grey area where in
practice there is hesitation between the two spellings.


[snip]

> Granted.  What I advocate is not *random* variation, but
> to allow a greater variation reflecting variation in
> pronunciation.
Why? Does it really improve comprehension for my Merkan cousins to know
that I say [grAs] and not [gr&s]?  What's the point? At the moment we're
all quite happy writing _grass_. Why introduce two different spellings
for plants of the monocotyledonous family Graminaea, when all
anglophones are AFAIK quite happy with the current common spelling? I
fail to see this as a reform.

[snip]
>> Nope - most of the YAEPT threads concern the way the different way that
>> the *same* phoneme is pronounced in different parts of the anglophone
>> world. A phonemic spelling of English simply would _not_ reflect these
>> differences.
>
> I know, but you must agree that the present spelling doesn't
> promote awareness of the fact that pronunciation differs.
But no _phonemic_ spelling will do that - see my remarks above.

What you seem to be advocating is strictly _phonetic_ spelling. While I
agree that a phonemic spelling would be a reform (tho for all sorts of
reasons, I do not think it will happen for English), I do not see
strictly _phonetic_ spelling as a reform. It would mean kids would have
to spell differently from the grandparents in many cases. This seems to
me a recipe for far greater confusion that we have in current English
spelling.

[snip]

> Yes, those who are aware of the differences may feel annoyment at
> seing them discussed, but what annoys me is that those who engage
> in those discussions seem annoyed or at least surprised by the fact
> that these differences exist.
I'll leave that to those who like to engage in those discussions.

[snip]
>>
>> How so? Unless you set up a different set of phonemes for different
>> varieties of English?
>
> I mean that I think some distinctions and some distribution
> differences should be smoothed over by not reflecting them
> in spelling, or by 'compromise spellings' rather than making
> a phonetic transcription of one accent and suppose it can serve
> everybody.
This seems, in part at least, to contradict what you seem to be saying
above. But, as far as I am aware, no one has suggested making the
transcription of one accent the norm to serve for everybody. If there
were to be a reform of English spelling on a phonemic basis, one would
need to establish the abstract English phonemic 'archetype', independent
of regional or national variation.

>> Any spelling reform would, in fact, be imposing some one else's ideas on
>> the rest of us. Personally, I think English spelling for historic
>> reasons has moved far from the ideal of phonemic spelling - But for
>> goodness sake can't we just let the 'natural' processes of very gradual
>> reform and of pronunciation change continue to work?
>
> The problem is that Hell will freeze before there is any real
> improvement by that 'natural' process!
The trouble is that most anglophones don't see it as a huge problem -
specially now we've got spell-checkers    :)

[snip]
>> - we would better applying our creative talents to conlanging (Er -
>> isn't that what the list is supposed to be about?)
>
>
> Well, isn't devising con-orthographies a form of conlanging?
Marginally - but spelling English or Swedish in Arabic characters, or
Tengwar or whatever might be fun, but it's hardly as creative, surely,
as devizing something like Quenya, Klingon, Brihenig etc,. etc.

[snip]
>
> The problem is that spelling prescriptiveness is used as tool of
> social oppression, and this is possible mostly because spelling
> is so much divorced from pronunciation.
Eh? IME kids from privileged backgrounds find our spelling just as
troublesome as kids from deprived backgrounds - and I've found in all
social classes kids who pick up spelling quite easily.

> The phonemic principle
> of spelling serves as a check on prescriptivists insisting on
> arbitrary spelling regulations as a form of shibboleth.
On the contrary, it gives prescriptivists an excellent tool to insist on
"correct" pronunciation. Our present system does not give them such a
tool - as the many YAEPTs so clearly show     :)

> Clearly
> it also makes it easier for kids to learn to spell and for
> L2 learners to learn to speak.
True. But kids are resilient - even Japanese kids seem to cope with
their horrendous mix of scripts. And isn't literacy high in Japan?

[snip]
>> Yes, obviously how one writes one's own language privately is their own
>> concern. George Bernard Shaw always wrote his English in full Pitman
>> shorthand. But if we want to communicate readily with others that use
>> our language it is useful to do so in a more or less commonly agreed
>> way. GBS had the luxury of having a secretary to transcribe his Pitman
>> into traditional English spelling. Most of us don't.
>
>
> The problem with shorthand is of course that it is not easy to
> reproduce mechanically, not that it is phonemic.
Some shorthands are certainly phonemic - and surely the difficulties are
no greater than they are in reproducing Arabic script mechanically.

[snip]

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

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