R: Re: Language changes,spelling reform (was Conlangea Dreaming)

Mangiat wrote:

<snip>

> The problem here is that English evolved far too quickly. Italian has
> preserved its original spelling from about 1250 and, with very few minor
> changes, most of whom already steady at Dante's times (around 1300), it
> perfectly works today as it used to work then. English, on the other hand,
> has undergone so many changes from the OE times: the weakening of the word
> ending (a destructive phenomenon which caused the loss of declension
> patterns, genders and personal conjugation of the verbs) and the infamous
> Great Vowel Shift are the most famous. The Middle English spelling system,
> which, AFAIK, was quite phonetically even in Chaucer's times ('Whan that
> Aprill with his shoures sote...' - darnit, I'm studying that now at
> school!),  has been preserved because of tradition, even if overwhelmed by
> sound changes.
You're probably right. I've always wondered what made English change so
fast - in like a thousand years, we've lost declensions, genders, and
personal conjugation, and the Great Vowel Shift completely overhauled
our long vowel system. Not too many other languages can make that claim
- I've heard that Icelandic hasn't changed too much over the past
thousand years, and now you're telling my that Italian hasn't either.

Many other languages use spelling systems that are basically phonetic
versions of the Standard Dialect - English did pretty much the same
thing 500 years ago, but since then, the Standard Dialect (tho there's
two now - a British one and an American one) has changed dramatically,
but we still spell it the same. It doesn't make senes, and I'd like to
see it change, but it ain't gonna happen.

Oh well, what can I do?

I'm beginning work on a whole big language family, and I'm going to have
one of the languages go through changes as fast an English did, keeping
the spelling the same all the while - that should be interesting.

--
Robert