Re: English is a crazy language

(Apologies if I've already sent this. I thought I had, but I haven't
seen it and my email program has told me it wasn't sent so I'm guessing
I haven't.)

On Tue, 2002-04-23 at 20:27, Wesley Parish wrote:
> On Tuesday 23 April 2002 20:38, [I] wrote:
> > And that brings me to another point... Why not abolish correct spellings
> > of particular words altogether and let spellers take charge, just like
> > speakers with pronunciations? If you practise it a bit, reading
> > forums/chat isn't too hard. (But we must have a few rules, like people
> > who use numbers and punctuation to spell with will be shot with no
> > trial!)
> >
> Don't you mean |tiacht| with no trial?  |ti| as in ghoti-ing, convention,
> convection, etc; |acht| as in yacht?
Nah, English spelling rules work against allowing <tiacht> to be
pronounced /S(Q-A)t/. The <acht> of <yacht> is entirely irregular so
I'll let that equivalency pass, but alikening the <ti> to be equivalent
to that of <convention> is bad because in such examples, the <ti> needs
an unstressed syllable. (That's not to say that there aren't words with
a <ti>=/S/ in a stressed syllable, just that the theory above is bad.) I
never pay <ghoti> as an excuse because it's made up and fails the test,
too. (<Gh> only at end of syllable/before consonant: <laugh(ter)>.
<Ghost> breaks.

I can't say I've seen many people spelling like that on forums and
chatrooms and the like on the web. The kinds of spelling I was thinking
about was:

  I carnt say ive seen menny peepl speling like that on forums n
  chatrooms n the like on th web. Th kindza spelling i woz thinking
  about woz.

(And yes, I have seen spellings like that.)
--
Tristan

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