Re: USAGE: Fänyläjikyl Inglyx

Roland Hoensch wrote:
>
> And thus we touch at the heart of the matter.
> The common writing system for Chinese is their... I do not
> even know what it is called.  A part phonetic, part semantic
> system of (and I use the term loosely) "picture writing".
Logographic is the term.

> Whereas English is using an alphabet.  An alphabet that has
> distinct letters for vowels and consonants.  An alphabet whose
> great achievement was a largely phonetic representation of
> speech.
In theory.  BUT an alphabet does not have to be purely phonetic.
Indeed, in a language like English, there's an advantage in not.  First,
English already uses a morphophonemic system, wherein spelling indicates
not only sound, but how words are connected.  Consider "democracy" and
"democratic", tho both share the common element democra-, that is
pronounced differently in each word.

> If the speech of various speakers differ that widely, why are they
> all writing the same?  I feel the alphabet is not being made full
> use of.
Because people have an easier time distinguishing variant pronunciations
than they do variant spellings.  A difference in spelling can be more
difficult to understand than a difference in pronunciation.  So,
spelling differently would make dialects that could understand the
spoken form be unable to understand the written.

Besides, I like the fact that my regional identity is not automatically
revealed in my writing.  Other than that I'm American, you can't tell
more about it unless I CHOOSE to use some regional words like y'all.

> And yes, I do apologize, saying English is no more a language than
> the Romance tongue is a bit of a stretch... a lot actually.  But I am
> rather certain that English is going exactly the same way the Romance
> tongues went.
Unless civilization collapses, I don't see that happening.  There was no
contact between the Romance-speaking areas, that's why Romance broke up
into French, Spanish, Italian, etc.  However, there's lots of contact
between English-speaking regions.

> Even if the big three somehow homogenize their dialects/languages,
> other countries will make English genuinely their own.  Jamaica and
> India will, I think with doubt, have their own English language given
> time.
Jamaica certainly does already, and there's a movement to get it
recognized as such (rather than the normal perception of it merely being
"bad English"), and India probably does.

However, as they are drawn into the global economy more, they will quite
likely adjust to become less distinct.  And, to a lesser extent, the
prestigious dialects (American, British, Australian, Canadian) will
adjust themselves as well.

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