Re: English spelling reform

Adrian wrote:
> > [RBW] on artifiscyol laengwaecge ise o laengwaecge ðaet hase bein
> > [SWG] Ön artifisjöl längwitsj iss ö längwitsj thät häs binn
> > [YMC] In uotifeccil langwidj ez i langwidj hzat haz beon
> > [TAM] Än aatöficjöl längvidj is ö längvidj ðät's byyn
>
>Methinks any transciption scheme in which the character for schwa has
>a diacritic is not at all suited for English! When a letter with a
>diacritic ('ö') is more common than the same letter without ('o'),
>then the language and transciption scheme are probably mismatched.
Daniel was trying to indicate English pronunciation by Swedish orthography
conventions, so the mismatch is, as Christrophe'd say, a feature, not a bug.
|ö| denoted /2/ and /2:/ in Swedish; Swedes tend to hear English schwas, esp
when stressed, as /2/.

Where schwa is heard in Swedish words, it usually corresponds to written
|e|. Whether you'll find [@] or [E] in unstressed syllables often depend on
'lect, register, and talking speed. Actually, it's most commonly something
on the line between a pure schwa and cardinal [E].

>If I was writing this as though it were Gzarondan, it would read:
>
>         An aatifycll lengridj yz a lengridj hzets byyn ...
>
>Note: Gzarondan doesn't have /N/ (my substitute: /n/) or /w/ (my
>substitute: /r/). Also, not all the above is compatible with
>Gzarondan phonological constraints, especially the word "language",
>which breaks several rules.
A Tairezan might've tried to indicate it as "en ártifishel lengidzh iz e
lengidzh dhet ez bin". "ártifishel" breaks a pretty strong ban on long vowel
plus consonant cluster, whereas "lengidzh" would have to be interpreted as a
word "gidzh" with a fairly loosely asociated prefix "len-" (or
alternatively, leng-idzh, leng-gidzh or lenk-gidzh) to keep stress on the
second syllable.

                                                 Andreas

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