Re: English spelling reform

Tristan wrote, quoting myself and respectively himself:

> >>Incidentally... you all seem to be writing 'an' as /@n/... But I
> >>think a written form would be better to have what it is 'properly',
> >>which I would've thought be /&n/. (Though 'a' I agree should be
> >>/@/.)
> >
> >That's a defensible point of view, but it does place an extra burden
> >on the transcriptor to analyse every reduced vowel.
>
> Only every word, actually... And anyway, the only time it counts is in
> this word and a couple of other monosyllable words.
Is "every" a typo, above?

So you think reduced vowels should be un-reduced in monosyllabic words
but it doesn't matter for polysyllabic ones)?

There are any number of words that are reduced in practically all
speech but which may preserve an unreduced vowel under special
circumstances, e.g. possibly when sung. I find it easier to leave
schwas as schwas than to develop some other policy on where to draw
the line.

> >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.
>
> Ah, but my argument out of that 'ö' is considered a single letter, not a
> combination of letter-plus-diacritc... Actually, this is a
Irrelevant. The time it takes to draw the diacritic, and hence the
impact on handwriting, is equivalent whatever your terminology. It's
also equivalent aesthetically.

> transliteration of a script better designed for the English language...
> I should have the actual alphabet sitting somewhere in my bedroom, but I
> dunno... I can remember the rough form...
Presumably then, 'ö' maps to a simpler squiggle than 'o' does?

> >You voice your /x/ in "auxiliary", evidentally.
>
> As did the Macq. Dictionary. Indeed, it didn't have any unvoiced version.
I tend to leave it unvoiced. However, I can't remember the last time
anyone used it in real life conversation...

> >>(Now then, I have most claim to the abbrev. 'etc.' (my full version
> >>would be 'etcétra'), given that I normally have <c> for /s/...
> >>What're the rest of you doing? Tut, tut, tut!)
> >
> >This is about English spelling, not Latin spelling :-)
>
> Well... I'm saying that 'et cetera' is a single English word, not a
> Latin word... most people treat it thus... (it suffers, for example,
> from English sound changes (/@ri/ > /ri/) and an English rhotic). Why
> should our reader be forced to suddenly switch orthographies? A worse
> trade-off than having to remember than 'an' is spelt <än>.
I'd argue with this. You never see it spelled out in English - it's
always spelt "etc" which you have to remember is pronounced /et'setr@/.
It's only ever spelled out in full when the author is, for example,
showing off their Latin.

(of course, "etc" would spell "itch" in my scheme)

Adrian.

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