Re: English spelling reform

Adrian Morgan wrote:

>>Robert B Wilson (RBW)
>>Daniel Andreasson - Swenglish (SWG)
>>Adrian Morgan - Yûomaewec (YMC): *
>>Tristan McLeay (TAM)
>>
>>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.

>>[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.
>
Ah, but my argument out of that 'ö' is considered a single letter, not a
combination of letter-plus-diacritc... Actually, this is a
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...

>>[RBW] Artifiscyol laengwaecgesse deissynd four specific purposese are
>>[SWG] Artifisjöl längwidjis får späsifik pörpösis ar
>>[YMC] Uotifeccil langwidjiz fo spisefek pùopisiz u
>>[TAM] Aatöficjöl längwidj's [dösayn'd] fo spösifik pööpös's a
>>
>>
>
>Ah - did Daniel leave out the word "designed" or did I accidentally
>snip it when reformatting and then follow suit? Anyway, it should be
>"dizuend".
>
Seems that Daniel left it out. Bad Daniel!

>>[RBW] caommunicascyonsse are calld unifersol laengwaecges, acsilyari
>>[SWG] kåmjonikäjsjön ar kåld jonivörsöl längwidjis, åksiljäri
>>[YMC] kimyûonikaeccin u koold yûonivùossil langwidjiz, ooksellire
>>[TAM] kömjuunökäicjön a kool'd juunövöösöl längvidj's, ogzilöry
>>
>>
>
>You voice your /x/ in "auxiliary", evidentally.
>
As did the Macq. Dictionary. Indeed, it didn't have any unvoiced version.

>>(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 :-)
>
>Spelt out, "et cetera" would be "àt sàtiri". But in other documents I
>have followed the convention of translating acronyms only if they are
>English-derived. So I'm being consistent.
>
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>.

Tristan

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