Re: Sidestepping Spelling Reform

On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Joe wrote:

> >_doing_ spelling reform: Replace the Romanji Aplhabet
I always thought the word was romaji. But Romanji makes more sense...
(Either way it wouldn't've helped me link the name with 'roman' till I was
explicitly told...) Am I utterly wrong here?

> I think we'd need a Cree-oid syllabary.  That is, we allow for consonant
> clusters, not as in Japanese.
>
> Okay, well, English has the following (based on RP, possibly one of the
> dialects with maximum distinctions) -
A rhoticised RP would be better, of course, and it seems you meant to
imply that...

> /A:/  as in 'father'.
> /A:/ (/&/ in most dialects)
You'll also need one for /A:/ as in far even if you still right the r
after it. Even though mostly you might be tempted to say it's /&/+/r/, you
can't tell which it'll be when there's a vowel after it. Same probably
applies to all the r-mutated vowels.

Also, I'm not sure exactly how useful /A:/ as in 'father' is. There's
father and words like palm, calm, almond (and even they have (possibly
pronunciation-learnt) spelling-influenced pronunciations in some parts of
the world IIUC).

> For instance,  'grass' would be spelt with three characters. 'g',
> 'rA:'(Pronounced as /&/ in most dialects) and 's'.  That would work, right?
So ... you'd need a letter for every consonant and every vowel and (every
consonant except /N/ and every vowel)? That seems ... needlessly
complicated. I think the only pseudo-syllabry that'd work for English is a
hangulesque one, which is very pseudo. Nor is any reform going to make all
the people reasonably happy without being amazingly minor.

--
Tristan

Mecht most toreck, ånd absolut mecht most toreck absolutelik. Gehalchte
menn vaore nichæ ever uevel menn, jetsvao svao indfluedels evaore
nemmfremm, ånd ne othoritet.
                             --- Jochn Emerich Edvard Dalberg, Herr Acton

/maiS mQ:tSaitS,  Qn afsluS maiS mQ:tSaitS afslulaitS.  jQ:f m&: wE Sa jev
ivu m&:, ZEsi fo efluduS evuJE:f, Qn (mwipet_ho/nu:t_horit_heS)/

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