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Re: Sidestepping Spelling Reform

From:Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
Date:Wednesday, January 28, 2004, 15:50
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)/

Replies

Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>