Re: Sidestepping Spelling Reform

I don't know how accurate this is but

http://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html#phono claims that "English goes as far
as (s) + (C) + (r, l, w, y) + (V) + V + (C) + (C) + (C): sprite, thinks."

If this is acurracte and I figure
        S is about 6 (f, v, th/th, s, z, sh/zh). I'm not including both th
because they don't seem to change the meaning of a word for me. Same for sh
verses zh.
        C is about 19 (p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, th/th, s, z, sh/zh, h, ch, j,
r, l, w, y)
        (rlwy) is 4
        V is about 10 (seat, say, set, sat, sit, suit, soot, soak, sought,
sot)
And for all of these items except one V, add one because it is optional,
gives us

7 X 20 X 5 X 11 X 10 X 20 X 20 X 20 = 616,000,000.

Now I'm willing to bet we could trim down the list, but it's large.

I still disagree with, what I belive is, the root of your argument. If we
could just switch to a different alphabet (like one day it's decided all new
published material will use the Cyrillic alphabet), you would find most
people don't want to switch.

Too many people have too many years investing in learning to read and write
under the current system and will refuse to change. You almost need to have
a 100 time where you teach both and require both alphabets in all public
signs, and then get rid of it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Shannon [mailto:fiziwig@YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 12:42 PM
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
Subject: Sidestepping Spelling Reform

That's raises the question, just how large would a
syllabary have to be to semi-accurately represent all
existing English words?

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