Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

Tristan wrote:

> Becoz(?) it completely avoids aul that hassle ov having(havving?) to
> lern irregular spellings. If yoo donte hav too spend a year lerning how
> too spell 'all', 'were' and 'word', yoo can spend it lerning how to
> spell 'contrary', 'unfortunately' and 'antidisestablishmentarian' (or
> whatever it is).
But, for instance, things like "whatever" and "word" would still be
irregular, to people who live where I live; wh and w are only different if
you're me and mess up sometimes. Though I suppose the degree of irregularity
would be reduced regardless.

> >I learned to read pretty fast and have been good with spelling all my
life,
> >though I still can't spell exercise or exaggerate or lisence without
> >squinting at them,
> >
> It's actually either 'licence' or 'license', the latter being the
> American spelling and the Commonwealth spelling for verbs and the former
> the Commonwealth spelling for nouns, so that I have a 'drivers licence'
> and so am licensed to drive a car, but an American would have a 'drivers
> license' but still be licensed to drive a car.
Yeah, see? Captain Bad Spelling to the rescue. I don't use the word license
very often, but I think it's just one of those words that I'm hopeless with.

> > as many have before me, wondering why I can't remember
> >them, and spell wierd wrong every time because I think ei looks wayerd.
> >Anyway, my question is, how much more efficient is a system that doesn't
> >seem to change that many things?
> >
> Becoz if oanly (shorely 'oe' would make the sound /i:/ e.g. oestrogen
> but nun with it making /ou/) sum wurds change, we donte need too spend
> thousands of dollars or pounds or euros or whotever the local currency
> is changing billions of wurds, and becoz of my first comment.
I guess I wasn't very clear, my question really was "Does the increased
efficiency of a not very much changed orthography outweigh the overall
effort and cost involved in fixing it?"

I like stupid English spelling, despite my hopelessness and tendency to
write "excersize," so I count loss of character in that. :)

> >Aj prsunlj lajk funetik speliq, as any sort of spelling reformed the
English
> >way (ie 'long a' for e, 'long i' for i) looks utterly ridiculous to me,
and
> >I lament the utter irregularity of it, given that Jeff and I don't agree
on
> >phonetic spelling in Tiri'n and we speak the same dialect of English.
> >My sentences are far too long and I far too ignorant!
> >
> Well... if it helps, using 'ai' or 'ay' for the long A sound makes
> phonetic sense for Australian English, where it's pronounced /&i/.
Here it's probably more like something I'd write as ey, though I have no
idea how to represent that. /ej/  I suppose. (Captain of Not Knowing SAMPA
or anythign resembling it, and Captain of callnig myself Captain Of Stuff.)

Ok, that's enough incoherency from me.

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