Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

> kendra wrote:
> > 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.
>
> RI is only regular in terms of READING.  If there's a rule that "w" and
> "wh" are both pronounced /w/, that's perfectly regular in terms of
> reading, tho not in terms of writing.  RI isn't intended to make WRITING
> easier, just READING.  It regularizes English without sacrificing the
> unity of written English the way a purely phonetic system would.
All right. It just seemed like a strange thing to leave in, to me, unless
there were a distinction somewhere.

> > 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?"
>
> But the thing is RI *doesn't* involve much effort and cost because you
> don't have to change anything except to make new dictionaries and modify
> education.  All books in old spelling could be kept without problem.
> Children who grew up with new spelling would find the old spelling not
> too terribly difficult, as we do with, for example, Shakespeare's
> original spellings, as John Cowan pointed out earlier.
In which case, what's the point and benefit of regularizing? I'm really just
interested in to what degree it would improve the learning of English since
the changes aren't as widespread as one might expect, for a spelling reform.
It seems to me like it wouldn't help very much, but I acknowledge that I
have no idea. I'm just curious, sorry if I'm causing trouble. :)

-Kendra
http://refrigeratedcake.com
"We que sont adieu....uh...la toilette..." - Amy's
shining moment in French poetry writing
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nik Taylor" <yonjuuni@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

>
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