Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

From: "Tristan" <kesuari@...>
Subject: Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)


> kendra wrote:
> Yes, I know... 'what' is h-less here, too. I didn't say I particularly
> liked half-arsed spelling reforms. In fact, I've tried to say that any
> half-hearted spelling reform, if it succeeds, is going to oversucceed
> and the normal spelling in Some Parts of the World would be
> 'harf-harted'. And you're all specifically banned from saying 'I would
> spell it 'haff-harted'.
Until reading the part below, I didn't realize you were from an r-less
region, so try and imagine how "harf-harted" sounded to me!

> >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 think the only way to find that out is to actually reform the spelling.
I think that's the only way to know _exactly_ how much work it takes to
change it, and how much it'll help.  But no one will go for it until we've
considered all the repercussions that we _expect_ to happen, and it still
looks good.

> I like the look of the current English orthography. I imagine most do.
> But it's only a matter of what we're used to.
I agree, as would many on this list.  Whenever I consult a biblical text in
the original Greek (New Testament, anyway), the copy I have is in
modern-style Greek characters (basically all lower-case).  Things actually
written in that time period looked like today's upper-case, which I have
little experience actually using, as Greek uses it a whole lot less.  We
recently discussed that, either here or on the Conculture list.  Anyway,
either one works, and you can get used to whichever you use.

> There's nothing inherently
> worse with having written 'ai laik ov dhe karent Ingglish oothografi'
> (unless you have Rs pronounced, or say 'current' as /kr=@nt/, or
> whatever, but we don't need to hear it).
Sure, we don't need a whole, "But I say it like _this_!" thread.  But here's
where there is something inherently worse with that spelling.  It might be
better for your part of the world, but I would have spent quite a while
figuring out what "karent" was supposed to mean.  Using the same
orthography, I probably would have written "ai leik dhe lwk ev dhe krrint
Ingglish orthagrefi", and people from other parts of the world might have
been scratching their heads.

Modern written English doesn't reflect the pronunciation completely, but it
is common to all English-speaking countries.  Over time, I imagine it'll end
up being a common written language between places whose spoken tongues have
diverged enough that they are unintelligible.  Who knows what'll happen?

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