Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

> Let's not exaggerate.  Literature hasn't been spelled "the old way"
> for anything like 1000 years.  "Whan that Aprille with his shoures
> sote / The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote, / And bathed
> every veyne in swich licour, / Of which vertu engendred is the flour;"
> etc.  Late 14th Century.  Standard spellings for words didn't really
> exist until dictionaries became popular in the 18th century*.  So in
> practice you're looking at less than 300 years of mostly consistent
> spelling.
I'll give you that, and I was aware of this.  I really must admit I got
carried away
in that email, it was partly out of fun.  But spelling would be a serious
issue if the reforms were as drastic-- and as weird-- as they were in my
email.  This from a person who learned how to spell by staring at a word
for a long time to see if it "looked right."
> Still, that's hardly a negligable amount, and probably accounts for
> the majority of books in existance.  Certainly there would be a
> certain amount of difficulty, in the event of a language reform.  RI,
> at least, follows current conventions well enough that most old words
> would be recognizable (as I understand it).  Also, it's a lot easier
> to learn to read odd spellings of familiar words than it is to produce
> them.  It doesn't take much practice to become used to the spellings
> of familiar words in Middle English - the difficulty comes from words
> which are obselete, which wouldn't apply in this case.  I suspect that
> the kind of people who enjoy "the beautiful scent of dust from the
> book not beeing read for 150 years" would probably be willing to learn
> to recognize old spellings.
It's spelled obsolete.  I usually wouldn't correct like that, but this time,
it's in the spirit of the thread.  hehe
> Tim May
(a name which, incidently, would be spelled the same after my wacky
spelling change)
Jake
>
> * Even for proper nouns - the surviving signatures of Shakespeare show
> considerable variation (and none of them are spelt "Shakespeare").

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