Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

Jake X scripsit:

> What do you do with all the thousand years' literature spelled the old way?
> Will it all need to be "translated" by, erm, linguists?  What about the exciting
> feeling you get when you open an old book and smell the beautiful scent of
> dust from the book not being read for 150 years?  They can't translate that smell
> into the new edition.  Someone born into the new spelling will have to either
> learn both the regular rules and the old wacky exceptions unless s/he wants
> to give up reading any old out-o'-print paperback never transcribed.*
In RI that would look like this:

Will it aul need to be "translated" by, erm, linguists?  What about the exciting
feeling yoo get when yoo open an old book and smell the beutiful scent of
dust frum the book not being red for 150 yeers?  They can't translate that smell
into the new edition.  Sumwun born into the new spelling will hav to eether/yther
lern bothe the regular rules and the old wacky exceptions unless s/he wants
to giv up reading enny old out-o'-print paperback never transcribed.*

In short, the transition is nowhere near as difficult as you sugest.
I suspect that reading the old orthogrphy, to sumwun braught up on RI,
wood be like a nativ today reading Shakespeare in the First Folio orthography:

Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the Question:   [1710]
Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer
The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune,
Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to dye, to sleepe
No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end
The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes
That Flesh is heyre too? 'Tis a consummation
Deuoutly to be wish'd. To dye to sleepe,
To sleepe, perchance to Dreame; I, there's the rub,
For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come,   [1720]
When we haue shufflel'd off this mortall coile,
Must giue vs pawse.

As it happens, "minde" is both Elizabethan and RI, and very sensible too,
since it shows the long "i".

> (four thouz hu kan't reed the uhbuhv, the faalouwing haz bin conveenyentlee
> tranzlaytid four your reeding plezhir)
As you can see above, RI is nowhere near as drastic as this.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  ccil.org/~cowan
Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos          --Lithuanian proverb
Deus dedit dentes; deus dabit panem             --Latin version thereof
Deity donated dentition;
  deity'll donate doughnuts                     --English version by Muke Tever
God gave gums; God'll give granary              --Version by Mat McVeagh

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