Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

John Cowan wrote:

>Tristan scripsit:
>
>
>>As I've said in the Germaniconlang mailing list: you respell English,
>>you put up with what you get. And you won't like it if you want
>>inter-dialectal homogeneity. The only rules you can have that'll be as
>>valid in one area as another are the present ones, full-stop. (And yeah,
>>they aren't homogenous, but they're close enough to make no difference.)
>>
>>
>Not so.  Regularized Inglish has inter-dialectal homogeneity at least as
>good as the present system, precisely because it is not a phonetic or
>phonemic spelling.  Wijk designed it on the basis of conservative RP
>and General American, but it should work for most other Englishes as well.
>If Americans end up writing "bin" where others continue to write "been",
>this is no worse than all the silly -er/-re and -or/-our distinctions
>that have no value whatsoever.
>
Doesn't matter: the very second you tell people to change the 'correct'
spelling from 'you' to 'yoo', they'll also change the correct spelling
of 'saw' and 'sore' to be the same (assuming they say them the same).
No-one has trouble spelling 'you' correctly, but it's actually difficult
getting 'saw' and 'sore' right. Regardless of the inter-dialectal
homogeneity built into a reformed spelling in theory, putting it into
practice will see it lost. It's a case of all or nothing. I can't see a
part-way solution working.

>He used both, and I agree that he winds up with too much "z".  Here's a
>small sample of RI, with the s > z, th > dh, and a > aa changes backed out:
>
>
[snipped]

>=====
>
>As yoo can see, this orthography is etabnannimous but not maggelitous.
>
Looks ugly... And I've heard irregularities are easier to memorise than
regularities (why, I don't know)...

Tristan.

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