Logographic English was Re: Divergent Scripts

On Friday 30 August 2002 19:32, Barry Garcia wrote:
> Of course i've read that
> english words are *somewhat* ( note: i never said they are, so don't jump
> on me for that :)), logographic, but that's due to the way things are
> spelled.
        No need to be defensive; English words are most definitely moving toward a
quasi-logographic system. Personally, I think that's a good thing. With
increasingly dialectal divergence, pretty soon the only way to understand
what someone is saying is to ask them to write it out. :) People may complain
about the irregularities of English spelling, but it's the best solution to
language change. I can easily imagine a scenario in which students five
hundred years hence are still able to read Hemingway in the "original" with
only glosses at the bottom of the page for obsolete words (much like what we
do for Shakespeare today), even though pronunciation has completely changed.
        I have a Korean friend living in Japan who happened to meet a Taiwanese man
on the subway. He said they communicated very well writing in Chinese, since
neither spoke the other's langauge, and the Taiwanese man didn't speak
Japanese. I didn't think to ask him at the time, but I wonder if it would
have been as easy for him to communicate with a mainland Chinese person who
only knew the simplified system.
        :Peter

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