Re: orthography and pronunciation

On Wed, 11 Apr 2001 22:49:50 +1000, D Tse <exponent@...> wrote:

(I wrote)
>>
>> In a 1000 years, 20th century English will probably be referred to as
>> "Classical English", and will be studied by a few nutballs
[snip]

>Hehe...very entertaining.
>
>But (and this is conjecture) isn't today's language, specifically its
>pronounciation be easier to figure out in the future, what with audio
>samples that the scientists of today hope to retain for prosperity?
>What I'm saying is that back in Roman 1 AD I'm sure that there was no way
to
>record the exact pronounciations of words, but that making speech
recordings
>are something that is achievable in this day and age.
Yes, of course :) The first few words of my "prophecy" might hold, but the
rest was just for fun. I think that, even with a breakdown of civilization,
a post-dark-age renaissance culture would manage to work out very much
about the 20th century. Even about 20th century Icelandic, for that
matter...

It would probably take something like an alien starship with planet-
busters, blowing earth out of space (with a group of humans escaping on a
colony ship, of course...;) ), to seriously endanger our data bank of the
past centuries. Or perhaps an asteroid; in any case, something planet-wide,
something sudden.

Actually, the main points in the joke were a) English will be considered
extremely unpronounceable (even with full phonetic knowledge of it), and
b) "the Great Spelling Reform of 2665" (if there ever will be one...) :)

Óskar