Re: Not phonetic but IN CONCLUSION

--- David Zitzelsberger <DavidZ@...> wrote:
> what is ghoti?
"gh" from "enough"
"o" from "women"
"ti" from "nation"

Thus "ghoti" spells "fish".  I don't recall off hand
who first dramt that one up, but I'm inclined to guess
it was G.B. Shaw.

--gary

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gary Shannon [mailto:fiziwig@YAHOO.COM]
> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2004 10:11 AM
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Subject: Re: Not phonetic but IN CONCLUSION
>
>
> In conclusion, it appears that my original concept
> of
> a dialect-neutral phonetic alphabet is not possible.
> In fact, phonetic alphabets in general would be
> useless except in a very small community of speakers
> who all use the same dialect.
>
> That being the case, it appears that spelling of an
> international language like English more or less
> _must_ be somewhat arbitrary.  So those phonetic
> spelling fans, like the Shavians, are really wasting
> their time.  Arbitrary spelling in English (within
> limits, of course) is really the only system that is
> workable.  The best we could hope for in the way of
> reform is to get rid of some of the grosser oddities
> like the "gh" in "ghoti".
>
> --gary