Re: English notation

me:

>  > But, alas, one can't do phonetic writing without choosing *some*
>  > accent--and, like it or not, American English has become the dominant
>form
>  > of the language today.
Tristan:

>Once again (because i tend to reply bottom-to-top), that wasn't my
>point. My point was that English does not mean American English,
Then I guess I still don't get it. Obviously I'm aware that a transcription
based on an American accent will not be accurate for speakers of other
accents, but the same is true of *any* transcription, right? And obviously
I don't think that American English is the only kind there is. So I'm
having trouble grasping what it is you're objecting to, if it is not my
choice to transcribe with reference to American pronunciations rather than
others.

>especially strange dialects of it that tensify /I/ before /N/, for
>example (that wasn't meant in any offencive way, btw, it was meant as
>humour).
Well, humor or no, it is getting a bit annoying now, since several other
posters have established that /iN/ is widespread in American English, to
the extent that I don't recall ever having heard /IN/ in this country,
although I have lived on both coasts and in the midwest also.

>And as I say later, you have to make the *most* amount of distinctions
>as possible (although where you have otherwise impossible things, like
>/i@(r)n/ versus /ir@n/, or /mam/ vs /mam/ (but the first one is /mVm/
>and the second /mQm/ when you 'translate' them into other dialects)
>you'd need two spellings to do it with.
It's not clear to me what you are advocating here, and it is even less
clear to me later on (which I guess I'm supposed to read first?)

>And, finally, i have nothing against someone designing a reformed thing
>for one dialect alone, but i do have something against them trying to
>suggest it as a more general one - for some, it'd be as advantagous as TO.
What's TO?




>  >> Try
>  >>
>  >>   Ie think dhis iz sumwot maw reed'b'l faw Inglish speek'z. It
>reliez on
>  >
>  >
>  > Nah. It's a step in the wrong direction. Everyone is used to the "r"s in
>  > the written language, and a good many of us are used to speaking
>them and
>  > hearing them too. Dropping them just defers to one sort of accent
>without
>  > enhancing comprehension at all.
>  >
>
>Sorry, you missed my point. My point was that if one was going to do a
>phonemic transcription, they shouldn't choose some dialect that isn't
>the most complicated;
Why? This baffles me. If one is going for recognizability/readability
(which was my point to begin with), then it seems a good strategy to pursue
would be to preserve traditional orthography wherever it is reflected in
the speech of some substantial group, and depart from it only when no one
(or hardly anyone) pronounces the word as suggested by the traditional
spelling. This strategy would imply keeping the <r> around, and also
keeping <ing> as is. The former may not reflect many British accents; the
latter may not reflect many American accents, but both are readily
comprehended by anyone who reads English, and both are comprehensible if
spoken phonetically by a non-native speaker.

>  spelling /"kVr@nt/ ans <kerent> or whatever it is
>makes no sence to a fair amount of the population.
You'll have to be more explicit about what you see as the problem. And I
don't recall proposing <kerent>, so I'm not sure what the context this is.

>  IMHO, the *most*
>complicated form would be the best, and that *would*, of course, include
>post-volic aahs, even though, thanks to american influence (american
>rhoticness creates support for it in other dialects, but there is a hole
>there as the dialects in question don't have them, and so they drop /@/s
>to fill the hole. That's my guess, at least), certain dialects want to
>use them in brand new cases, but these certain dialects will already
>have to cope with people putting an extra syllable into 'violence', so i
>guess that shouldn't matter too much.
Too much of a run-on sentence for me to parse successfully. You're
advocating a reformed spelling that drops <r> in certain environments, but
I can't seem to tease out the justification for that position, though it
seems you intend it to be in here somewhere.

>I theenk :) i've explained my POV propperly now, so i'll finish here.

Maybe it's me, but I've read this post about 4 times, and the only thing I
believe I understand is that you don't care for my accent.   ;)


Cheers, Tom



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Tadfor Little            tom@telp.com
Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA)
Telperion Productions        www.telp.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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