Re: English notation

At 6:37 pm +1000 29/6/01, t wrote:
>> Ie think dhis iz sumwut mor reed'b'l for Eenglish speekerz. It reeliez on
>
>I'll be calm. Okay. I think I can manage it. DON"T CONFUSE AMERICAN ENGLISH
>WITH
>ENGLISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>(etc).
AMEN!!!!!

[snip]
>
>AEt eny raeyt, ay doevayzd wan foo thy inglish spoeukoen hioe, with oe fjuu
>foenetik doestinkshens, layk incluuding boeth [I:] and [I@], aend juuzing
>thoe saeym simboel foo boeuth [Q:]=/Q:/ and [Q:]=anstrest /O:/ (noeut thaet
>thyyz aa foenyymicly difroent, aend thaet /Q:/ oeunly oekooes in thoe wooed
>'gaoon')
>
   :-)

Good on yer!

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At 9:17 am -0600 29/6/01, Tom Tadfor Little wrote:
>Tristan wrote:
>
>> > Ie think dhis iz sumwut mor reed'b'l for Eenglish speekerz. It reeliez on
>>
>>I'll be calm. Okay. I think I can manage it. DON"T CONFUSE AMERICAN ENGLISH
>>WITH
>>ENGLISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>>(etc).
>
><grins>
>
>Okey dokey.
>
>But, alas, one can't do phonetic writing without choosing *some*
>accent--
...which is precisely the point I made in an earlier email.  A phonetic
approach to spelling reform must inevitably be divisive.

>and, like it or not, American English has become the dominant form
>of the language today.
..which is precisely the attitude that gets Americans disliked in so many
parts of the world.

I must make it clear that personally I have no animus against Americans.
Indeed, on my visits to the USA, I have found Americans to be courteous &
hospitable.  BUT - I'm afraid Americans are not always perceived that way,
even here and still less in other parts of the globe.  And one reason is,
quite frankly, the attitude: "Look, buster, we are the dominant power in
the world today, so you'd better get used to it."
---------------------------------------------------------------

At 11:37 am -0500 29/6/01, Andrew Chaney wrote:
>on 29/06/2001 10:17, Tom Tadfor Little at tom@TELP.COM wrote:
[snip]
>> accent--and, like it or not, American English has become the dominant form
>> of the language today.
>>
>
>I'm not sure about that.  Many of the foreign professors and students here
>speak an English that is not really American but not really British either.
>I don't think American or British is the dominant form.
Indeed not.

Here, in little old England, I went to Mass Friday morning in a church in
the southwest of London.  The priest was of African origin (west African, I
think), and he most certainly had neither an American nor a British accent.
One my visits to South Africa I find quite a different accent, but similar
to what I've heard people from Zimbabwe use.  Neither the Aussies nor the
New Zealanders speak with anything that can be mistaken for either a Brit
or American accent (at least, by us Brits - I'm told that some Americans
find it difficult to distinguish Cockney & Aussie - strange).  And the
English of the Indian sub-continent is quite different from that of Britain
or the US.

These are all sizable populations of English speakers.  But an increasing
number of English speakers now are L2 or L3 speakers of the language that
use it as an IAL.  English is becoming more & more internationalized.

-----------------------------------------------------
At 1:51 am +1000 30/6/01, tristan alexander mcleay wrote:
[snip]
>Sorry, you missed my point. My point was that if one was going to do a
>phonemic transcription,
But, surely, the orthographies discussed so far in the present threads have
been _phonetic_, not phonemic.  Any successful spelling reform for English
as a whole must be phonemic.

>.......they shouldn't choose some dialect that isn't
>the most complicated; spelling /"kVr@nt/ ans <kerent> or whatever it is
>makes no sence to a fair amount of the population.
Indeed not - it took me a while to work it out.

(I see Tristan, tho living in a completely different part of the globe,
like me pronounces _current_ with [V].  Not everyone conflates /V/ and /@/
;)

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=========================================

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