Re: English notation

At 12:54 pm -0700 28/6/01, Tommie L Powell wrote:
>On Thu, 28 Jun 2001 Christian Thalmann wrote:
>> [snip]
>> Æni obzerveishenz or koments?  Das samwan sii æn
>> obvies sursiz of problemz? Ou, ænd pliiz dount giv mi
>> æni long spiichiz ebaut dhe diiper fenetik intrikesiz of
>>> inglish -- ai daut æni emæriken spiiker short of æ linggwist
>> is ewær of dhem, ænd wud mis dhem in dhis nouteishen.
>> Bisaidz, it's not æz if dhe kerent inglish speling wer dhæt
>> prisais æniwei.
>
>What English dialect does your teacher speak?
>I ask because I've never heard English spoken like that
>(though I've heard it spoken in numerous ways).
Amen.

I'm afraid there's too much in Christian's scheme that is just
counter-intuitive to me.  It contains too many irregularities to make me
want to change from the current system, e.g.

æ = /E/ in _æni_, /{/ in _ænd_ and _dhæt_.

The phoneme /E/ is spelled {æ} in _æni_, but as {e} in _dhem_.
The phoneme /O/, which Brits usually pronounce [Q] and Americans as [A], is
spelled {o} in _koment_ and _problem_ but as {a} in the first syllable of
_samwan_.

The /V/ sound seems, as far as I can see, to be spelled {a} in _wan_ (one),
but as {e} in _kerent_ /"kVrn=t/.

Indeed, _kerent_ threw me completely on the first read; it suggested
*kerrent /"kErn=t/ to me.

Maybe Christian will say that I'm going on about the "deeper phonetic
intricacies of English" - but I ain't.  These are _surface_ issues.  Any
schoolkid in this neck of the woods will continue to make spelling errors
if English were respelled like this.  It still does the two things that the
current spelling does:
(a) spells the same sound in different ways;
(b) gives different values to the same letter.

The problem, I think, arises here:
>ai daut æni emæriken spiiker short of æ linggwist....
You don't have to be a linguist (or linggwist) to notice what I've written
above.  You just have to live in the south east of England (that's in
Britain, a little island off the shore of Europe).

Any spelling reform that merely represents US English is certainly doomed
to failure a wide scale simply because it will be be perceived not merely
as regional but as "imperial" by many, i.e. the Americans trying to lord
over the rest.

Now, I don't suppose for one moment Christian intended any such thing
(especially IIRC he hails from Europe).  But that is, sadly, how such a
reform would be viewed by many elswhere in the anglophone world.

The trouble is that English is not only still spoken in little old England
(and the rest of Britain as either L1 or L2), but is also spoken in
Australia, New Zealand, much of Africa & the Indian subcontinent.  Any
spelling reform, to be be successful, has to be acceptable to all
anglophones (except diehards).  It would, in fact, not be impossible to do
this; but it would need a lot of care.
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At 12:05 am +0200 29/6/01, Christian Thalmann wrote:
[snip]
>least a dozen years.  Many independent native speakers have attested my
>speech to sound like accent-free generic American.
It may sound "accent-free" (whatever that means) in the US, but it's a
certainty that it wouldn't pass as accent-free in Britain, Australia or
South Africa (inter multa alia).
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At 11:33 pm -0400 28/6/01, Dennis Paul Himes wrote:
[snip]
>
>    Why to you distinguish [V] and [@]?  Is that a phonemic distinction in
>any dialect of English?
Er, yes - south-east England, for starters - and some other Brit dialects.
Almost certainly varieties in other parts of the globe (but I'll let
Aussies and others speak for themselves   ;)

In words like _curry_ and _hurry_ we have [V].  But there is also a word
_fur_ [f3:], and if something is covered with fur it is _furry_ ["f3:ri].
[3:] is perceived by us in this neck of the woods as an allophone of /@/
(altho the 'person in the street' wouldn't use that terminology!).  Here,
_curry_ simply does _not_ rhyme with _furry_.

Actually, we had this discussion several times on Conlang and they can be
found in the archives (so, actually, has spelling reform of English).

I gather that altho /V/ and /@/ have generally fallen together in American
English, it's not universal even there; and it sure ain't universal outside
of the US.
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At 12:17 am +0200 29/6/01, Christian Thalmann wrote:
>Shreyas Sampat wrote:
[snip]
>> (Actually, Chris, you use æ in a lot of
>>> situations where I'd use /E/.)
>
>Generally, I IPAize sounds written as <a> with /æ/ rather than /E/.  I
>don't make much of a distinction in speech (my /æ/ doesn't sound as open
>as in British, in fact more like /E/).  This might be an American
>influence.  As I said, I don't want to start these dead boring bickering
>wars about phonetic details in English again.  *rolleyes*
But I'm afraid that by adopting a _phonetic_ approach to spelling reform,
you inevitably invite just that.  And, with respect, it is a little more
than bickering.  Some of us like it to be appreciated occasionally that
English is not confined to 49 united states in north America + Hawaii.

IMHO the only successful way for a wholesale reform of English (rather than
regularizing present spelling) is to adopt a _phonemic_ approach which
accommodates all mainstream varieties of English.

Ray.

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