Part 2 Why my conlangs SUCK!!!

Oops: I accidentally hit the "send" button.   Bad me.

Anyway, responding to this sentence:

<<Isn't it better that all verbs are
regular and congugate in the same way?  Well, maybe
not.  *But if not, why not?*>>

The reason behind the "why not" is to make a language more naturalistic.   
Natural languages are irregular, so if you want your created language to be 
natural-looking, you have to model believable irregularity--and this goes for the 
orthography as well as the grammar (but NEVER the romanization--that just 
gives us a headache!).   With respect to this, though:

<<The chaos of English spelling is rather like the
genetic diversity of an ecosystem.  Do we "fix" the
forest by exterminating those life forms that aren't
orderly enough?  Heaven forbid!  This diversity
provides material for variety that can be exploited by
the poet and the author (ode to a flea), as well as
providing a springboard for future mutations and
modifications.>>

Since English is a real language, we don't have to make it *look* natural, or 
protect its naturalness, because it will always be natural.   Since that's 
the case, why not have a regularized spelling system?   It sure would help out a 
lot of people (for those arguments, you can go to any sight where an 
alternative English orthography is proposed).  What will be lost, of course, is the 
literature that we've built up that relates to our spelling system.   If we 
adopted a new spelling system that, for example, got rid of silent e's, what 
happens when future generations read literature or see something on TV that talks 
specifically about silent e's?   They won't know what the heck's going on, 
because (ideally) the new orthography would have no silent characters (aside from 
diagraphs, which, unless the new orthography has new characters, will no doubt 
be necessary).   I'm thinking specifically of a segment on a children's 
television show called Between the Lions, where they have a criminal called "Silent 
E", who goes around town turning kits into kites, rags into rage and hats 
into hate, and so forth (when they put him in jail, he asks the guard if he can 
take a look at his cap, and the unsupsecting guard hands it to him, and he 
turns the cap into a cape and makes his escape!), but there are probably hundreds 
of other references in all kinds of literature and media.

-David

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