Regularized English (was: RE: CONLANG Digest - 10 May 2000 (stillmainly English)
From: | John Cowan <jcowan@...> |
Date: | Tuesday, July 11, 2000, 21:59 |
And Rosta wrote:
> Can "aisle" be "aile"?
Just so.
> > Reg.Ing. changes laughter to lafter, or laafter in Brit.Reg.Ing.
>
> The lass/glass contrast occurs only in SE England, & those places to
> which English was exported in the nineteenth century. I don't think it
> should be called "Brit.Reg.Ing.", and I'm not persuaded that a true
> Brit RegIng should have "laafter".
I agree, actually; I think the Reg.Ing. "aa" digraph is pretty much
unnecessary. I think Wijk introduced it to help non-native speakers
who are learning RP.
One of his interesting "propagation" ideas is to have the English-teaching
establishments in non-anglophone countries adopt Reg.Ing., thus
effectively creating a beachhead for the reform.
> I suppose the best thing would
> be to leave the choice of laafter/lafter up to the writer,
Wijk believes that uncertain spellings are worse than a small number
of standardized conventions, preferably one (but two is tolerable).
--
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