Re: USAGE: No rants! (USAGE: di"f"thong)

On 5/30/06, Paul Roser <pkroser@...> wrote:

> Even making English spelling more phonemic would require picking one dialect
> over another - and which do we choose? Standard American? RP? Scots? ANZAC?
> Canadian? Caribbean? South Asian? Shanghai/Hong Kong?
Well, which is allegedly easier: remembering to spell homophones
differently, or remembering to spell non-homophonic homonyms the same?
 If the former, then we should standardize on a dialect with the
maximum number of distinctions (including rhoticity); if the latter,
the minimum (which implies non-rhoticity).   If the two varieties of
orthographic discrepancy are considered equally undesirable, then we
should go for somewhere in the middle.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>