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

Hallo!

On Thu, 1 Jun 2006 08:15:18 +0100, R A Brown wrote:

> Aw - I disappear for a few days to south Wales and return to find 164
> emails waiting. I eagerly download them, hoping to read lots of stuff
> about conlanging & find they're mostly - {stifles big yawn}- about
> English spelling reform!
This is one of the reasons why I have remained set NOMAIL for long, and
do not consider changing that.  And while I take a daily look at the
archive, I don't read most of the stuff I find there, especially if the
subject line indicates that it is off-topic.  I found your post, Ray,
only because I made a spot check, guided by the experience that your
contributions are often witty and edifying.

> I don't know how many times this has cropped up on the list (quite a few
> times IIRC). In my teens way back in the 50s I used to churn out English
> spelling reforms with almost the same frequency as I did auxlangs (some
> two or three a year). Proposals for English spelling reforms exist from
> at least the 19th century. The market for English spelling reforms is,
> like that for auxlangs, one where supply vastly outnumbers demand.
Yes, this is pretty much the same game.

> Whatever we think here, or however we vote, it ain't going to happen.
Yes.  Spelling reforms are notoriously difficult to pull through, as
the example of the recent German spelling reform (which concerns only
minute details and is in no way comparable to the radical changes most
English spelling reformers propose) demonstrates.  A decade of heated
debates, various compromises and reforms of the reforms, disagreements
between state governments about what to teach in schools, etc. p. p.

> Of course the subject has spewed the inevitable YAEPT  :=(
> What difference does it actually make to a phonemic spelling reform
> whether one says [k_hjEt], [k_h&t], [k_h&?], [k_hatT_d] or any of the
> other varieties of /k&t/. Obviously it ought to be spelled/spelt M-O-G  ;)
>
> Sorry - this sounds like a rant. Well, I got tired of trashing so much
> stuff   :)
I think it is time to speak another Machtwort as in the Great Sundering,
and explicitly ban all discussions of spelling reforms (of whatever
language) and English pronunciation from the CONLANG list the same way
we have banned auxlang advocacy a decade ago.  Spelling reforms are a
form of prescriptivism, and don't we all agree that prescriptivism is
the diametral opposite of conlanging?

What do you think?

> [...]
>
> Tho I am not a fan of E-o spelling, I think it is, however, up to the
> Esperanto community how they spell their language, just as it is up to
> Marc Okrand & the Klingon community how they spell their language, etc.
AMEN.

> Now, I've got that off my chest, I can get back to conlanging   ;)
I concur with you.

... brought to you by the Weeping Elf

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