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

On 31/05/06, 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?
In spite of the fact that non-Anzacs can't hear the difference between
Kiwi and Aussie accents (in spite of the fact that it's really
obvious), for the purposes of developing an orthography, they are
different. Kiwi and RP share things in common like pronouncing "dance"
and "plant" as "darnce" and "plarnt" that Australians don't do. (So on
that count, you've gotta link Kiwi and RP.)

Also, Kiwis have a tendency to pronounce "bear" and "beer" the same.
And the difference that makes the way the sound "six" so funny also
means that apparently a growing number of Kiwis pronounce "women" and
"woman" the same (Kiwis also have a quite centralised /U/---but so do
speakers of most other dialects of English. Sounds awful to my ears).

In any case, I think Australia and New Zealand are small enough that
if they are considered, it should be on the grounds of permissable
variant spellings... (Which IMHO is the best way to deal with
trap/bath in a reformed orthography.)

--
Tristan.

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