Spelling reform

I mean Britons.

Perhaps to you, but to me these pronunciations sound quite natural. It's all a matter of perspective, wouldn't you say?

Wouldn't you say it's a bit uncouth to label someone's accent as "retarded?" Unless you're one of the many internet trolls that seem to love screwing with this forum, I'd suggest you try to be a little more open-minded when it comes to different accents. Having a variety of accents is something that makes a language more interesting.

My post was to Bluemonkey, not Richard.

That spelling reform reformed ''bus stop'' to ''busstop''.

Any spelling reform is gonna be tough since all dialects of English have thousands of different ways of saying particular words. Just a couple of examples.

The "schwa" vowel

Now American don't use this vowel to replace the "er, or, etc..." endings in words. So words likeS CREAT"OR" are pronounced like CREAT"A" in non-rhotic speach so that's one problem

Another obstacle

Words like CAN'T which is pronounced C"AE"NT in the States and C"AANT in other dialects. That's another little challenge.

And not to mention the billion of different ways of pronouncing words that each dialects has. I'll give acouple of examples. Words such as SCHEDULE, COMFORTABLE, ANTI-SOMETHING, TUESDAY etc, etc, etc which Gringos and other dialects differ in pronouncing.

So the chances of a spelling reform. Zero.

I think Brits should stop moaning about american accent, because in fact they are responsible for its existence. If USA hadn't succeeded in what they call independence from England, they would have been speaking like Brits today. So do not complain they speak like retards or how you are supposed to understand them lol

Richard,

I looked "yeah" up in my dictionary and got /je../ This dictionary, by the way, includes "both" of the English accents: American & British.

http://www.dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?dict=CALD&key=91936&desc=yeah&ph=on

But it all illustrates the point that there are so many different ways of pronouncing things. You suggest that they could have two spelling reforms: one for British and one for American.

I'd suggest that two might not be enough. There are more than two accents out there. Even if you had two reforms, ideally they should at least use a compatable system.

The system that they propose simply would not work for anyone whose dialect is not North-American. There are some Americans even for whom it would not work. These folk can go back to the drawing-board if you ask me.

Anyway, even within their own accent there are problems. It isn't perfectly phonemic. They spell "finger" as if to rhyme with "singer", i.e. "fingur" and "singur", but it doesn't. They use "ur" for "words" and "singer", i.e. "wurdz" and "singur", but the "or" in "words" and the "er" in "singur" are not the same sound.

Okay, we've already got this problem and we manage but we are all used to the fact that traditional orthography isn't phonemic. If you represent different sounds using the same letters I think people might "have a hard time knowing how any of the words are pronounced."

Also, you don't want to have a hard time knowing how any of the words are spelt. Yet, they reformed ''bus stop'' to ''busstop''. People would be wondering why the double "s".

In my system "bus stop" and "singer" would remain the same but "finger" would be respelt "fingger". Also I respelt their sentence:

"Welcome to a new way of writing English, a way where no one will have a hard time knowing how any of the words are pronounced."

It came out as:

"Welkym tu a new way ov rieting Inglish, a way whair noawun wil hav a hard tiem noaing how eny ov dha wurdz ar prynounst."

A mistake: I'd respell "English" as "Ingglish".

Also I'd respell "yeah" as "yea".

I've never even heard yeah pronounced any different than the pronunciation ''ye'', is it an Australian thing to pronounce ''yeah'' differently, I've always pronounced ''yeah'' as ''ye''

Also, another Idea that they had that might not be a very good idea is that they respelled the contractions to where they don't have an appostrophy

can't-kant
don't-doent
shouldn't-shuudunt
haven't-havunt
won't-woent
isn't-izunt
aren't-arnt
doesn't-duzunt
wasn't-wuzunt
weren't-wurnt
you're-yor
we're-weer
they're-ther
he's-heez
she's-sheez

Just like they reformed ''bus stop'' to ''busstop'' they also reformed ''one hundred'' to ''wunhundrid''.

There was this one other spelling reform that had the idea to have the schwa sound written as ''c'' but they had to have the ''ch'' sound reformed to ''x'', the word children had to be written xildrcn. Doesn't sound like a very good idea.

Seriously ladies and gents, let's make French the written form of English, so English will only be a spoken language. This way, French will not be pronounced, but the spelling system is more consistent.

Hee-hee ;-P

Richard,

If it were an Australian thing to pronounce "yeah" differently to /je/ (i.e. "ye") then it wouldn't have found it's way into the Cambridge Dictionary. It wouldn't seem to be a Commonwealth-only thing either. Merriam-Webster's dictionary gives /'ye-&/, /'yeu/, /'ya-&/. This translated to Antimoon's Phonetic Alphabet is /'jee../, /'je^/, /'ja:../ (as far as I can make out).

I wouldn't want to spell without appostrophes. I don't think we need to change punctuation. This goes for running two words together. I don't like the idea of spelling "one hundred", for example, as one word. I'd respell it "wun hundryd".

That Merriam-Webster link:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=yeah

There sure are a lot of spelling reforms, each are a little different. The spelling reform that I was talking about doesn't like the idea of consonants being in the vowel sounds. For example they change ''ow'' and ''oy'' to ''ou'' and ''oi'' because ''ow'' and ''oy'' include a consonant. They ran a lot of words together, i guess. They also spelled ''ice cream'' as ieskreem.