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Spelling reform
If English were to undergo a spelling reform, who would be responsible for it. I mean, would it be the government or what?
If America changed to a new phonetic system, do you think England and the ex-colonies would follow suit? Would they have to or could they sustain their backwardness?
America already engaged in spelling reform, and England did not follow suit. That is why they differ on such words as center/centre, color/colour, et cetera.
No, I don't think we'd change to follow suit - broken off colonies often develop their own dialects and spelling changes. As 'Another Guest' pointed out, this has already happened and we have not changed to suit it.
There's no point in manually reforming the spelling of a language, because that's not how languages naturally evolve.
I think in today's world, it would be necessary to have consensus between at least the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand before any spelling reform can be implemented.
<<America already engaged in spelling reform, and England did not follow suit. That is why they differ on such words as center/centre, color/colour, et cetera. >> The changes byspeled here are extremely minor. I would not even consider this a true spelling reform. Instead, this is a spelling preference between two optional forms, with UK choosing one form and the US choosing the other.
All said and done "This is indeed a historic day" and "There's a hotel in the village" are the standard norms here in the UK.
As a native English speaker, I find the spelling quirky but I just accpet it because I grew up with it.
But English spelling must be a nightmare for foreigners to master. The same combination of vowels can often produce 2 or 3 different sounds and then you have all the silent consonants. I realise a complete spelling overhaul is highly unlikely. But you have to wonder how we ended up with such an un-phonetic language in the first place.
I'm not a native speaker or English. I never thought that English spelling is a nightmare. I never thought about spelling as being a nightmare, regardless of the language. I never even thought about how many different sounds a combination of vowels yield. Nobody thinks so when he learns a new language. I just memorized the sequence of letters pronunced in my mother tongue. The actual pronunciation of the words can be learned in the classroom, form TV or form music. And English has the best music of all. (I've learned French the same way, exept that I've heard less music in French.)
A ''complete spelling overhaul'' is highly pointless. It messes things up. It makes the wrong persons ern much money without doing something. It wastes much time and money to ''relearn'' what you've already learned in your childhood. This forced relearning process destroys your ability to handle spelling. Take spelling as it is, it's part of your cultural heritage. |