English orthography must be reformed !
A few other points:
- French uses lots of letters that are not pronouced. Would you want to reform French too?
- Spanish is just about completely phonetic in its spellings, yet native Spanish speakers make frequent spelling mistakes too.
- Children learning English natively don't have much trouble with the spellings, it's just "the way it is". Kids are good learners that way. As a kid, it never occurred to me that the spellings were strange. It's more a problem for adult learners.
But French spelling and pronunciation are 70% cognate
How about English? less than 10% cognate!
Which one shall be reformed first? Of course, English!
If Children don't have such a problem, then why adopting "phonetic features" ?
English reformer : « But French spelling and pronunciation are 70% "cognate" ».
Ça paraît difficile de déterminer un pourcentage avec exactitude.
Certes on rencontre <papa>, <dodo>, <diabolo> etc, mais c'est souvent ça que tu verras :
<monsieur> [møsjø] [m2sj2] {Herr} {señor}
<oiseau> [wazo] [wazo] {Vogel} {pájaro}
<couvent> [kuvɑ̃ ] [kuvÃ] {Kloster} {convento}
<couvent> [kuv] [kuv] {brüten aus} {incuban}
<cueillir> [k)œ-ø(jiʁ] [k)9-2(jiR] {abpflücken} {coger}
<fils> [fis] [fis] {Söhne(n)} {hijos}
<fils> [fil] [fil] {Strippen} {hilos}
<jet> [ʒ)e-ɛ(] [Z)e-E(] {Wurf} {lanzamiento}
<geai> [ʒ)e-ɛ(] [Z)e-E(] {Häher} {arrendajo}
<j'ai> [ʒ)e-ɛ(] [Z)e-E(] {ich habe} {tengo}
<jet> [ʤɛt] [d_ZEt] {Jet} {jet}
<jette> [ʒɛt] [ZEt] {werfe, wirft} {tiro, tira}
etc.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/comment/story/0,,1938662,00.html
>>It is plain silly to regard doughnut as "better" than donut. The same goes for alternatives to night, through, colour and wholesome. When the great Noah Webster invented American spelling after independence, he left British English immured in bigotry. He chided "even well-bred people and scholars for surrendering their right of private judgment to literary governors". To Americans, spelling reform was the sovereignty of common sense. For that reason the British treated it as foreign, vulgar and, worst of all, American.<<
English would look weird
HAU AR YU TUDAI? (how are you today)
AI LAIK DA FUD? (i like the food)
mai naim es brandon (my name is brandon)
lets go
da eskuo (the school)
i think they should change english, we need creative people, not lazy conservatives.
"The trick is to change English spelling enough to help learners
without annoying and alienating the already literate."
to change English spelling enough to help learners
To help what learners? Many letters are pronounced in a different way in different countries. People that have difficulties in learning to read an write most probably have difficulties in other subjects.
"It is plain silly to regard doughnut as "better" than donut. The same goes for alternatives to night, through, colour and wholesome. When the great Noah Webster invented American spelling after independence, he left British English immured in bigotry. He chided "even well-bred people and scholars for surrendering their right of private judgment to literary governors". To Americans, spelling reform was the sovereignty of common sense. For that reason the British treated it as foreign, vulgar and, worst of all, American"
Surely it's American English that's bigotted and not British English if it's American English that changed it's spelling just because it didn't want it's words to be spelt in the same way as the British.
British English spelling isn't biggotted. The British were the first people in the world to speak English, considering that we invented the language.
If any English is bigotted, it's American English, because it wanted to be different from the language spoken by the Great British.
Adam : « The British were the first people in the world to speak English, considering that we invented the language. »
Ou plus exactement les Anglais ont été les seconds à apprendre l'ancien français d'Outremanche. Ils l'ont si bien appris que c'est devenu de l'anglais tel que nous le connaissons. La palme de l'invention revient peut-être aux Français, qui sait ?
How did I know THAT was coming.
But :
HAU AR YU TUDAI? (how are you today)
AI LAIK DA FUD? (i like the food)
mai naim es brandon (my name is brandon)
lets go
da eskuo (the school)
Does look weird.
I don't think we should necessarily make the language entirely phonetic, just CONSISTENT. The OU in House doensn't have to be pronnounced [ou] but it would be nice if its ALWAYS pronnounced [au].
Hou are yeu teuday?
Ei leic the food.
Mei naim is Brandon.
Let's go tu the scool.
It looks a little better and is more consistent.
au ar iu tudei
ai laiqe de fud
mai neim is Brandon
lets go to skul
haU ar ju tude. aI l@ik D@ fud. MaI nem Iz BrEnd@n. lEts go t@ skul-.
lol, this thread is rather funny :-)
But then, with such an reformed orthography English would look more germanic since this new spelling ideas reminds me of German!
>> haU ar ju tude. aI l@ik D@ fud. MaI nem Iz BrEnd@n. lEts go t@ skul-. <<
But in my dialect it would sound more like:
haU ar ju tude. aI l@ik D@ fud. MaI nem Iz BrEnd@n. lEts go t@ skul-.
haU A ju tudeI. aI laIk D@ fud. MaI neIm Iz Br{nd@n. lEts goU tu skul.
Plus, I would write [spElIN] and not [spElin], because I don't pronounce spelling as "spelleen", nor do I pronounce Brandon as "Brendon".
What needs to be reformed is english grammar!
It is utterly absurd that the word 'you' does not have a distinction between singluar and plural. This vagueness leads to verbositiy and or sexist language. For example,
'Did you go to the zoo yesterday?', is completely ambigous. English speakers are aware of this ambiguity so they usually add something like the following to clarify plurality: 'Did you and Tina and Mike...go to the zoo yesterday', or 'did you guys go to the zoo yesterday? The first sentece is verbose and the second is not gender neutral (guys refers to a group of males). The solution to this problem is simple: resurrect the plurals of 'you' and 'your' that were used in Middle English, 'ye' and 'thy'. So, if more than 1 person is meant then say, 'did ye go to the zoo yesterday?' This would prevent verbosity, promote clarity, and have the added advantage of being gender neutral. I have started to use this in my speech and so have my friends. We have found it useful.
We also need to resurrect the dative and accusative forms of 'you' from Middle English, as the pronoun 'you' is also completely overstreched in this regard. This, I think, would also be more economical in that we could cut out alot of prepositions if we case marked the pronouns. For example:
in german you say. "Ich habe es Dir gegeben" (literally: I have it you given. Or with English syntax: I have given it you). In English the prepostion 'to' is needed here for a grammatically correct sentence. By case-marking the pronoun "Du" (you) to the dative "Dir" (you), German is more economical. As far as I know, all modern European langauges do this , so foreign learners of English would not have a hard time grasping the concept. In fact, I think it is Enlish's almost infantile-like simplicity that confuses them and makes it harder for them to learn than need be.