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From: rharmsen@knoware.nl (Ruud Harmsen)
Subject: Re: Lunatic orthography 
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In article <3f7dkb$g03@mother.usf.edu> millert@grad.csee.usf.edu (Timothy Miller) writes:
>From: millert@grad.csee.usf.edu (Timothy Miller)
>Subject: Re: Lunatic orthography (was Re: Esperanto as a stepping stone?
>Date: 14 Jan 1995 02:41:15 GMT

>Ruud Harmsen (rharmsen@knoware.nl) wrote:
>: In article <3es81a$5r8@mother.usf.edu> millert@scheifler.csee.usf.edu (Timothy
>Miller) writes:

>: >I'd thought about English spelling reform, and it seemed to me that we 
>: So have I. I don't have a description ready, but it is a reasonably consistent
>: system, with a not-too-sharp break with the past. It could be used for 
>: British and American and other variants of English.
>:  If there is enough interest, (please email) I might take the time to write an
>: article about it. To give an impression, here's the "translation" of my own 
>: article:

>To begin with, any spelling reform would HAVE to reset the vowels, which 
>you fail to do.
I do, but in such a way that some of the regularity in the old system is 
_used_, not thrown away.

>: So hav I, I doant hav a diskripshn reddy, but it iz a rezanably kansistant 

>Why do you use 'y' for /i/?  Why the double consonants?  Why do you use 
>'a' for schwa?
y
>: sistm, widh a not-too-sharp brake widh dha past. (Brittish variant: pahst).

>Some of your 'dh's would be 'th's in some dialects.  And the Brittish 
>variant has a front /a/, not the back /A/.  The American has the slightly 
>wider and more forward /&/ (/ae/).

>: It kwd be uzed for Brittish and Amerrikkan and udher varyants ov Inglish.

>Why 'w' for /U/?  Why the doubled 'r' and 'k'?  /'ve-ri-@nts/  Now you're 
>using /o/ for a schwa?
The w is to distinguish short U from long U:, which is written oo. (Question 
is if this length distinction is there with all speakers? Not in US? Or is it 
replaced by a "colour"-difference there?

The doubled consonants are used to force "closed" syllables, as opposed to 
open syllables (a bit like in German and Dutch, for those who know them). Then 
e.g. an -a- in an open syllable has the "ei" sound as in "make" (old and new 
spelled alike), and an "a" in a closed syllable keeps the sound as in "bad" 
(also spelled the same, old and new).  This is to make the new system more 
easily readable for those with knowledge of the old, i.e. all of us. 
But to make this clearer, I would have to explain the full system, which is 12 
pages in a hand-written concept from 1978 until 1985. Maybe I'll find time to 
type and post it, but it could take a couple of weeks before I have it, there 
are other things to do. 

>Among some of the things that you do with vowels that I don't like, we 
>run into the dialect problem again.
>I pronounce final 'er' as a strong retroflex approximant.  I hate it when 
>people who don't pronounce it that way assume that no one does.  My 
>imitation of Brittish and other non-American English accents is pretty 
>good, so I am very much aware of the differences.
A strong point of my system  is that it covers the American, Irish, English 
and Scottish ways to deal with the difference between "via" and "fire" (apart 
from the f-v difference, a better example doesn't come to mind right now). In 
Southern English I could write "fia" for what burns, but I don't, just 
because in the USA (by many speakers at least, there seem to be others who do 
it the English way), and Ireland and Scotland, the -r is audible, albeit 
differently in all three cases. So I write -a- for schwa when no -r- is 
involved, and -er- where it is. 
As far as I know Australia, New-Zealand and some people in South-africa and 
Canada perhaps, do not have this kind of -r sound? But it doesn't matter in 
this system.
