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From: Darrin Edwards <edwards@noise.bsd.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: Anounsing a nu Ingglish spelling
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Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 15:39:18 GMT
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang:68138 sci.lang.translation:11547

Mike Wright <darwin@scruznet.com> writes:

[snip Strunk & White, Twain's essay]

> But this only applies to those who will suffer a bit during the
> transition period. It seems the least we could do for future
> generations. If it makes their learning easier, it might be worth more
> to them than simply amassing a bit of property.

But by the time these "future generations" roll around, the pronunciation
will have changed enough so that what is for us a simplification will be
for them a bizarre complication, a system even more bizarre than the
"pre-reform" spelling up until the late twentieth century.  Indeed, they'll
be in an even tougher bind; at least we are guided in the spelling of
"complex" words to their foreign origins (for the most part), while they
will be faced with an imposed, wholesale change that will defy
etymology.

> Spelling is not language. I'd like to see some actual examples of how
> "phontetic" spelling might change the meaning of Shakespeare's writing.

S. was a rotten example, I will agree with anyone who replied to my
post to point this out.  But we don't need to go as far as that for
examples; look at the subject line of this message.  "Nu" is a Greek
letter, what's it got to do with English spelling, or even Ingglish
spelling?  Perhaps a more appropriate Greek letter would have been
"beta", since the proponents of this system presumably consider it
an improvement over the old one. ;)  All right, I am being facetious,
but in all seriousness I don't see how such drastic changes can avoid
glossing over important distinctions, and obscuring important relationships.

> Spelling that reflects pronunciation too closely is not practical, since
> pronunciation varies so much, but English spelling could certainly do
> with some rationalization.
> 
> -- 
> Mike Wright

Depneds on the extent of the rationalizations I guess... minor isolated
changes are different in my opinion from changing "new" to "nu".
(And I think the variation in pronunciation from region to region is
the biggest problem with a project like this.  Where I come from - rural
southern New Jersey - "didn't" rhymes with "kitten", and neither is
pronounced with a "t": it's a full glottal stop.  Drove our English
teacher nuts.  Also the second person plural pronoun, in the instrumental
case, is pronounced "witches".)

Darrin
