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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Lunatic orthography (was Re: Esperanto as a stepping stone?
Message-ID: <D27L7o.6o2@spss.com>
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References: <3ergbm$g14@condor.cs.jhu.edu> <3es81a$5r8@mother.usf.edu> <rharmsen.97.000B857D@knoware.nl>
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 21:33:22 GMT
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In article <rharmsen.97.000B857D@knoware.nl>,
Ruud Harmsen <rharmsen@knoware.nl> wrote:
>So hav I, I doant hav a diskripshn reddy, but it iz a rezanably kansistant 
>sistm, widh a not-too-sharp brake widh dha past. (Brittish variant: pahst).
>It kwd be uzed for Brittish and Amerrikkan and udher varyants ov Inglish.
>If dhare iz enuf intrest, (pleze emale) I mite take dha time ta rite an artikl 
>about it. Ta giv an impreshn, here'z dha "tranzlaishn" ov mi one artikl:

Like so many schemes for English spelling reform, this one spends most of
its energy fixing what isn't broken.  For instance, <th> represents two
sounds in English, so one could make a (weak) case for separating them;
but why replace *both* of them with 'dh'?  Intervocalic <s> is generally /z/
in English; why bother with 'pleze' or 'rezanably' then?  And since your 
scheme represents the schwa with various letters anyway (a in "kansistant", 
o in "ov", e in "enuf"), why bother to write "kansistant" rather than 
"konsistent"?  For that matter, what's wrong with the <c> in "consistent" 
and "American", which is completely unambiguous?

My counterproposal is not to come up with any scheme at all; just stop 
correcting students' spelling.  In a generation or two, English speakers
would spontaneously generate a reformed orthography, retaining what is
most useful from the past while eliminating most of the worst exceptions.
Many common misspellings (e.g. "seperate" for "separate") are more
rational than the standard spelling.
