Dieing languages and "easy to learn" spelling

Tom Zurinskas truespel at HOTMAIL.COM
Fri Apr 11 15:36:28 UTC 2008


If English speakers don't adopt an English-friendly phonetic spelling NOW, will they be forced to use one based on another language in the future?  Should future language respelling be done in the "easy to learn" alphabet of "Nuriguel” or in an "easy to learn" English based script - truespel?

The world is thinking about respelling.  I suggest that English-based would be the best choice, being the "lingua franca" of the world.  What English needs is an English based phonetic system.  Truespel is mature and fits the bill now.  See below copied from another emal:

An organization in Korea has persuaded some language-planners in China and UNESCO to seriously consider an expanded version of the Korean alphabet for use as an international script.
Google-search "Nurigeul" and/or visit
     http://www.korea.net/news/issues/issueDetailView.asp?board_no=18140&menu_code=A
and watch
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtGhiz5V8Yg&feature=related

U.N., China eyeing Hangeul-based alphabet to combat illiteracy

Korea News:  October 13, 2007
Dr. Kim-cho Sek-yen, Director of Sejong Studies Institute.

Of the roughly 7,000 languages worldwide, on average, one goes extinct every two weeks, according to the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Language in Australia and the U.S. National Geographic Society.

In words of K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College and author of "When Languages Die" (2007), losing a language means losing a vast repository of knowledge accumulated by generations of people. Videos, recorders, journals, storybooks and other basic literacy materials are being used to slow this decline.

Recently Korea has joined the efforts to rescue languages with a unique method -- lending the speakers of dwindling languages Hangeul, Korea’s own easy-to-learn alphabet. Hopefully, this will be one of Korea’s biggest contributions to the world.

"But Hangeul is not enough," says Professor Kim-Cho Sek-yen who came to Korea for a speech at the WOGA 2007, International Women Leaders Mission Conference. Living in New York with her husband and daughter, she has devoted over three decades completing "Nuriguel” - an alternative Hangeul system with additional letters that allow an even wider range of pronunciation that can cover sounds like "f" and "th" that are absent in Korean and hence difficult to transcribe accurately. Below are the newly added letters after Hangeul;

"The principle of Hangeul is that it can transform and regenerate itself,” she said. “I didn’t just create letters out of the blue. I merely restored the lost Hangeul letters of the 15th century and formed additional letters based on the movements of speech organs just like King Sejong, the inventor of Hangeul, did.” She said. “That’s why I call it a visible speech sound. You can see clearly why certain Nurigeul letters are shaped as they are in accordance with the pronouncing organs.”


Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.


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