LL-L "Orthography" 2003.09.19 (19) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "How do you say ...?" 2003.09.19 (17) [E]


Sandy said:

"I would say that the script was chosen for its internal ingenuity as an
abstract alphabet rather than for any didactic or unifying features. It
seems to me to stand as a warning against trying to make English
writing completely phonemic. - there is just too much variety amongst
dialects."

I have come across Shavian script, but I didn't realise that it won the
George Bernard Shaw prize.

Personally, I don't think there is any reason to change our script so
radically, but I do think we could simplify spelling quite dramatically
without making the written word incomprehensible to speakers of different
dialects. English as we know it now is after all essentially a
representation of a dialect that probably none of us speaks any more.

By way of example, no dialect I know sounds the mute -e at the end of
certain words. Admittedly it could be argued that combinations of vowel plus
final mute -e represent an orthographic unit of which the e is a necessary
part (as in _toe_, _doe_, etc), but new ways could be found to represent
those vowels, or already established ways of representing them (as used in
other words) could be made standard in all cases. Thus, if we wanted we
could write _oo_  even in the words _ too doo_ ('to do' in present English).
Objectors would say that this would remove the distinction between the
preposition 'to' and the adverb 'too', but I am sure we could live with it,
English already has so many homonyms.

No English dialect I know employs geminates in its phonology, so if we
wrote: admitedly, sily, prety poly - no-one would have any difficulty
understanding.

In many words -gh- is redundant in English. I know the Scots pronounce it as
a gutteral [x] (as in German 'Ach!'), but that is Scots, and they could have
their own orthography for the Scots language. Sassanachs and their cousins
could perfectly easily write: frait (= fright), fait (=fight), ruf (=rough),
lait (=light).

In the latter examples I can see that people would say 'But what about the
vowel in the English word 'rough'? It is pronounced in different ways in
different places.' Well, so it is, but it still is whether you write it
'rough' or 'ruf' (or 'rof', which would be another possiblilty).

The letter c can fall out of use except in the digraph ch representing the
'ch' sound of 'church' (for which I would suggest _cherch_ as a new
spelling), in other positions it would be usurped by k or s. In words like
'church', 'lurch', 'certain' the r would be retained as it is pronounced
fully in many accents even though it almost disappearing in some Received
British Pronunciations (where it almost amounts to giving a rhotic quality
to the vowel).

These are just a few suggestions that immediately spring to mind; it isn't
actually something I have thought through before, but I think that they show
that different dialects could be accomodated in a new orthography. There
isn't really any reason why - especially now when the English-speaking
populations of the world have largely lost any significant knowledge of
Greek and Latin - why reminders of the Classical legacy need to be
fossilised in spelling. [On the other hand, a case might be made possibly
for preserving classical spellings in 'international' vocabulary but there
are languages such as Turkish and Indonesian that spell these loanwords
phonetically without losing credibility or ease of understanding.]

I myself am something of a traditionalist when it comes to language, and my
love of languages makes me revel in the sheer variety of variant spellings
in English; I love to identify why the spellings are how they are, and what
their origins are, but maybe a case can be made for a gradual introduction
of a simplified spelling-system. After all, text messaging is already
eroding the orthography on one level!

Finally, I just came across something in the above discussion that I would
like to ask Sandy, or other Scots on the list. I have come across the Scots
words _licht_ , _bricht_ (its a bra bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht),
_nicht_, and _fricht_, [ for English light', 'bright', 'night', 'fright' ]
but I can't remember hearing the word *_ficht_. Does this word exist, or is
it just because the Scots use other words for 'fight'. By the way, here in
Lancashire dialect people say: _leet_, _breet_, _neet_, _freet_, but we also
have _feet_. In some people's idiodialects _feet_ meaning _fight_ is a
homophone of _feet_ meaning _feet_ (plural of foot). I do remember older
people saying _feyt_ (in Preston).

Regards,

John, Preston, UK.

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