LL-L "Orthography" 2006.01.17 (02) [E]

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17 January 2006 * Volume 02
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From: Heather Rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2006.01.16 (01) [E]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>Ekh, just some tired thoughts, but I'd be curious what you lot thing of
Reformed Inglish. <

For a language like English that has so many homophones a spelling reform
would be a silly move, in my opinion.

If English ended up with only one version of

so
bow
rite
rode

etc
there would probably be more people having difficulty understanding what it
is they read more easily ( if the latter is the intention behind any
spelling reform)

Heather

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Orthography

Hi/high, dear/deer Heather!

Good thing I had my set of little strap-on horns handy (though its rubber 
band is getting a bit tired) ...

Questions:

(1) How many problems do you have with homophones when
      you speak or listen to someone speak?

(2) Is keeping homophones orthographically apart worth
      lifelong learning of the spelling of individual words (versus
      initial short-term *system* learning)?

Oh, and Gary, me mite, you mentioned the enormous volume of English language 
in the "old" spelling that would be inaccessible or difficult to access for 
future generations.  (Now, I'm still wearing my smart little horns, mind.) 
These days, it would take smart programmers (like our Sandy and Kenneth, for 
instance) all of a few days to write programs that convert text in the 
complex spelling to the simplified one.  Why, even I might be able to get it 
together.  (It would be considerably more difficult, though by no means 
impossible, to write a program that converts the simplified spelling to the 
complex one, since the program would have to be context-sensitive.)  I have 
no problem envisaging future people carrying little scanners gadgets around 
with them (possibly doubling as mobile phones, internet access and music 
machine) that scans and automatically converts "old" spelling, for instance 
when visiting libraries

While the volume of their literatures may not measure up to that of English, 
bear in mind that many languages have gone through spelling reforms, some of 
them very drastic ones.  The Danish reform of the early 20th century was 
considerable (abolishing German-style noun capitalization, among other 
things), as was the Russian spelling reform of about the same period.  When 
Sorbian switched from German-based spelling to Slavonic-based spelling it 
involved some very drastic changes (but few native speakers complained, 
because it was a part of ethnic assertion).  More impressive have been the 
reforms of numerous languages of the former Soviet Union, not only in terms 
of scripts but also in terms of spelling.  One of the most impressive ones 
has been that of Mongolic languages outside China: from the old vertical 
script to Cyrillic script and currently back again, all of which involves 
drastic spelling changes.  You can imagine the dismay and outrage especially 
among intellectuals and clerics when, under Atatürk, Turkish switched from 
Ottoman literary style and Arabic-based spelling (which does not represent 
short vowels and inconsistently distinguishes front and back vowels) to 
speech-based style and Roman-script based spelling with consistency and most 
necessary distinctions.  (Reading of Ottoman texts is part of advanced level 
education, and numerous important Ottoman works have been republished 
transcribed.)  Most recently, Modern Greek abolished the 
(Ancient-Greek-derived) "polytonic" accents and aspiration symbol (which are 
irrelevant today) for a simple "monotonic" accent system.  This was quite a 
big deal, facilitated spelling enormously, though any future Greek will 
still be able to read pre-reform texts.  So far, all of these speaker 
communities survived their reforms, and complainants eventually gave up, 
found other sorts of changes or proposals to complain about.

By-buy-bye!
Reinhard/Ron 

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