"easy to learn" spelling

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Of course it is not ALWAYS "a bad thing to point out to people that they are 
mispronouncing things." (In most cases, however, it would be very rude to 
"correct" someone's pronunciation of 'Dawn Hawkins' with respect to /a/-/o/ 
merger, since one's use of the merged vowel is an unconscious dialect variant and 
not a "mispronunciation" at all.) 

Of course, the "truespel" guy is not suggesting merely that one might want to 
correct someone else's pronunciation of a proper noun. The "truespel" guy 
wants to somehow change the evolving phonological systems of vast numbers of 
people (as if the educational system does not have enough to do already without 
setting out on such a quixotic venture). Again, the only practical way that this 
could be accomplished would be to kill (or perhaps just cut out the tongues 
of) all those who do not have the same pronunciation as the "truespel" guy. And 
even this would not work, because the language continues to change and in a 
decade or so, variation would emerge once again.

Maybe the "truespel" guy should think about forbidding speech entirely. 
Didn't Gulliver meet some philosophers who just held up rocks instead of saying 
"rock"--etc.?

And of course it can be a good thing to change one's mind because of someone 
else's opinion, assuming that that someone else has some good arguments. But, 
again, "changing one's opinion" and changing one's phonological system are not 
at all the same thing.

I know that it is a quixotic venture even to respond to this guy, and I 
wonder how many times I have sworn not to do so. If being a little crazy entails 
doing the same thing over and over again and each time expecting different 
results, then I obviously am a little crazy.




In a message dated 4/12/08 10:16:21 PM, truespel at HOTMAIL.COM writes:


> Granted our own voicings of phonemes can change without us knowing it.  But 
> is it a bad thing to point out to people that they are mispronouncing 
> things?  For instance saying "My name's not Don Hockins it's Dawn Hawkins."  And if 
> changing one's mind because of someone else's opinion is a bad thing, why 
> should anyone listen to your opinion or anyone else's?
> 




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