LL-L "Orthography" 2002.04.20 (03) [E]
Lowlands-L
sassisch at yahoo.com
Sat Apr 20 19:05:14 UTC 2002
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L O W L A N D S - L * 20.APR.2002 (03) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> English Spelling Reform
> http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/spell/
Although the "unifon" pages had a lot of interesting stuff,
I felt that the above link was the most practically useful.
Thw writer (Tom Breton?) seems to have had quite a lot of
practical experience in the field of English spelling
reform, and isn't just throwing up yet another spelling
system, but proposing a planned, non-radical (even
anti-radical) approach, trying to introduce English-speakers
to the concept of continuous spelling reform (which, no
matter how impossible it may seem on this Sceptred Isle, is
pretty much the usual in other parts of the globe).
Only last week I might have objected to the idea of
continuously changing spellings, but by some fortuitious
circumstance I was reading the original text of Mary
Shelley's "Frankenstein" and was impressed by how different
some of her spellings were from modern spellings and how
little it seems to matter if a writer occasionally uses
his own spelling variants (without missing the snobbery
involved here - Mary Shelley [pennyless, choaked] or Jane
Austen [Swisserland, ridicule] use these spellings and
editors preserve them reverently - if I did it, it would
be ignorance!).
I was particularly interested in the first stage of reform
proposed on the site, which is "Ugh-Free" spelling (ie
spelling of English without "gh"). Instead of devising
rules for determining these spellings, he looks for
"prototype" spellings that already exist in the langage
(I'd call these "precedents" for accuracy, but I suppose
"prototyping" has a more modern appeal), eg:
ughish examples ugh-free prototypes
=============== ===================
rough, tough buff, cuff
cough, trough off, scoff
though, borough go, no; doe, floe
through flu, gnu
plough, bough how, cow
thought, bought taut, astronaut
caught, aught taut, astronaut
draught draft, raft
Except for occasional homophone clashes such as "weight" ->
"Wait"(which ultimately don't matter) this more or less
guarantees spellings which even adults will begin to accept,
because it involves learning no new rules. It even helps
(except in certain cases) to overcome the problem of
dialectical pronunciations, since no matter whether it
"works" with a person's own dialect, they're already used
to the prototypes.
One could even envisage individual writers taking the initiative
and implementing one or two reforms in their own writing (which
in fact does happen to a small but quite significant extent with
American writers in English).
When it comes to Scots spelling the problems are not nearly
so trivial as eradicating historical silent letters and other
irregularities: we first have the much bigger problem of
getting rid of purely English copycat spellings. The idea of
copycat spellings - that is, just indolently using the
available English spelling when the Scots and Scottish English
pronunciations are identical - is often put forward as a
spelling principle in Scots, but I think this would have to be
abandoned before we could even embark upon a programme of
continuous spelling reform in Scots.
However, expunging copycat spellings could be taken as a first
step - or more likely it could itself be broken down into
stages. This has been happening - "night", "thought" &c has
been successfully replaced with "nicht", "thocht" by all but
the least enlightened of Scots writers, and English-influenced
apostrophes are well on the way out. We could now make it our
concern to map out what _else_ should be adopted by writers.
For example, we could put as the first stage the fact that
writers should endeavour to use "y" rather than "i" in writing
the long and short diphthongs in Scots. Before trying to make
a rule for distinguishing the long and short diphthongs we try
to find prototypes:
i-ish i-free prototypes
===== =================
write, bite wyte
file, mile, stile wyle, style
five belyve
nine, fine, line ??? (or is "tyne" a good prototype?)
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to go so smoothly in Scots
as in English, because the prototypes themselves don't seem
to be very regular. However, the SVLR can save us here - the
"y" in "belyve" is long because the SVLR says it should
(normally) be long before a "v". Hence we could write "fyve"
from the prototype, without having to introduce new rules
(such as adding an "e" only for short diphthongs) which would
oblige writers to provide a spelling crib even for experienced
readers of Scots.
What about cases where we can't find a good prototype? Since
the reason for using prototypes is to ensure that the
orthography remains recognisable to adults, I would suggest
that we accept the particular spelling "-ine" for /@in/ as
completely regular is Scots (which it is, if we can't find
prototypes!) and leave the complete regularisation to later
stages in the programme. Alternatively we could look for
specific prototypes in authors with more radical spellings -
however, even if we did this, I'd suggest sticking with
authors of works that are both important and widely
available - Lorimer and Burns are the only cases that
spring to mind.
While, as you might realise, I would prefer a radical
spelling system myself, this way of doing it does have
the advantage of making spelling reform _possible_! It
transfers some power to individual writers and publishers
instead of leaving it all up to academics, educators and
lexicographers. But it's different from previous attempts
at reforming Scots in that it neither attempts to create
new rules, nor attempts to implement everything at once.
Nor is it important to get absolutely everything right,
as change is part of the principle, so mistakes can be
corrected - they only slow things down a bit.
Suppose we planned out some stages of reform for Scots
spelling, how would it be best implemented in an electronic
medium like Scotstext? One possibility that interests me is
that I could have a database of words affected by the next
few stages of reform, and their spellings at each stage
(most words would only change spelling once, I imagine, it's
just a question of which stage it changes at, and what it
changes to). Then it's up to the user to select how "advanced"
he wants his orthography. This would enable him to select what
he considers a comfortable compormise between familiarity and
quality, and perhaps encourage the best possible spellings in
his own writing. With further proposed reforms, the database
is updated. This could help to drive the reform programme as
speedily and yet as painlessly as possible!
The maintenance of such a database in parallel with suggested
reforms wouldn't be too hard - I don't think prototyped
reforming would normally involve a huge number of words at
each stage, and it would make it possible for online
publishers to implement the programme without having to
continually "modernise" their publications manually.
Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
- C.W.Wade,
'The Adventures o McNab'
----------
From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"
I've been following the links on some of the orthography
sites Ron listed. I'd like to offer the following pages
as particular eye-openers that will interest anyone involved
in English or Scots spellings:
http://www.spellingsociety.org/pubs/leaflets/whyeng.shtml
- why English spelling is so bad (there's a lot more to it
than mere language change, it seems!);
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/03/010316073551.htm
- comparative research into English, French and Italian
orthography;
http://www.spellingsociety.org/pubs/leaflets/cutspelng.shtml
- the "Cut Spelling" (CS) page; this seems quite an advanced
project with sensible aims and dictionary and software support;
it seems quite like the diacritic-free form of the radical
spelling system I originally proposed for Scots, although
where I used many "i"'s for schwa-like vowels, this simply
drops the vowels (my approach is more suited to Scots, however,
and incidentally would work better with Scottish English,
indeed I think they've made a mistake and my version was much
superior!); here's a quote from the page to serve as an example
of the orthography:
Autmatic spelng convertr
Ful mastry of CS may take mor time, concentration and practis
than many peple can giv to th task, yet they may stil wish to
produce text in CS (eg, to print a weekly CS colum in newspapers).
They can now do so, thanks to enjneer Alan Mole (Colorado, USA),
aidd by Bernard Sypniewski (New Jersey, USA) and John Bryant
(Cambridge, UK), ho hav created th BTRSPL program. In conjunction
with th 40,000-word CUTSPL dictionry, this rapidly (at about 100
pajes per minut) converts text from traditionl orthografy to CS.
Availbl fre of charj from th Intrnet, BTRSPL/CUTSPL curently suits
PCs (incl. WINDOWS), but not yet th Macintosh. Th program is stil
in its infncy, and furthr developmnts ar pland, for instnce to enable
users to adapt th dictionry to ther own needs, adng new words or
altrng those alredy listd, and so bild up a persnlized CS riting
tool. For details and to download th program, visit:
http://www.les.aston.ac.uk/sss/cutspelng.html
Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
- C.W.Wade,
'The Adventures o McNab'
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