LL-L "Orthography" 2002.04.22 (04) [E]

Tue Apr 23 02:55:00 UTC 2002

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 22.APR.2002 (04) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

I'd like to give a brief overview of the current situation
with English orthography, and particularly to compare the
approaches taken by UK organisations for spelling reform
against those in the US.

Firstly, a quote from a report on a scientific research paper at
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/03/010316073551.htm

"English and French are both languages that are said to
have an irregular orthography. In English, there are 1,120
ways of representing 40 sounds (phonemes) using different
letter combinations (graphemes). Mapping letters to word
sounds is ambiguous; this is illustrated by pairs of words
such as mint/pint, cough/bough, clove/love, where you can
only read each pair correctly if you have previously learnt
how they should sound. By contrast, in Italian there is no
such ambiguity and 33 graphemes are sufficient to represent
the 25 phonemes. This means that the same letter groups in
Italian almost always represent the same unique sound, which
makes the written language logical and easy to read."

As you see, nobody is saying that Italian spelling is perfect,
but nobody's necessarily saying it has to be changed either.
It's also not surprising that Italian is so good in this respect,
as the Roman alphabet was designed for a language very like it.

But I think it's also fair to say from the above that the
problems with English spelling are excessive, and it's no
wonder that attempts are made to improve the situation. An
example of an overloaded phoneme is /i/ as in, for example:
seem, team, convene, sardine, protein, fiend, people, he, key,
ski, debris, quay. Such words seem to be pronounced about the
same in all accents, ie the multiple-accent objection doesn't
apply, so the usual objection to changing these is that they
preserve etymological information, although this isn't just
English-language etymology - it's also an awful lot of
information about the foreign languages from which some of
the words have been borrowed. Does it make any sense to
preserve this information? Well, it's certainly true that
while the entire Anglophonie is forced to absorb all this
vestigial information, no attempt is ever made to teach
etymology along with it. Moreover, folk etymology doesn't
work - the information isn't _really_ there in the words
except in the most vestigial form, and etymology is a subject
for specialists. I would say that etymological information is
already preserved in antiquarian publications, and this is what
etymologists should be using. There's no place for it in the
modern language.

The main attempt at spelling reform in the UK has been the
"Initial Teaching Alphabet", a project in which children were
taught one spelling system at an early age, and then had to
learn to spell the usual English spellings at the age of twelve.
This is now discredited, most experts agreeing that if there's
anything worse than having to learn English spelling, it's
having to learn it twice over. More recently, the "Cut Spelling"
system, which I described in a recent submission, has been
introduced, though not really taught in schools, as far as
I know. It has the fairly sensible aim of spelling without silent
letters, and if this was what it accomplished it would probably
be a worthwhile project. Unfortunately it goes further and ignores
the entire syllabic structure of the language, removing unstressed
vowels even though this pronunciation varies considerably with
dialect and accent and even register. It also doesn't go far
enough, in that it _only_ removes letters, it never alters
existing spellings in any other way, leaving the mutli-grapheme
problem more or less intact in areas where the problem isn't with
silent letters.

These projects seem to have had no impact on British spellings
of English. Spelling reforms in the US, by contrast, are much
less heavy-handed (in fact "reform" is probably too strong a
word to describe American spelling simplifications) and yet
much more successful. In the US, optional spelling simplifications
are recommended, and, perhaps because writers and publishers are
allowed to decide for themselves and because the changes are light
enough not to make the spelling look too unfamiliar, the
recommendations almost always make headway into everyday American
spellings. The following ten proposals have been made:

1. "-our" to "-or"
2. "-re" to "-er"
3. dropping final "k" in "publick," etc.
4. changing "-ence" to "-ense" in "defence," etc.
5. use single "l" in inflected forms, e.g. "traveled"
6. use double "l" in words like "fulfill"
7. use "-or" for "-er" where done so in
Latin, e.g. "instructor," "visitor"
8. drop final "e" to give: ax, determin, definit, infinit,
envelop, medicin, opposit, famin, (others)
9. use single "f" at end of words like "pontif," "plaintif"
10. change "-ise" to "-ize" wherever this can be traced
back to Latin and Greek (where a "z"/zeta *was* used
in the spellings) or a more recent coining which
uses the suffix "-ize" (from Greek "-izein")

And all except number 8 have gradually been gradually adopted,
to some extent even influencing spellings in the UK.

I think quite a lot can be learned from this:

1. English spelling is very bad (read the Science Daily report
   at the link above for repercussions on literacy);
2. People reject heavy-handed attempts at reform such as has
   been attempted in the UK;
3. Optional spelling simplifications that don't make reading
   too awkward are gradually adopted by the populace.

I think it's also worth mentioning that in the various spelling
reform examples I've seen through the years, one of the biggest
problems is that traces of the inventor's accent can often be
seen in them - I think that this more or less guarantees failure
of the proposals because it's the one thing that even reform
enthusiasts find hard to swallow - having to write the way
someone _else_ speaks. The above ten recommendations are
remarkable in that they are merely simplifications and
regularizations with no accentual references at all. They seem
to me to be an example of truly international thinking, and yet
in the UK they're written off as "American".

I think the main point those interested in spelling reform
should note, though, is that light-handed, patient approaches
to English orthographic problems have met with success (at
least where notions of national pride don't stand in the way),
heavy-handed, all-at-once approaches haven't. And it's not to
do with lack of authority - spelling reform has actually been
attempted in English schools as part of the national curriculum.

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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