LL-L "Orthography" 2006.01.07 (03) [E]

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 07 January 2006 * Volume 03
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From: Henry Pijffers <henry at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2006.01.07 (02) [E]

Sandy wrote:
> 
> I think the "ghoti" people are arguing from the position that a good 
> spelling system is merely a matter of phonemics: the closer the spelling 
> comes to the sound of the language, the better.
 >
Don't you mean phonetics here?

> But I think there are 
> many examples in real languages that show that less phonemic, more 
> grammatically-derived features often make sense
 >
<snip/>
> 
> An example from English is the spelling of plurals, where <s> is written 
> for both /s/ and /z/ without confusion.
> 
Is this really a grammar rule? Isn't it just phonemics at work? I mean, 
/s/ and /z/ are really just one phoneme in English (or at least in 
plural endings), right? (Please correct me if I'm wrong)

> Another way for spellings to be irregular in a useful way is to make 
> them more economical. For example, in English we write "be", "we", "he" 
> "she" rather than the more regular "bee" "wee" "hee" "shee".
 >
I have a feeling that the reason is not economics, but history. However, 
I have no data at hand to support this, so feel free to ignore my remark.

> I also think that irregularities aren't important in rare words. There 
> is no point in regularising exotic and unusual borrowings from other 
> languages, for example, if most English speakers would be so 
> unaccustomed to them that they'd more likely be copying them over from 
> somewhere than using them from their active vocabulary.
> 
Sandy, would you please go talk to the Taalunie? They don't seem to have 
gotten that. ;)

Henry

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