LL-L "Orthography" 2009.01.01 (04) E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 01 January 2009 - Volume 04
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From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2008.12.31 (05) E]

from Heather heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk

Sandy wrote

For example, in English we
write "child" and "children". Phonemically, this would have to be
something like "chyld" and "children".

...  Or if 'child' is accepted as phonemically correct then the plural could
be marked as 'chilldren' as the sound/word 'chill' is already accepted and
'child' bears comparison with 'wild'

And doesn't this illustrate the problem - that there is often more than one
way of representing  a group of sounds.?

chyld   <<  shy / chy    as in 'shy'

child    < ild as in 'wild'

They both arrive at the same end via different routes.

Hasn't English spelling got where it is by a variety of means

1) when spoken language followed one major area dialect but the written
language followed another    (light, night etc)

2) when accepted spelling did not change with a new development ( clerk,
Derby etc)

3) when scholars wittingly amended a spelling to reflect a long forgotten
route ( and sometimes even this was based on a misguided assumption) ( the
'b' in debt )

4) when spoken language changed faster than written language creating
homophones that were not homographs

5) a collision of historical development that resulted in two different
words arriving at the same spelling for different meanings ( can - the tin
and the verb etc)

I would be sad to see uniform spelling because all the above leave their
traces in the language which as a keen linguistic historian I love to have
unravelled for me by the experts.

If spelling reform took place, I bet there would be a wealth of books
written correlating new spellings with old and explaining the histories!

Happy New Year!

Heather

•

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