EPTspelling reform in English speaking countries - Page 5
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No_Roo
United States905 Posts
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pfods
United States895 Posts
On January 29 2011 03:52 NoobSkills wrote: Every language has it's own rules. English has very little variation in those rules. I before E except after C. Sure there are 5 words that do not follow that rule, but in every other language there are 50. Now as far as sentence structure not following the norm of most languages, new grammar rules, vocab, ect it would be a hard language to pick up whereas learning French after knowing Spanish would be much easier. But then again why would you want to learn French. Of course every language has it's own rules, English has a rule for almost everything though when it comes to grammar. Most people don't realize how complicated English grammar is until they study a second language in depth, and they have to actually know their own grammatical rules in order to properly learn the other language. When I studied Arabic I really learned to appreciate how uncomplicated it was in comparison to English. | ||
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domovoi
United States1478 Posts
Spelling isn't an issue in English, especially between different dialects. It's a huge stumbling block for non-native speakers trying to learn English. Spelling variations between the dialects aren't a problem, though. | ||
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Sufficiency
Canada23833 Posts
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Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
On January 29 2011 00:44 theSAiNT wrote: I'm afraid that's just not true. English is NOT a phonetic language (whatever your teachers may tell you.) The pronunciation of words is not a direct function of spelling unlike in some other languages (Spanish I believe is close to phonetic). Harbor (American) and Harbour (UK) should be pronounced the same. Yep, I know pretty well since Finnish is 100% a phonetic language and English is a complete opposite. In Finnish, you can say a word even if you've never heard it before since the letters are always pronounced the exact same way. In English, the difference between the "e" in "envy" and "cheese" is quite clear. English isn't anywhere close to phonetic. -.- | ||
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domovoi
United States1478 Posts
On January 29 2011 04:11 Shikyo wrote: Yep, I know pretty well since Finnish is 100% a phonetic language and English is a complete opposite. In Finnish, you can say a word even if you've never heard it before since the letters are always pronounced the exact same way. In English, the difference between the "e" in "envy" and "cheese" is quite clear. English isn't anywhere close to phonetic. -.- Let's not get carried away. Chinese is nowhere close to phonetic. English is pretty phonetic (especially its consonants), but there are a billion exceptions/alternate pronunciations one must memorize. | ||
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elkram
United States221 Posts
- For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. Mark Twain has got you beat on the spelling issue by at least 100 years. | ||
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Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
On January 29 2011 03:36 ggrrg wrote: I don't see any particular reason why British English should be adopted all over the world. You haven't given one either. On the other hand, a worldwide readjustment to BE would cause complications in all countries involved. The words of a man that hasn't studied any other languages. English grammar is kind of easy in comparison to Romance languages, a piece of cake in comparison to Slavic and Scandinavian languages, and not even comparable to something like Finnish. Mark Twain: "My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years." Irony. First of all, difficulty is always going to be based off of your native language. To a native English speaker the Romance languages are laughably easy. To counter your quotation with an anecdote, there was an American Indian (I think he was Iroquois or Huron) who wrote several grammar books for French, English and Spanish. When asked if he could write a grammar for his own native language, he replied that it had no grammar. The point being that Twain was a native English speaker, so of course he thought English was simple. I don't think turning this into a linguistic pissing contest is helpful though. | ||
Falling
Canada11379 Posts
But as demonstrated by the Mark Twain post above, the attempt to standardize English would render the language incomprehensible to the native speaker. Then you have the great vowel shift. Prior to the shift, good and food actually rhymed. But some vowels shifted and others didn't. Speaking of difficulty in spelling rules: | ||
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Achilles
Canada385 Posts
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yema1
Iceland101 Posts
Color Dolor Honos, honoris (gen) The Brits fucked up at some point and decided to add superfluous letters, that doesn't mean we should. | ||
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Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
On January 29 2011 04:13 domovoi wrote: Let's not get carried away. Chinese is nowhere close to phonetic. English is pretty phonetic (especially its consonants), but there are a billion exceptions/alternate pronunciations one must memorize. Some imprecise language here. The attribute of 'phoneticness' they are comparing is the regularity of the letters to their pronunciation. Chinese doesn't even belong in the discussion because it's not a phonetic language. | ||
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domovoi
United States1478 Posts
On January 29 2011 04:28 Achilles wrote: I didn't think any American spellings were taught in schools tire, realize, aluminum, I'm sure there are more. | ||
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pfods
United States895 Posts
On January 29 2011 04:29 yema1 wrote: If there's anything that I dislike about British English it's the extra u's. The American version is more correct in my opinion because it's more like Latin. Color Dolor Honos, honoris (gen) The Brits fucked up at some point and decided to add superfluous letters, that doesn't mean we should. It's ironic that superfluous has an extra u in it. | ||
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domovoi
United States1478 Posts
On January 29 2011 04:29 yema1 wrote: If there's anything that I dislike about British English it's the extra u's. The American version is more correct in my opinion because it's more like Latin. Color Dolor Honos, honoris (gen) The Brits fucked up at some point and decided to add superfluous letters, that doesn't mean we should. The extra u came from Anglicized French. All the more reason to hate it. | ||
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Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
On January 29 2011 04:29 yema1 wrote: If there's anything that I dislike about British English it's the extra u's. The American version is more correct in my opinion because it's more like Latin. Color Dolor Honos, honoris (gen) The Brits fucked up at some point and decided to add superfluous letters, that doesn't mean we should. I don't like this idea, to be honest. There are several artificial grammar rules in English that were added because some Oxford dons had just finished jacking off to Cicero and decided that English grammar should adhere to the Master Language, Latin. For instance, I have yet to see a good reason as to how a split infinitive is ambiguous other than that it's freaking impossible to split an infinitive in Latin seeing as it's just one word. | ||
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domovoi
United States1478 Posts
On January 29 2011 04:29 Jerubaal wrote: Some imprecise language here. The attribute of 'phoneticness' they are comparing is the regularity of the letters to their pronunciation. Chinese doesn't even belong in the discussion because it's not a phonetic language. Well... Chinese isn't entirely non-phonetic. A lot of Chinese characters consist of a "radical" (to indicate what the word is related to, e.g. water) and a "pronunciation morpheme" to indicate how the character should be pronounced. For example, the character 媽 (ma1, "mother") is a combination of the radical 女 (nv3, "female") and the pronunciation morpheme 馬 (ma3, "horse"). Due to the evolution of Chinese pronunciation, this doesn't always work exactly, e.g. 早 (zao, pronounced dzao) and 草 (cao, pronounced like tsao). | ||
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Myles
United States5162 Posts
On January 29 2011 04:16 elkram wrote: Mark Twain - "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling" - For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. Mark Twain has got you beat on the spelling issue by at least 100 years. This right here wins the thread. English may be a hard to learn language, but the main reason is do to our nonsensical grammar. Spelling might make it difficult to look at a written word and say it properly, but the grammar makes it hard to understand what is being said at all regardless of how it's spelled. | ||
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Maenander
Germany4926 Posts
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Maenander
Germany4926 Posts
On January 29 2011 04:37 Myles wrote: This right here wins the thread. English may be a hard to learn language, but the main reason is do to our nonsensical grammar. Spelling might make it difficult to look at a written word and say it properly, but the grammar makes it hard to understand what is being said at all regardless of how it's spelled. So what is so hard about the grammar? Am I missing something? English actually uses a lot of great simplifications, I like it. | ||
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