Wʊd ˈꟾŋɡlɪʃ bi ˈbɛtər ɔf wɪθ fəˈnɛtɪk ˈspɛlɪŋ? - Would English be better off with phonetic spelling?

[Ponderous Pillock]

In terms of the UK alone, a Scouser's phonetics would bear little relation to that of a Cockney, or a Manc, Scot, Yorkshireman, Taff or any other region you care to name. Dialectic drift between regions that are <100miles apart is enough to indicate that a phonetically-driven written language simply wouldn't work in English.

This thread is hilariously America-Centric where accents can be broadly the same if you go into any major metro area. You can get dialect drift less than 20 miles away in some areas of the UK.

Fascinatingly the dialect drift is actually the old languages that once shotgunned the UK (namely during the Heptarchy era) being effective holdouts creating a sublanguage.

Yorkshire is probably the best example (the entire Riding of Yorkshire is larger than Israel) where there's a recorded instance of two students from Oslo university practically falling over themselves when out for a bite to eat in a pub where they discovered a man who spoke an old local dialect. The locals could understand him perfectly and so could the students.

Once they began trying out their ancient Norse and found the old man replying to them.

Spelling english phonetically as a language system would only really work if you were teaching the language fresh and new, and you'd still have to factor in that other groups, such as Mainland Europeans, have a different phonetic system than those who speak English as a first language.

We adapt foreign words to our phonology too we just don't realize it because we don't know the original languages

Generally english steals words outright if we don't already have them. You can pretty much see every mid-tier soldier's rank (nicked from the French).

 

[Watcher]

You can't force people to use languages. Languages develop on their own.

The way we spell our words comes from both phoenetic and the origins of our words from other languages sort of mixed together. Expecting people to then suddenly learn a completely different way of reading words, especially when it's not as elegant and upon a first glance almost looks like you're reading Arabic. Is significantly more work than you might think.

Especially in the context of America because it still hasnt migrated to the Metric system

 

[autisticdragonkin]

Ai hav a betr aidiya. Let's yuz a parʃlli ϕoenetik alϕabet ƕiћ iz dizaiǵnd tu bωþ ʃω etymology and prωnaunσiyeiṫʃun. Wi wil
ϕoenetiklli ʃω jrmanik wrdz alþωȝ wiþ þa addiṫʃun uv ƕair and yoȝ wi wil ϕoenetiklli ʃω vauwlz and consonants but wi wil alsω ʃω sailint letrz wiþ a dezigneitd daiyacritic in ωrdr to indiceit þat þei ar sailint

Spoiler

I have a better idea. Let's use a partially phoenetic alphabet which is designed to both show etymology and pronounciation. We will phoenetically show germanic words although with the addition of huair and yogh we will phoenetically show vowels and consonants but we will also show silent letters with a designated diacritic in order to indicate that they are silent.
th=þ
sh=ʃ
ch=ћ
gh=ȝ
ph=ϕ
wh=ƕ
zh=ж
ch pronounced as k=ch
c pronounced as k=c
c pronounced as s=σ
f=f

 

[Joan Nyan]

Ai hav a betr aidiya. Let's yuz a parʃlli ϕoenetik alϕabet ƕiћ iz dizaiǵnd tu bωþ ʃω etymology and prωnaunσiyeiṫʃun. Wi wil
ϕoenetiklli ʃω jrmanik wrdz alþωȝ wiþ þa addiṫʃun uv ƕair and yoȝ wi wil ϕoenetiklli ʃω vauwlz and consonants but wi wil alsω ʃω sailint letrz wiþ a dezigneitd daiyacritic in ωrdr to indiceit þat þei ar sailint

Spoiler

I have a better idea. Let's use a partially phoenetic alphabet which is designed to both show etymology and pronounciation. We will phoenetically show germanic words although with the addition of huair and yogh we will phoenetically show vowels and consonants but we will also show silent letters with a designated diacritic in order to indicate that they are silent.
th=þ
sh=ʃ
ch=ћ
gh=ȝ
ph=ϕ
wh=ƕ
zh=ж
ch pronounced as k=ch
c pronounced as k=c
c pronounced as s=σ
f=f

While I like the idea of preserving etymologies while being more phonetic, what you have actually doesn't seem very helpful at all. Replacing sh with ʃ and so on is pointless, sh isn't hard to spell. And if you're going to replace th with something, why not also add a distinction between voiced and voiceless? Just replacing common letter combinations with new letters doesn't really make things easier. I think there should be a consistent spelling for vowels, and consonants should be kept as close to normal English as possible, with diacritics to indicate that some letters are silent or pronounced differently (like ţ for t in nation)

 

[AnOminous]

Ai hav a betr aidiya. Let's yuz a parʃlli ϕoenetik alϕabet ƕiћ iz dizaiǵnd tu bωþ ʃω etymology and prωnaunσiyeiṫʃun. Wi wil
ϕoenetiklli ʃω jrmanik wrdz alþωȝ wiþ þa addiṫʃun uv ƕair and yoȝ wi wil ϕoenetiklli ʃω vauwlz and consonants but wi wil alsω ʃω sailint letrz wiþ a dezigneitd daiyacritic in ωrdr to indiceit þat þei ar sailint

Congratulations. You made an already staggeringly autistic and useless idea even more autistic and useless. Now, to spell words, you'd have to know the etymology of every single word you use.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

Congratulations. You made an already staggeringly autistic and useless idea even more autistic and useless. Now, to spell words, you'd have to know the etymology of every single word you use.

I made the english language slightly less autistic by making the pronunciation of every word obvious but still keeping semantic determiners

 

[Philosophy Zombie]

The accent thing is brought up every time spelling reform is discussed, but it's not the biggest problem with a new system at all. While English dialects are disparate in their phonemic usage and there's no "standard" for pronunciation, the solution is to keep as many distinctions between different words as exist in different areas in which English is spoken.

"Card" would retain its r to account for rhotic accents (as opposed to something like BBC English received pronunciation) while "what" might keep its "h" because while many people don't pronounce the h, doing so is common in some dialects. Likewise the spelling differences between "Mary", "merry", and "marry" would be retained even though they are homophones in standard American English.

 

[on a serious note]

I'd like to go phonetic because it will make it easier for people to learn the language, which is a big deal because we have a lot of immigrants

 

[Sperglord Dante]

There is one thing that massively pisses me off about english:

The fucking vowels.

Jesus, why the fuck does the 'e' usually sound like 'ee' like in but also as 'eh'? What' s the point of having a 'u' when it sounds like 'oh' half of the time AND rarely as 'oo'?

 

[autisticdragonkin]

There is one thing that massively pisses me off about english:

The fucking vowels.

Jesus, why the fuck does the 'e' usually sound like 'ee' like in but also as 'eh'? What' s the point of having a 'u' when it sounds like 'oh' half of the time AND rarely as 'oo'?

Latin had not very many vowels so they didn't need many. The slavic languages made their own alphabet because their vowels were different from latin and so did the Germanic languages but Cyrillic has survived whereas Runic has not

 

[Sperglord Dante]

Latin had not very many vowels so they didn't need many. The slavic languages made their own alphabet because their vowels were different from latin and so did the Germanic languages but Cyrillic has survived whereas Runic has not

Pretty sure you can render most if not all of those sounds by combining latin's vowels. In Spanish we do this:

Spoiler

- a sounds like 'alpha'
- e sounds like 'enter'
- i sounds like 'indian'
- o sounds like 'old'
- u sounds like 'brute'
- ai sounds like 'eye'
- au sounds like 'out'
- ei sounds like 'gay'
- eu sounds like 'well'
- ia sounds like 'yard'
- ie sounds like 'yellow'
- io sounds like' Joseph'
- oi sounds like 'oil'
- ou sounds like 'owl'
- ua sounds like 'watch'
- ue sounds like 'well'
- uo sounds like 'walk'

 

[Marvin]

There is one thing that massively pisses me off about english:

The fucking vowels.

Jesus, why the fuck does the 'e' usually sound like 'ee' like in but also as 'eh'? What' s the point of having a 'u' when it sounds like 'oh' half of the time AND rarely as 'oo'?

English, like most languages, wasn't designed by committee.

Heh, if you want an artisan language, learn Lojban or Esperanto. (And schisms still exist in those languages.)

 

[Gym Leader Elesa]

Can't fathom this is a good idea, as reforming the English language to this degree would require putting someone in charge of it and that is only going to lead to the slow, socially devastating spread of something like a new prestige dialect, which has already been a loss for common heritage where standardization has been pushed overly much (and in America particularly, as part of Americanisation.) Best case scenario, you would probably just end up like France did, pissing everyone off and humiliating and isolating communities for no good reason, assuming you succeeded.

Which in the case of English, you won't. It's too large, diverse, and divisive to regulate it on that level. It's best to let languages evolve naturally as they tend to develop a sort of rudimentary efficiency on their own. Society will sort out what it needs in the crucible of daily life. Besides, while I know the opinion is unpopular, I tend to like diversity in accents, dialects, language, and so on. Even if it can make communication more difficult. I would rather try to preserve the interesting idiosyncrasies of the English language even if only on sentimental value alone.

 

[Dr. Tremolo]

There is one thing that massively pisses me off about english:

The fucking vowels.

Jesus, why the fuck does the 'e' usually sound like 'ee' like in but also as 'eh'? What' s the point of having a 'u' when it sounds like 'oh' half of the time AND rarely as 'oo'?

You could ask the same about consonants. As I had mentioned earlier, it's just a trait unique to English due to multiple influences and its widespread use.
Also English is relatively simple so it can afford to have phonetic inconsistencies. Languages like say, German or Polish are far more consistent because they wouldn't work otherwise.

 

[*Asterisk*]

Ai hav a betr aidiya. Let's yuz a parʃlli ϕoenetik alϕabet ƕiћ iz dizaiǵnd tu bωþ ʃω etymology and prωnaunσiyeiṫʃun. Wi wil
ϕoenetiklli ʃω jrmanik wrdz alþωȝ wiþ þa addiṫʃun uv ƕair and yoȝ wi wil ϕoenetiklli ʃω vauwlz and consonants but wi wil alsω ʃω sailint letrz wiþ a dezigneitd daiyacritic in ωrdr to indiceit þat þei ar sailint

Spoiler

I have a better idea. Let's use a partially phoenetic alphabet which is designed to both show etymology and pronounciation. We will phoenetically show germanic words although with the addition of huair and yogh we will phoenetically show vowels and consonants but we will also show silent letters with a designated diacritic in order to indicate that they are silent.
th=þ
sh=ʃ
ch=ћ
gh=ȝ
ph=ϕ
wh=ƕ
zh=ж
ch pronounced as k=ch
c pronounced as k=c
c pronounced as s=σ
f=f

Fucking-A. I thought I was the only guy who wished we picked up this lesson from the Japanese.

Congratulations. You made an already staggeringly autistic and useless idea even more autistic and useless. Now, to spell words, you'd have to know the etymology of every single word you use.

What's wrong with that?

If more people knew about etymology, they'd have a better idea on how to coin aesthetically pleasing new words and phrases. And anyone who uses the lemma "splain" in a serious fashion can be pubically executed for crimes against culture.

 

[DuskEngine]

I'd like to go phonetic because it will make it easier for people to learn the language, which is a big deal because we have a lot of immigrants

Trying to force a centralised top-down reform of the language would only make it harder to learn at this point.

I agree that English is a pretty unwieldy language (because it's full of unwieldy words like 'unwieldy') but it's become a standard second or even first language in many parts of the world, and trying to prescriptively determine changes to make to it at this point would just cause more confusion than it would solve.

 

[Joan Nyan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut_Spelling

Cut Spelng is an intrestng idea becus it reforms spelng based on making things shortr wile retaining th same basic spelng of words. It just gets rid of silnt letrs, unstresd vowls, and dubl letrs that don't help distinguish btween difrnt words. Th only replacemnts ar PH/GH to F, soft G to J, and IG/IGH to Y. I don't no if it wud make English esier to lern or spel, but it's suposedly 8 to 15% shortr so it cud save a lot of papr. Then agan, it wud make it hardr to rite an esay of a certn length so I can imajin colej studnts cmplaining.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut_Spelling

Cut Spelng is an intrestng idea becus it reforms spelng based on making things shortr wile retaining th same basic spelng of words. It just gets rid of silnt letrs, unstresd vowls, and dubl letrs that don't help distinguish btween difrnt words. Th only replacemnts ar PH/GH to F, soft G to J, and IG/IGH to Y. I don't no if it wud make English esier to lern or spel, but it's suposedly 8 to 15% shortr so it cud save a lot of papr. Then agan, it wud make it hardr to rite an esay of a certn length so I can imajin colej studnts cmplaining.

Also is terrible for dyslexia