do you think there should be a referendum on english spelling?

Question

english spelling is hard enough for english people, let alone foreigners so do you think that english should adopt a strict new pronounciation based method of spelling? this would almost be impossible with the current english alphabet but if more clear vowel sounds were available and strict letters stood for strict sounds i think it could easily work and be easily adopted by the world's english speaking population. english is 1 incredibly difficult language to learn and then mastering to write it is a whole new challenge. for instance: "th" can make 2 different sounds such as in "the" or "three". "c" can make the sound of either a "k" or an "s" and what's the point of having an "x" because this is just the same as "ks"!! english has more vowel sounds than actual vowels so maybe it could adopt things like accents, circumflexes(hats) and the little dots to make the pronounciation clearer. i reallt think this would work and i would like to hear your views and ideas on it please!!!

also to any of u who are critics the main reason i am sayin this is that i speak spanish french german chinese russian japanese and korean and i found there systems of writing a lot easier than ours although i do respect all your views and comments!! thanxx

Answer 1

Try improving your grammar before asking this sort of question.

Answer 2

In the UK, we can't agree how to pronounce words, so how would we be able to agree how to spell them, with any kind of strictly phonetic orthography?

I was taught to read at first through a system called ITA, the Initial Teaching Alphabet. It was a 1970s orthographic experiment, and it was a total disaster. The regional variations in pronunciation are too great for something like that to work properly. Nor is it desirable, as there is a lot of history and derivations to be had in spellings one might otherwise see as eccentric.

Let's consider that word, 'eccentric'. From its spelling, someone who didn't know what it meant might be able to work out that it means 'away from the middle' and perhaps be able to infer from that its colloquial meaning of 'out of the ordinary'. If you spell it 'exentrik', then you'll never be able to infer anything from it. It'd be burning an important historical and linguistic bridge. It'd be an act of vandalism. And do you really want to close the door on everything that has been written in English up to this point? We, people who are already adults and can read and spell properly, will always be able to dip back into real English when we need it, but children who grow up with some weird orthography will be screwed, essentially.

You also have to consider if you'll have a standard orthography or a non-standard one. Will you pick new spellings that have to be used, or will you just let people make up their own? If you let people make up their own, reading will become very difficult indeed. In fact, you'd probably have to read stuff aloud before you could get the meaning.

It'd be bad news.

Edit: That's not how you spell (or pronounce) pronunciation.

Answer 3

There are a few problems with this. In English, words are pronounced differently according to whether they are emphasised or not, so there will always be some variation either in spelling or pronunciation. There are other languages which deal with this issue well which are spelt better than English though. Another issue is which dialect or accent of English to prefer, which is a political decision. For instance, the General American English accent is the most widely used, but British people would be very unhappy with that being used as standard. An alternative would be to use different spellings for British and American English, which is what has recently happened with European and Brazilian Portuguese, but this is tantamount to a decision to abandon the language's status as an international medium of communication.

I would take issue with your opinion that English is difficult to learn. I would say the main problems with English for a speaker of another Indo-European language are: spelling, pronunciation and the use of phrasal verbs. Words generally change their form very little and grammar is mainly connected to word order. English vowels are very peculiar, mainly consisting of unusual diphthongs, and the long vowels in particular are not written phonetically.

One advantage of English spelling is that it tends to preserve the way a foreign word is spelt in the original language, which makes it easier for speakers of other KENTUM languages in particular to read and write it. It would lose that advantage if spelling were reformed. For instance, if "night" were spelt "nait" it would look less like the German "Nacht", and if "photograph" was spelt something like "feutegraf" it would look a lot less like the word in other languages.

English is not the only language to use "h" after other consonants to indicate a different sound. This also happens in Albanian, Portuguese, French, German and Italian in Europe alone, and other languages use other letters to do the same, for instance Polish and "z". The odd thing about English is that it uses virtually no extra marks to indicate different sounds. In Europe, the only other language i can think of written in the same alphabet which doesn't use them is Dutch. In a sense, it could also be said that English doesn't use extra characters, but this is a relative view. Rotokas, for example, only uses twelve letters, so for a literate native Rotokas speaker, all the other letters are extra.

This is what i propose for a near-RP accent such as my own. It won't work for other accents:

Vowels: the emphasised or only vowel or diphthong in each of the following words -

uu - moon
u - wood
eu - no
o - or
o - boss
aa - father
æ - act (this is the letter used in the Wessex dialect of Old English for this sound).
a - the er in father, and third. This is traditionally e but if a is used it will make words of Latin origin more recognisable to speakers of Romance languages)
e - men
ei - take
i - lip
ii - clean
au - house
ai - I
ia - ear
ou - awe
io - milk
eo - melt
ea - air
juu - you
a (again) bus
Consonants: the capitalised letters in the following words.

b - Bus
p - Pen
m - Moss
w - Wall, WHeel (the same pronunciation in my accent, but not all others)
f - Face
v - Vase
þ - THought (this is an old letter which went out of use in English but is still used in Icelandic. "Ye" as in "the" is actually "þe".)
đ - THe
t - Tap
d - Debt
s - Size
z - Zeal
n - Noel
r - Red (but note that this sound is also used in elision between words ending and beginning with vowels, and is dropped from many words altogether in the South East of England, India, New England, the Caribbean and Australasia)
l - Lip (but note that in my accent and many others', the l in "pill" is actually a vowel in some contexts and a consonant in others)
x - SHeep (x is used for this purpose in some languages)
c - CHeap (again, used in some languages for this sound)
j - You
hj - Humour. (This is rather unfortunate, but all the choices would be quite poor)
k - Cat
g - God
ng - thiNkiNG (This is also problematic, but the alternative would be to invent a new letter or use an accent)
h - Hand
q - the glottal stop used at the beginning of emphasised words beginning with vowels, between two vowels not forming a diphthong and in my accent for "t" in "better")
dj - Juice.

Đis iz hau Ingglix wud luk if điiz prapeusaoz wa adoptid, o đa wei ai pranauns it eniwei.

This phrase is use to demonstrate vowels in English: "Who would know aught of art must learn, act and then take his ease". In the other spelling, it would look like this:

Huu wud neu ot ov aat mast lan, ækt and đen teik hiz iiz.

"Sorry, I left my chocolate and oranges in the forest" in my accent becomes "Sorii, ai left mai coklet and orindjiz in đa forest."

Answer 4

learn russian or japanese then ask the same question. english is now becoming fragmented due to text 'language' and the huge influx of immigrants. we should be more strict, not only on the spelling of the english language, but also the pronunciation of even basic english.

Answer 5

Old idea. George Bernard Shaw had that idea many moons ago.
Most people in the UK couldn't spell referendum, so what's the point?

Answer 6

I don't understand your problem I don't recall having any trouble learning English and I was very young at the time

Answer 7

the only rule that's actual annoying is I until eventually now E different than after C as there is greater words that are exceptions than there are words that carry on with the guideline. S it is going to be E until eventually now I different than after C.

Answer 8

If they ever recognize eeebonnniks then I say maybe its time for such a convention !

Answer 9

do you mean english language?or the English people?

Answer 10

No. What a daft idea. We will all be speaking 'chav' and using txt spk. Language evolves naturally as time goes on, you can't just overhaul it all!

Answer 11

I think you have posted this question in the wrong section.
It should be in "Entertainment & Music", sub-section, "Jokes".