English Orthography Reform

[qwed117]

don't change words where there's no reason too. Maintain the basic spellings known where possible, and where they don't conflict grately with the currint language.

[Xonen]

Wel, u can wate until sum peeple "in the frunt" start using mor logical spellings to start using it, or u can be one of those peeple in the frunt who start using it. I'm one of those peeple...

The problem here is that using letters, such as c and u, as words originated text speak and will, very likely, never gain wider acceptance in any fashion. I, for one, find it repulsive and consider you very lucky to have earned this response from me.

C'mon, if the Middle English pronoun "ich", still used in the 15th century, managed to replace its spelling to modern "I", it can happen to "you" as well.

Compare, also, with how the -n of Middle English verbal infinitives and plurals was dropped (to doon, they writen > to do, they write), much unlike a very similar change in nearby French (Old French parles, parlent [ˈparləs ˈparlə(n)θ], which are nowadays still spelled [tu] parles, [ils] parlent but pronounced [tyˈpaʁl i(l)ˈpaʁl]).

True about "ich." But, that's a bit different because "ich" may've been a holdover from German, where it's survived to this day.

To me, Occam's razor would seem to suggest the explanation that it was spelled ich simply because it was originally pronounced /ɪtʃ/, and <ch> happens to be the normal way of spelling /tʃ/ in English (and was already in Middle English). In Old English, where /tʃ/ was spelled <c>, the word was spelled ic. The fact that German happens to use the same digraph for /x ~ ç/ is largely a coincidence; Old High German used <h>, so this word was ih.

The primary difference between I for the first person singular and u for the second is that the former was included in the Chancery Standard in the 15th century, while the latter is a much later innovation. And knowing human nature, I'm fairly sure some people back then considered Chancery spellings to be utterly repulsive and quite certain to never gain any wider acceptance... Although to be fair, things were different back then, in that there were multiple competing spellings before the standard was established. By contrast, these days we already have a firmly established standard which people are used to seeing, so there's also a firmly established basis for considering any new, alternative spellings to be substandard.

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don't change words where there's no reason too

currint

[qwed117]

don't change words where there's no reason too

currint

and you missed "grately" Good sign of which one is a better replacement.

[Xonen]

don't change words where there's no reason too

currint

and you missed "grately"

Did I? I just thought I understood the reason why that was changed; "great" does conflict with normal English spelling rules, whereas "current", AFAICT, doesn't. But I guess I'm missing some of your logic here?

[Salmoneus]

don't change words where there's no reason too

currint

and you missed "grately"

Did I? I just thought I understood the reason why that was changed; "great" does conflict with normal English spelling rules, whereas "current", AFAICT, doesn't. But I guess I'm missing some of your logic here?

Indeed, while "current" is entirely predictable, "currint" completely conflicts with normal English spelling rules, as not only is it not the correct spelling, it's an actively misleading spelling, since it suggests /I/ rather than /@/.

I assume therefore that qwed has the weak vowel merger, but then again, that's kind of the point...