English Orthography Reform

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Zé do Rock
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Zé do Rock »

Dormouse559 wrote: 31 Dec 2018 21:30
Zé do Rock wrote: 31 Dec 2018 13:28I think it is quite funny how native speakers are counted: only european or white speakers are counted as native speakers of english or french, ie speakers who speak this or that language as their only language.
That's not true. As an example, the U.S. Census doesn't count "native speakers" of languages, but it does tally which language(s) people speak at home. In 2017, it said the U.S. had more people who spoke only English at home (78.7 percent) than people who identified as white (73 percent).
EUROPAN

Mi spicou abaut Africa (et a bit ma no so mult abaut Asia) dan abaut USA.

Eniwei USA hav a strange modo de clasifi pople, lis counta hispanics as un oune ras. Latinis can bi blondis, mixetis, negris, indigenis, azis, ma plotslik oni put lis ali na same dro coze lis spik espanian. E den lis sei 'caucazis' wen lis vole sei claro blankis, mas in Russia, vo lis sa multi plus abaut Caucaz, caucazis is videt as la sicilis na rest af Europa, e lis rader oscuro blankis...


ENGLISH

I was rather talking about Africa (and in a lesser extent about Asia) than about the US.

The US have a funny way of classifying people anyway, counting hispanics as an own race. Latinos can be blond, colored, black, american indian, asian, but suddenly they're all thrown in the same bin because they speak spanish. And then they say 'caucasians' when they mean light skinned whites, but in Russia, where they know much more about the Caucasus, caucasians are seen as the sicilians in the rest of Europe, and they're rather dark white...
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Dormouse559 »

Zé do Rock wrote: 01 Jan 2019 23:03The US have a funny way of classifying people anyway, counting hispanics as an own race. Latinos can be blond, colored, black, american indian, asian, but suddenly they're all thrown in the same bin because they speak spanish. And then they say 'caucasians' when they mean light skinned whites, but in Russia, where they know much more about the Caucasus, caucasians are seen as the sicilians in the rest of Europe, and they're rather dark white...
I don't understand. Is this relevant to English orthography reform? Or anything I said, for that matter? I didn't mention Hispanics, and those Census statistics ask about Hispanic status separately. The exact words used to designate a group, like "caucasian" vs. "white", have no bearing in this context.
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Zé do Rock »

Dormouse559 wrote: 02 Jan 2019 00:01
Zé do Rock wrote: 01 Jan 2019 23:03The US have a funny way of classifying people anyway, counting hispanics as an own race. Latinos can be blond, colored, black, american indian, asian, but suddenly they're all thrown in the same bin because they speak spanish. And then they say 'caucasians' when they mean light skinned whites, but in Russia, where they know much more about the Caucasus, caucasians are seen as the sicilians in the rest of Europe, and they're rather dark white...
I don't understand. Is this relevant to English orthography reform? Or anything I said, for that matter? I didn't mention Hispanics, and those Census statistics ask about Hispanic status separately. The exact words used to designate a group, like "caucasian" vs. "white", have no bearing in this context.
REFORMD

No, it dusnt hav much tö dö with inglishe speling reform, indéd. Mas is un naturale fenomen: oni comensa parlar sur basketball e na fin oni parla sur kemie o religion. Salmoneus diseu ki reforma non è necesari parkee fora bebees, la falis de inglishe fal inglish e non ha problemas co le inglish, inton Xonen respondeu ki noi no deverai olvidar l mega numero de falis no nativ, inton yo diseu ki la numero de falis nativ è multi mas mega ki oni di parke la linguistis no conta la no-blankis como falis nativi parkee lis fal un otra lingua paralelament, tu comentou ki mais gent en USA fal inglish in casa ki la numero de blankis, yo respondeu ki yo falou mais sobre la mund inter, no solo de USA, mas como tu falou de USA, yo comentou ki USA tem un modo bizarro de contar rasas. Aba natyrli myssen wir nich daryba reden.


ENGLISH

No, it doesnt have much to do with english spelling reform, indeed. But it is a normal phenomenon: you start talking about basketball and end up talking about chemistry or religion. Salmoneus said that reform is not necessary because except for babies, english speakers can speak english and dont have problems reading english, then Xonen replied that we shouldnt forget the great number of L2 learners, i said that the number of native speakers is much greater than we think because linguists dont count non-whites as native english speakers because they usually speak another language parallely, and you commented on it saying that more people speak english at home than the number of whites in the US, and i replied that i was rather talking about the whole world, not the US, but since you talked about the US, i commented that the US have a funny way of counting races. But of course we dont have to talk about it.
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Dormouse559 »

Zé do Rock wrote: 02 Jan 2019 11:01No, it doesnt have much to do with english spelling reform, indeed. But it is a normal phenomenon: you start talking about basketball and end up talking about chemistry or religion. Salmoneus said that reform is not necessary because except for babies, english speakers can speak english and dont have problems reading english, then Xonen replied that we shouldnt forget the great number of L2 learners, i said that the number of native speakers is much greater than we think because linguists dont count non-whites as native english speakers because they usually speak another language parallely, and you commented on it saying that more people speak english at home than the number of whites in the US, and i replied that i was rather talking about the whole world, not the US, but since you talked about the US, i commented that the US have a funny way of counting races. But of course we dont have to talk about it.
Then I'll return to your assertion about how native speakers of English are defined. You were talking about the whole world. Given the U.S. is part of the whole world, and one of the largest concentrations of native English speakers in the whole world, it stands as a large counterexample to the idea that native speakership of English is determined by race.
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Re: English Orthography Reform

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Zé do Rock wrote: 01 Jan 2019 23:03 The US have a funny way of classifying people anyway, counting hispanics as an own race.
No, the official governmental category (at least) is completely orthogonal.
Dormouse559 wrote: 29 Dec 2018 01:47 When I speak quickly, my "we'll" can become /wəl~wl̩/, which does sound a bit like /ˈwʊl/.
I wouldn't expect there to be much in the way of a phonetic difference, at least in Mid-Atlantic AmE, between /ʊl/ and /əl/.
Salmoneus wrote: 28 Dec 2018 21:42
Nortaneous wrote: 28 Dec 2018 21:33 isn't we'll homophonous with wool?
Not that I've ever heard. It it sometimes realised the same way as wheel, though.
That'd be pretty emphatic, I think. (IMD an emphatic form with KIT is permissible, but I think there could also be an emphatic with FOOT.)

Also, as for /æ/ vs. /eə/, 'panko' [peəŋkəw]. The expected [pæjŋkəw] just sounds wrong to me. This intuitively feels like /nk/ (so /ŋ/ would be marginally phonemic), but given 'yeah' I think the abstractly better analysis is the one where /eə/ is phonemic.
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Re: English Orthography Reform

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Dormouse559 wrote: 02 Jan 2019 16:51 Then I'll return to your assertion about how native speakers of English are defined. You were talking about the whole world. Given the U.S. is part of the whole world, and one of the largest concentrations of native English speakers in the whole world, it stands as a large counterexample to the idea that native speakership of English is determined by race.
EUROPAN

Certli mi vou no sei ki nativo spikis is countee bai ras. E certli lis counta neblank USis as nativo spikis, si dat is su nativo lingua. I ha sei ki normali wen lis sei ki la numero de 330 tu 360 milion inglishe nativo spikis as hir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-speaking_world, lis refere tu landes as USA, UK, Australia, ma no landes as Kenya o Naijiria. Tais is mencionet in el article oso, ma plu sub, as spikis de "dialecto continumes" af inglish, "ranging from english baseed creole to standard english". In Naijiria multi pople solo spik a sorte creol o pidjin, mas in Est Africa e specialik in Sud Africa in landes as Zambia o Zimbabwe inglish is certli super plus izi tu comprend (auminu tu mi) e plu nire tu standard inglishe dan el inglishe ki some scotis o pople in Nord Ingland spik. So lis ignore no ta landes na statisticas coze lis is neblank, lis fa lu coz in ta landes lis spik no standard inglish o coze lis hav a paralelo nativo lingua, wat is no la caz in multi caz, coze na mega citis pople veni de diferente regiones na land e mus comunica na coloniale lingua, so su kidis spik la coloniale lingua na dom, o su maipai spik un africano lingua ma la kidis mus spik la coloniale lingua co la vizinis. La facto ki lis is neblank is rader a coinsidens, mi supon.


ENGLISH

I certainly wouldnt say that native english speakers are counted by race. And certainly they count non-white americans as native speakers, if english is their native language. I was saying that usually when they say the number of 330 to 360 million of english native speakers as here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-speaking_world, they refer to countries like the USA, UK, Australia, but not countries like Kenya or Nigeria. These are mentioned in the article, too, but further down, as speakers of "dialect continua" of english, "ranging from english based creole to standard english". In Nigeria many people only speak some sort of creole or pidgin, but in East Africa and especially in Southern Africa in countries like Zambia or Zimbabwe or Botswana their english is certainly much easier to understand (at least for me) and nearer to standard english than the english spoken say by some scots or people in Northern England. So they dont ignore these countries in the statistics because they're non-white, they do it because in those countries they dont speak standard english or because they have a parallel native language, which isnt the case in many cases, since in the big cities people come from different regions in the country and have to communicate in the colonial language, so their children speak the colonial language at home, or maybe they hear their african language at home from the parents but have to talk to their neighbors in the colonial language. The fact that they're non-white is rather a coincidence, i guess.
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If English used diacritics

Post by Ryanvadar »

English uses very few diacritics compared to other languages written in the Roman alphabet. If English used more diacritics/accent marks, how would you implement them? Stress, vowel quality, other ?
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Re: If English used diacritics

Post by GoshDiggityDangit »

Frænkly, I wøld probably use ðëm to dïstïnguïś sæunds ðæt ȃren't uźually.
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Re: If English used diacritics

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I'd reform English spelling to be consistently and accurately etymological, and use diacritics to take care of various inconsistent shortenings and lengthenings which have, to the horror of Neogrammarians, appeared during the history of English.

This happens to be a horribly difficult task and I admit I have no idea how to implement it consistently. ú for PUT, ù for STRUT, ó for BOOK and ò for BLOOD are easy, as well as â for BATH and ô for CLOTH, but would there be enough diacritics to deal with examples like BREAD, BREAK and BROAD?
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Re: If English used diacritics

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Zekoslav wrote: 11 Oct 2019 16:37 I'd reform English spelling to be consistently and accurately etymological, and use diacritics to take care of various inconsistent shortenings and lengthenings which have, to the horror of Neogrammarians, appeared during the history of English.

This happens to be a horribly difficult task and I admit I have no idea how to implement it consistently. ú for PUT and BOOK and ù for STRUT and BLOOD are easy, as well as â for BATH and ô for CLOTH, but would there be enough diacritics to deal with examples like BREAD, BREAK and BROAD?
Fixed. No need to use two orthographies for the same vowel [pʰʊʔt]/[bʊk] and [stɹʌt]/[blʌd].
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Re: If English used diacritics

Post by Zekoslav »

yangfiretiger121 wrote: 15 Oct 2019 18:23
Zekoslav wrote: 11 Oct 2019 16:37 I'd reform English spelling to be consistently and accurately etymological, and use diacritics to take care of various inconsistent shortenings and lengthenings which have, to the horror of Neogrammarians, appeared during the history of English.

This happens to be a horribly difficult task and I admit I have no idea how to implement it consistently. ú for PUT and BOOK and ù for STRUT and BLOOD are easy, as well as â for BATH and ô for CLOTH, but would there be enough diacritics to deal with examples like BREAD, BREAK and BROAD?
Fixed. No need to use two orthographies for the same vowel [pʰʊʔt]/[bʊk] and [stɹʌt]/[blʌd].
I actually intended to keep etymologically distinct vowels which have since merged distinct in the orthography, while taking care of irregular changes preventing the pronunciation from being accurately guessed from spelling. It's probably too complex to be done consisntently (what about one, for example)?
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Re: If English used diacritics

Post by thevietguy »

how could we be so ignorant the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA,..., the IPA is the new English that used diacritics. Yeah but it is wacko, in my opinion. We rather go to Vietnam and learn it's alphabet, which is a more modern alphabet.
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Re: If English used diacritics

Post by GoshDiggityDangit »

thevietguy wrote: 16 Oct 2019 18:34 how could we be so ignorant the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA,..., the IPA is the new English that used diacritics. Yeah, but it is wacko, in my opinion. We rather go to Vietnam and learn it's alphabet, which is a more modern alphabet.
The IPA was invented to transcribe all human languages. The Vietnamese script was made for Vietnamese.
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Re: If English used diacritics

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GoshDiggityDangit wrote: 17 Oct 2019 07:55
thevietguy wrote: 16 Oct 2019 18:34how could we be so ignorant the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA, the IPA,..., the IPA is the new English that used diacritics. Yeah, but it is wacko, in my opinion. We rather go to Vietnam and learn it's alphabet, which is a more modern alphabet.
The IPA was invented to transcribe all human languages. The Vietnamese script was made for Vietnamese.
To be fair, the IPA was invented by language teachers to transcribe English, French and German. Then it was heavily modified to render other European languages and Arabic, and then further so for other languages. See the Wikipedia article History of the International Phonetic Alphabet for a parade of the evolving charts.

The only reason is convention really. I could imagine Tamil or Japanese Katakana being heavily modified to cover the wide range of languages that the IPA does, with an equal degree of accuracy, but that's not the world that history produced and that we currently live in. [:)]
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Re: If English used diacritics

Post by Xonen »

Topic merged.

I'd personally be in favor of expanding the way diacritics currently âre, or have historically been, used. That is, take the way they've already been used and regularize it to mark unusual pronunciations, but keep it fairly limited; môstly to situations whêre no oħer way of regularizing the spelling readily presentes itself.
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Zé do Rock »

I invented such a sistem, tu. It is calld 'Axentus'. I úz acút for stressd long vowels (lát, brít, bén, bót), gráv for unstressd long vowels (ìdéa, athlèt, ráncòt), ümlout for special sounds (fäther, föd, füt), and sercumflex tu be úzd in cás of an unexpected stress, for example in 'cônsonant' (becauz in móst cáses the préfix co/con is unstressd) or 'expêct' (becauz E's in the fínal silables ar úsualy unstressd). The príse is that the úzer wüd hav tu lern sum stress röls... Axentus cuver nérly all problems of english, except schwas, but i dónt think thare is a proper solution for schwas. And i tri tu kép the fréquensy of axents lo, for instanse fínal long vowels dónt néd axent (se, di, lo, cu, piano), sinse tha'r automaticly long.

But i just mád it for fun, i dónt think it stands a chanse. Péple mít mák sum spontánius reforms, like 'overnite', 'lite' or 'i luv u', but i dónt think tha'd start úzing accents, sinse tha dónt exist in inglish. As uther europeans wüdnt start úzing chínèz caracters or sirilic leters. Atatürk manajd that in turkish, chánjing from arabic tu latin script, but the inglish spéking werld dusnt hav an Atatürk, and i gess tha dónt néd wun.
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by ɶʙ ɞʛ »

I'd say <i y> should be spelled <ai ay> if they are pronounced /ai/, and <a> should be spelled <ea> or <ae> if pronounced /ei/.
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by ɶʙ ɞʛ »

Nortaneous wrote: 02 Jan 2019 18:45
Zé do Rock wrote: 01 Jan 2019 23:03 The US have a funny way of classifying people anyway, counting hispanics as an own race.
No, the official governmental category (at least) is completely orthogonal.
Dormouse559 wrote: 29 Dec 2018 01:47 When I speak quickly, my "we'll" can become /wəl~wl̩/, which does sound a bit like /ˈwʊl/.
I wouldn't expect there to be much in the way of a phonetic difference, at least in Mid-Atlantic AmE, between /ʊl/ and /əl/.
Salmoneus wrote: 28 Dec 2018 21:42
Nortaneous wrote: 28 Dec 2018 21:33 isn't we'll homophonous with wool?
Not that I've ever heard. It it sometimes realised the same way as wheel, though.
That'd be pretty emphatic, I think. (IMD an emphatic form with KIT is permissible, but I think there could also be an emphatic with FOOT.)

Also, as for /æ/ vs. /eə/, 'panko' [peəŋkəw]. The expected [pæjŋkəw] just sounds wrong to me. This intuitively feels like /nk/ (so /ŋ/ would be marginally phonemic), but given 'yeah' I think the abstractly better analysis is the one where /eə/ is phonemic.
Similarly, <e ee ea> should be spelled <ie> when pronounced /i:/.

Also, maybe <Cheltic> for <Celtic> as it is still normally pronounced with /k/.

I say /paŋkɞu/, and both pronunciations are acceptable. (Standard American still has a rounded start to the /əu/ diphthong, actually slightly front of central in my case)
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Dormouse559 »

ɶʙ ɞʛ wrote: 19 Oct 2019 23:31Also, maybe <Cheltic> for <Celtic> as it is still normally pronounced with /k/.
<ch> for /k/ in a word borrowed from neither Greek nor Italian? Why not <k>, so people don't go around saying /ˈtʃɛltɪk/?
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Re: English Orthography Reform

Post by Zé do Rock »

ɶʙ ɞʛ wrote: 19 Oct 2019 23:25 I'd say <i y> should be spelled <ai ay> if they are pronounced /ai/, and <a> should be spelled <ea> or <ae> if pronounced /ei/.
Yea, sam piepel haev sajestid thaet wi spel inglish saunds with "cantinental" leter vaelius, olthou yu haev tu meik sam impravizeishen, for the saunds thaet igzist ounli in inglish. Ai laik the aidia, bat ai dount think it staends a chaens, aes the spaenish wudnt laik ther laengwij biing speld with an inglish sistem (eg umeegoez for 'amigos'?)... aend af corse meni internaeshanal wörds wudnt bi imiediatli recagnaizabal, laik 'neishan' for 'nation', etc...
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