If you could change a language ...
- Thread starter Mango Elephant
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Winner
Diverse in Unity
Nothing irrational or inconsistent about English rules, sir. You just have to get into the English mindset to see that.
In other words, you have to be insane
I don't have problems with spelling. I'd say I am better at it than most native English speakers
I simply said that it would perhaps help the poor sods whom I sometimes see posting nonsense on the net to have a more sensible system of spelling, one that would better reflect the actual pronunciation.
Psh. The Great Vowel Shift by itself was hardly the most important or the final important thing that contributed to the "irrationality" in English orthography that you so despise, and it had nothing to do with syntax, which you were complaining about more vociferously earlier. I have a hard time taking you seriously when you complain about orthography anyway, due to your avowed preference of British English over American English.
sophie
Break My Heart
Yeah, pretty much. The romanticists/"linguists" of the 18th century had just as much to do with our backwards orthography as the "great vowel shift" did.
Borachio
Way past lunacy
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@Winner Well, there was the Initial Teaching Alphabet.
I quite liked it.
In vogue ~40 years ago, but seems to have fallen out of favour. Simply because learners have to go through the whole process twice.
There seem to me to be two sorts of poor English spellers on the Internet: those who don't know any better (probably because of poor teaching), and those who know very well - but choose not to spell correctly (for unknown reasons). There's no way to distinguish the two.
I don't really understand why either of these two groups go in for it - given the rather intrusive spell-checking facilities that abound. But there - it doesn't really affect me, except in so far as it makes it more difficult to read and understand what they mean. But if they don't want to make any effort, I feel not at all obliged to make any effort to read or understand what they write.
I quite liked it.
In vogue ~40 years ago, but seems to have fallen out of favour. Simply because learners have to go through the whole process twice.
There seem to me to be two sorts of poor English spellers on the Internet: those who don't know any better (probably because of poor teaching), and those who know very well - but choose not to spell correctly (for unknown reasons). There's no way to distinguish the two.
I don't really understand why either of these two groups go in for it - given the rather intrusive spell-checking facilities that abound. But there - it doesn't really affect me, except in so far as it makes it more difficult to read and understand what they mean. But if they don't want to make any effort, I feel not at all obliged to make any effort to read or understand what they write.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
1) I am not complaining about ortography;
2) I never claimed that GVS has anything to do with syntax;
3) I don't "despise" the disconnect, I find it amusing.
You haven't slept much today, have you? It shows in your reading comprehension skills.
There are languages whose spelling is reasonably close to the pronounciation of its words (e.g. Italian) or at least where the spelling of a word is based off its pronounciation in some way (i.e. certain vowels/consonants/digraphs are always pronounced the same way in all words) instead of their etymology. That's a little hard to accomplish in English since it has so many different vowel sounds, though.
sophie
Break My Heart
Italian doesn't have the same extent of vowels and diphthongs that English has. And again, you aren't going to get an orthography in English that would in any way reasonably account for all the ways English is pronounced. I mean, how would you handle rhotics, just for starters?
Mango Elephant
Deity
That's the way one's supposed to say it.
Lillefix
I'm serious. You can.
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- Dec 1, 2003
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- 5,699
You don't. Simple as that.
But German spelling is reasonably close to the standard German pronunciation, and it has about the same amount of vowels. Same with the Nordic languages.
Yeah, I acknowledged that. But still, you could at least standardize the pronounciation of digraphs such as ea and ou.
I think English still has more vowel sounds than German, and German has three extra vowel symbols, effectively. I can see that people dislike to stoop to diacritic symbols.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
The serial comma is now mandatory. People who don't use it will stand to lose marks, get ridiculed, or be penalized in some other way.
Farm Boy
I hope you dance
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- 28,269
It's not really a matter of learning metric. I suppose it might be a bit of a chore to re-visualize distances/heights/weights when talking about people or drive times. It's more an issue of needing to take things apart and do small repair on household/agricultural stuff without having to own two entirely different toolsets.
"Is this a 9mm or a 3/8?" "How many nuts have I rounded off today?" "Screw it, the only tool I have that has access to that point that fits is a vice grip." That sort of thing. It would be nice if all your metric using countries would take it easier on me and just stahp it. I'll give your our apostrophes in trade.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
A problem many learners carelessly underestimate. (Also the importance of word stress, but that's a different matter altogether.)
I guess they could introduce a few diacritic marks to deal with the issue.
So what? Accents/dialects exist in every language. We're talking about creating a standard spelling that would be more in line with how the language is supposed to be pronounced.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Bleh. I'd rather learn Klingon, it sounds nicer.
Josu
Emperor
I would add to the criminal offences the use of other language words when there is allready one in the language is being used.
I would rip my eardrums when somebody uses weekend instead of "fin de semana" in spanish or "asteburua" in basque
