Should we just throw out spelling conventions and start over?

Puppycow

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Puppycow
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Would it be worth it to just throw out our whole system of writing and start over from scratch with something more efficient and logical?

Downsides:
Everyone would have to forget what they know and relearn how to read and right, albeit with a simpler, easier system.
All books and written information created heretofore would become obsolete and require translation into the new system (of course, they would still be usable for people who know the traditional system).

Upsides: Easier for kids to learn to read and write going forward. More, efficient, saves lots of time in the long run. Even would save hard drive space.

It would take an effort initially, but it would pay dividends forever. In the long run I think the benefits would exceed the costs.

Some examples: replace "you" with "u". People already do this with texting.
Spell words like they sound. No more silent letters or arbitrary combinations of letters that don't correspond to the sounds spoken. One letter/one sound and one sound/one letter?

Here's one person's ideas, but maybe those ideas aren't even radical enough and we should throw out the whole system and start over, perhaps with a whole new set of characters? Designed for maximum efficiency of course.

http://improvingenglishspelling.blogspot.co.uk/
 
arthwollipot said:
Nice idea, but your downsides make it impossible in practice. We always have to work with what we have.
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Do we though?

Sometimes it makes sense to repair a house or make improvements, but every once in a while it's better to tear the whole thing down and build a new one in its place.

OK, practicality-wise of course, we can't do it all at once.

First, get some really smart people together to design the new system. Linguists, educators, neuroscientists, psychologists, whatever else might be relevant. Create the system and then start teaching it in parallel with the old system. Create spaces and technologies for people to use the new system: new websites, etc. Translate old texts into the new system. Once it reaches a critical mass as people see its advantages, people will abandon the old one just like they have always abandoned obsolete technologies for new and better ones.
 
No. It may be difficult, but at least 10 generations have shown that it is possible to learn spellings. If you find it too difficult.........tough. People manage it rather easily if taught properly whilst young.
 
Puppycow said:
Do we though?

Sometimes it makes sense to repair a house or make improvements, but every once in a while it's better to tear the whole thing down and build a new one in its place.

OK, practicality-wise of course, we can't do it all at once.

First, get some really smart people together to design the new system. Linguists, educators, neuroscientists, psychologists, whatever else might be relevant. Create the system and then start teaching it in parallel with the old system. Create spaces and technologies for people to use the new system: new websites, etc. Translate old texts into the new system. Once it reaches a critical mass as people see its advantages, people will abandon the old one just like they have always abandoned obsolete technologies for new and better ones.
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It's called Esperanto.

Also, you seem to be stipulating a magical language that is by definition worth switching to. It's easy enough to agree with your conclusion if we accept the starting premise that your conclusion is correct.

But what if we don't accept the premise? What if you were to start by showing that societies anywhere prefer synthetic languages over natural ones?

What if you actually demonstrated a meaningful savings in digital storage space, by means of your proposed spelling "improvements".

What if you did a first-order back of the envelope calculation, to quantify your estimate of resources saved using the language vs. resources spent translating existing works into the language?

Take Esperanto as your benchmark. It's a real-world example of what you're talking about, and should give you a real-world idea of the challenges you'll need to overcome and the existing standard you'll have to beat.
 
Not just Esperanto, many Slavic languages are completely phonetic in their spelling - my mother tongue, Croatian, certainly is. There's never any doubt whatsoever how to pronounce a word.
 
I think the strength of learning the spoken language first would override the written language learned later. Dialects would make it very difficult to have a common spelling. A common pronunciation would have to come first.
 
theprestige said:
It's called Esperanto.

Also, you seem to be stipulating a magical language that is by definition worth switching to. It's easy enough to agree with your conclusion if we accept the starting premise that your conclusion is correct.

But what if we don't accept the premise? What if you were to start by showing that societies anywhere prefer synthetic languages over natural ones?

What if you actually demonstrated a meaningful savings in digital storage space, by means of your proposed spelling "improvements".

What if you did a first-order back of the envelope calculation, to quantify your estimate of resources saved using the language vs. resources spent translating existing works into the language?

Take Esperanto as your benchmark. It's a real-world example of what you're talking about, and should give you a real-world idea of the challenges you'll need to overcome and the existing standard you'll have to beat.
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Too much work! The main difference between what I am proposing and Esperanto is that I'm not saying to change anything about the spoken language, just the writing system. Maybe Esperanto failed to gain enough converts because people didn't want to learn a new spoken language.
 
BTW, when I say "translating", this would be much simpler than translating from one language to another. It's just one system of writing English to another, so machine translation would work just fine.
 
Puppycow said:
In the long run I think the benefits would exceed the costs.
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You think wrong.

It's a pretty simple exercise to see the cost would be trillions, and ongoing for probably an entire generation. The flip side is, it would generate no discernable economic benefit. The little bit saved by ease of teaching would never catch up the enormous amount expended on changing.

Also, you can change English when you prise the poisoned pen out of my cold, dead keyboard.
 
I don't think we should kowtow to people who aren't willing to attempt to write correctly, which is all this proposal is suggesting. Whether it's due to an inadequate education system or people who just don't think that it's important to be able to communicate effectively in writing, the problem is not that learning to write properly is too hard. The idea of "something more efficient and logical" sounds like what it really means is something that is made easy for lazy people who can't be bothered to put in the effort to grasp something that might take a little thought. I see no reason that everyone else should have to change to accommodate those who are unwilling to deal with it. Maybe we should try a little harder at teaching instead of changing things to make it easier.

Words are spelled the way they are for a reason. That article makes it sound like the English language was created in a vacuum, or that some crazy person just decided to throw unnecessary random letters into thousands of words. Furthermore, if the entire language were to be changed as suggested, etymology would become completely impossible after that. As it stands, if you understand even a bit of etymology, and you hear or read a word you've never encountered before, it's not too difficult to work out what it means based on root elements in that word.
 
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Tanja said:
Not just Esperanto, many Slavic languages are completely phonetic in their spelling - my mother tongue, Croatian, certainly is. There's never any doubt whatsoever how to pronounce a word.
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Pretty much the same with Russian. The only letters which might be ambiguous are non-accented vowels -- "a" and "o" might sound the same sometimes. Russian has endless jokes along the lines "How do you make three errors in [some four letter word]"; these jokes are funny precisely because it is inconceivable for a word to have more than one ambiguous letter.

Note that most languages do not have a verb "to spell". The fact that English has a verb dedicated to this particular activity, should tell just how screwed up English is. Incidentally, if you ask (in Russian) "How do you write the word ______ ?", the standard phrasing of the answer is "Through [letter] _ ". If you have to ask the question, there is never any doubt which letter you are unsure about.
 
Psi Baba said:
Words are spelled the way they are for a reason.
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That is an absolutely ridiculous statement. With rare exceptions, writing systems evolve without any "intelligent design" -- or reason.
That article makes it sound like the English language was created in a vacuum, or that some crazy person just decided to throw unnecessary random letters into thousands of words.
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How about "many LAZY people stopped pronouncing it correctly over centuries"? In old English, the word knight was pronounced "k-n-æ-kh-t" -- in other words, spelling reflected pronunciation much more closely. The words write, right, wright, and rite were all pronounced differently, whereas nowadays they all sound the same. You may complain about lazy people today being unable to spell, but it is lazy people of the past who are responsible for the whole mess now.
 
This is hardly a new idea. It's generally known as a phonetic alphabet.

Benjamin Franklin invented a phonetic alphabet for English back in the 18th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin's_phonetic_alphabet

It basically does exactly what you describe, but it never caught on.

There is also the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) which can be used for any human language. IPA is used around the world for a variety of different things (although most often as a pronunciation guide).

There's been lots of other phonetic alphabets invented. Here's a page with more than a dozen examples: http://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/phonetic.htm

But there are major problems with switching to a phonetic alphabet.

One problem is the enormous expense and difficulty in switching over. You think switching to the metric system is tough? That's nothing compared to this.

The second problem is with homophones. They can be confusing in enough when speaking, but if we went with a phonetic alphabet they'd be confusing in writing as well. For example: "Those two will go to the shops too."

The third problem is with accents and regional variations in pronunciation of words. People will end up having trouble reading what people from different parts of the world have written, even though they're writing in the same language.

A fourth problem is that it'd make computer searches difficult (as has already been pointed out) when the same word could be written a variety of ways depending on how different people pronounce it.

Puppycow said:
BTW, when I say "translating", this would be much simpler than translating from one language to another. It's just one system of writing English to another, so machine translation would work just fine.
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When you say "translating" you mean "transcribing".

ETA: The machine would have to be programmed to transcribe the texts into different accents so that people in different regions can read them easily.
 
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The example of attempted English reform I am most familiar is that of George Bernard Shaw and his Shavian_alphabetWP. In his will he required the publication of his play Androcles and the Lion.

File:Shaw_alphabet_paperback.jpgWP

He did not succeed (or, at least, has not yet succeeded) in getting anywhere with this proposal. Though there seem to be some active supporters.

I personally do not see any hope for reform of the alphabet until we achieve a standard English pronunciation. This will only happen when it is imposed on us by our XXXXXXXXX overlords. :eek:
 
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