English Spelling Reform

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English spelling is difficult for non-natives because you already need to know the pronunciation of a word because they are not written as non-phonetically as possible.
- through
- though
- tough

eh?

unlike other languages, some european in origin as well, english has no central 'regulating body', its not as cohesive. i may be missing something but there's no real equivalent to french's Académie Française and hebrew's הָאָקָדֶמְיָה לַלָּשׁוֹן הָעִבְרִית from which to set common orthographic/lexical standards, etc.

(funny. one of the jobs of hebrew's regulating body is to replace loanwords, but אָקָדֶמְיָה is itself a loanword.)

one of the reason's english spelling is so eff-d up is because of orthographic/writing conservatism, keeping the spellings of words the same even when their pronunciations have changed and moved all over the place. because writing is permanent, and clearly changes more slowly than speech there is inconsistency. think we could recognize "photo" from "photography" if they were spelled exactly the way they were pronounced??

@trollcatman - hebrew has that same issue i think, maybe because of what i just said, and also because vowel notation is secondary and unless one uses the nekudot (like in the hebrew text above) the only way is to use the mater lectionis,...certain consonants that can also be used to represent a vowel. nekudot is most often used in children's books and leaning materials for students of hebrew.

I really like etymology and the partially logographic quality it confers to writing systems.

Me encanta la etymología y el charácter parcialmente logográphico que confiere a los systemas de escritura. Si por mí fuera, por exemplo, el español se escriviría más o menos assí.

Soon after its creation, the Spanish Royal Academy made a point to differentiate itself from its French counterpart by simplifying Spanish orthography, making it almost purely phonetic, although it kept some letter pairs in complementary distribution (el juez, 'the judge'; los jueces, 'the judges'), which still add complexity, without holding any etymological content, and therefore being useless to recognize morphemes---in fact, they help obscure them.

Portuguese continued to use a French-like, very etymological orthography till the early 20th century. If I had my way, it'd have stayed like that, except for the addition of systematic rules for diacritics which would unambiguously mark word stress.

What I don't like at all is false etymologies. I wish we'd start writing iland again, as this Germanic word was spelled before someone decided to Latinize its appearance by sticking that intrusive s in there.

there are meaningless words like "presh" and "blint" that sound as though they'd be english, but no meaning. i wonder about the words in other languages that are like this. like Yuleach for hebrew (though i don't know any better, it might be real).

that's gonçalves viana's reform? brazil led it's own orthographic reform started in 38 and finalized in 46 i think. with slight differences.

i agree - i like "island" better. unrelated to "isle". "scissors" is spelled that way because of a mistaken belief it came from scindere instead of cisorium. and now wer have poeple saying "where are the skissors/zizzers"?

scythe too.

Anyone remember who said this:

Any language consists entirely of mispronounced foreign words if you go back far enough through its history

Thirty-years ago, I attended a Vegas show with a comedian who said, 'England invented the English Language, the Americans screwed it up!'

I have always been an outstanding speller. If spelling reform came into existence, it would be much more common for people to be good spellers, and there would be less of a demand for people with my talents to be editors. Therefore, I say no!