The Problem with that is that English lacks uniformity. There is simply no possible spelling that works for Oxford, Houston, Vancouver, Perth, Lagos and Johannesburg at the same time. Heck, it doesn’t even work between London, Manchester and Edinburgh.
So which pronunciation do you match the spelling to? What is “High English”?
English could be mostly a written language for many people - they read it rather than hearing or speaking it. So changing the spelling, if that is true, would be just the wrong thing to do.
English is still evolving though. For example it’s not too uncommon to we “through” spelt as “thru”. How long these changes will take to become popular enough to make it into a dictionary is anyone’s guess, but i believe we are slowly making our way there.
Countless reforms have already been attempted over the centuries, but here we are with this mess anyway. Yeah, that didn’t go as planned.
I think our best bet would be to switch to a more sensible language altogether. If USA loses its position in tech and entertainment, we’re probably going to switch to Chinese where writing is even more complicated.
Don’t know much, but what I do know is that each symbol corresponds to a sound… for the most part.
If you hear a new word, you just listen to the sounds and convert them to a sequence of symbols. That way dictionaries are actually quite helpful and easy to use. Try that with English and you’ll see what I mean.
It works the other way too. If you read a new word somewhere, you can pronounce just like everyone else. Try that with English…
I feel like English needs a spelling reform, but that’s never going to happen.
I like what Americans did with -ise/-ize, but they can take the ‘u’ from colour from my cold dead hands.
Þing iz, geting pēpel tú axept a speling rēform lyk ðis wöd bē véri difficult, & ēven if it woz, it haz a hy cans ov ōnli bēing parshali adópted
Why not just go full fonetic
The Problem with that is that English lacks uniformity. There is simply no possible spelling that works for Oxford, Houston, Vancouver, Perth, Lagos and Johannesburg at the same time. Heck, it doesn’t even work between London, Manchester and Edinburgh.
So which pronunciation do you match the spelling to? What is “High English”?
English could be mostly a written language for many people - they read it rather than hearing or speaking it. So changing the spelling, if that is true, would be just the wrong thing to do.
English is still evolving though. For example it’s not too uncommon to we “through” spelt as “thru”. How long these changes will take to become popular enough to make it into a dictionary is anyone’s guess, but i believe we are slowly making our way there.
Is mcdonalds the environmental stressor? 🤣
Countless reforms have already been attempted over the centuries, but here we are with this mess anyway. Yeah, that didn’t go as planned.
I think our best bet would be to switch to a more sensible language altogether. If USA loses its position in tech and entertainment, we’re probably going to switch to Chinese where writing is even more complicated.
Perhaps the Chinese will one day switch to an alphabet like Hangul or something similar. 🤣
Oh that one. The Korean alphabet is pretty neat and sensible.
To be honest, I don’t really know how it works, but I really like the aesthetic.
Don’t know much, but what I do know is that each symbol corresponds to a sound… for the most part.
If you hear a new word, you just listen to the sounds and convert them to a sequence of symbols. That way dictionaries are actually quite helpful and easy to use. Try that with English and you’ll see what I mean.
It works the other way too. If you read a new word somewhere, you can pronounce just like everyone else. Try that with English…
The west switching to chinese would be interesting to see, but I am doubtful.