Simplified English Spelling Board

[Powerogue]

There's a lot of problems in here. boulder→bolder for example would add confusion as currently those are both existing words with different definitions (not that we don't do this anyway, but why do it on purpose?)

[Azadina]

Actually when you pronounce a single a, by itself, it's literally pronounced a. As in a man went to the store.

By itself. As in, not part of a word or sentence. Besides that's not Finnish sentence last I looked

Finnish one would be: Mies meni kauppaan. No single a to be found.

[Puupi]

Also I think as a native English speaker seeing any vowel other than "e" or "o" repeated consecutively scares me so most of the Scandewegian languages do so. Lots of "aa" and "uu" and what sound even is that?

I've heard English speakers mention that quite often and it's absolutely ridiculous. You use double vowels all the time. You just don't write them, because English is ridiculous.

How do you say car? Kaar, not kar.
What about loose? Luus, not lus.

[Asetotti]

I've heard English speakers mention that quite often and it's absolutely ridiculous. You use double vowels all the time. You just don't write them, because English is ridiculous.

How do you say car? Kaar, not kar.
What about loose? Luus, not lus.

They don't differentiate between short and long vowels the same way we do.

[AeneasBK]

Last I looked this thread is about English... Stop derailing the thread discussing another language. Thanks.

How about "Try not weighing in halfway through a conversation without a clue as to the context?". Thanks.

[Azadina]

Last I looked this thread is about English... Stop derailing the thread discussing another language. Thanks.

Conversation was being had, before you came in to derail by attempting to be wiseass, without any idea what was being discussed.

[luc54]

Last I looked this thread is about English... Stop derailing the thread discussing another language. Thanks.

Context here is the fact that English spelling system sucks and there are examples of regural spelling system that has absolutely no ambiguity related to how you pronounce them. This is why Finnish was mentioned as it's perfectly regural and you will know how each word is pronounced always.

[Sylar Hao]

No, it is not. The same problem is present in German, French, Spanish, Polish, Greek, Portuguese, Russian, Bosnian-Chroatian-Serbian, etc. etc. The words are never written as they are pronounced and rarely read as written.

That is absolutely not true for the romanic languages. I am French and I've lived for so many years in Spain I could probably say Spanish has become my native language. I also speak Italian. And although there are exceptions to a few words, the three languages have rules for pronunciation <-> writing, so if you hear a new word you can know its writing 95% of the time, specially in Spanish and Italian, and if you read a new word you can know its pronunciation 99% of the times.

And as far as I know, Russian and Greek also follow this rule.

English also has these kind of rules but they are not extrict and have too many exceptions. But then again, English grammar and orthography are way easier to learn than any of those you mention. Definitely easier than the other languages I speak.

[IIamaKing]

I find it interesting how put off I am by all those misspelled words, even if their spelling makes better sense.

[Tackhisis]

There's no sound after the "D". Changing it it include a nonexistent "E" at the end makes no sense.

It makes a perfect sense: In English, vowels are short when they are in a closed syllable, and long otherwise. Adding 'e' makes the previous syllable open, so 'cede' is pronounced (regularly) as "see-d". That particular change is good as it reveals the underlying word "cedere".

Defend English's lack of sense in this department all you want, but can you do it without bullshitting about other languages? That'd be swell.

Do you know those languages? I do, so please be civil.

- - - Updated - - -

And although there are exceptions to a few words, the three languages have rules for pronunciation <-> writing ... And as far as I know, Russian and Greek also follow this rule.

Spanish does not pronounce H, has the same sound for B and V, LL and Y, C and S... no rules can tell you that 'baka' is spelled 'vaca'. In Italian, Z can mean z or dz, there is several ways to spell sh, etc. Russian does not mark the stress and has etymological spellings for reduced vowels, and in Greek there is 5 ways to spell "i", among other things. Writing in them is hard.

[derpkitteh]

Not really simplifying, but fixing and bringing even a hint of order to the language. English is outright a bad language, it's unfortunate that it's the lingua franca nowadays. French is horrible, too.

I wish Latin was the lingua franca.

latin's the coolest shit. wish i would have learned it in high school.

[Mehrunes]

It makes a perfect sense: In English, vowels are short when they are in a closed syllable, and long otherwise. Adding 'e' makes the previous syllable open, so 'cede' is pronounced (regularly) as "see-d". That particular change is good as it reveals the underlying word "cedere".

And that in itself is nonsensical.

Do you know those languages? I do, so please be civil.

Some of them, yes. Polish being my first language. What you said is bullshit in relation to Polish, Slavic languages in general (so including aforementioned Polish, already half of your examples), Greek, Spanish, German. If I had to guess, Portuguese as well.

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

The English language is already beyond saving, why not start on a clean slate instead?

[Independent voter]

IIfc one of the methods the absolutist state portrayed in the novel 1984 used to "program" or "control" its citizens was thru language. Its an ongoing sub plot I think. The point of the matter is that by altering the language itself they would prevent individuals to even be able to have a negative thought towards the state... or something like that.

This thread just reminded me of a character that keeps boasting how much "smaller" the language is becoming as the novel progresses.

Hope I recall that bit about the novel correctly, I read it years ago.

The words or their meaning aren't changing.

The government isn't going to come by next Thursday and strap a rat to your face.

[Sunseeker]

The problem with "spelling words how the sound" instead of how they're written is that 1: it's backwards logic, everyone pronounces words differently thanks to regional accents and 2: when you do this, you completely destroy the ability to determine the roots of words.

[Sylar Hao]

Spanish does not pronounce H, has the same sound for B and V, LL and Y, C and S... no rules can tell you that 'baka' is spelled 'vaca'. In Italian, Z can mean z or dz, there is several ways to spell sh, etc. Russian does not mark the stress and has etymological spellings for reduced vowels, and in Greek there is 5 ways to spell "i", among other things. Writing in them is hard.

Actually all those that you name are rules in Spanish:
- H is always mute (unless following a C, then it soundz like in /Chat/)
- LL and Y sound alike but are not exactly the same, it depends on the accent of each region of Spain but officially they are different
- C and S don't sound the same at all (not in Spain, in Latinamerica it does sound the same), S is they typical mute S, while C is pronounced K if the following vowel is A O or U, and /TH/ like in Thin when followed by E or I, always.
- The one I agree with you is B and V, they are the two consonants that cause more mistakes among Spanish speakers when it comes to writing them.
But all of them are rules, and if you know them without knowing a single word in Spanish you can read any text more or less accurately.

In Italian Z always sounds like TS, no exception. And there's only one way to spell sh: SC+E or SCI+A/O/U, that's Scia, Sce, Sci, Scio, Sciu. Same here, if you know the Italian pronuciation rules, you can read a text without knowing a single word in Italian.

You can't say the same in English. There are so many letters and combinations that have several pronunciations... not to mention the chaos that vowels cause since you can never tell how they are going to be pronounced until you learn the word.

I can't tell for Greek or Russian since my knowledge for both languages is pretty low, though.

[Fencers]

Damn. That's pretty good actually.

[Collegeguy]

The dictionaries lobby silenced it.

English is pretty bad in the sense that seeing a written word that you don't know or never heard out loud before gives you no certainty of how it should be pronounced.

I remember one night in vent on a pug raid, for some reason the name of an African girl became the topic of the conversation, and it started with some silent letter, 'M' I think, and everyone was making fun of it. Someone with a thick southern accent said something like "why put a letter that you don't pronounce, that's so stupid". Major facepalm there.

I kind of agree if it's the first letter that is not pronounced. Hate that when I see it.

[Zelk]

I like the quirks of English. Improving education is I think much better use of our time and money than changing it.

[Collegeguy]

I like the quirks of English. Improving education is I think much better use of our time and money than changing it.

Can't be any worse than this.