I’m still mourning the death of the diphthong.
The joined up writing I learned in my early years…with a nibbed pen and dip-in inkwell … never reached the beauty of some of my American pals’ Pitman script…even the lefties…but compared with my daughter’, it’s pure calligraphy
If I ever mention the word diphthong to any one of my golfing buddies I’m sure they would not be thinking about vocabulary!! More along the lines of ladies underwear 
'38Packard
==> Excuse me for the golfing buddy joke
I file taxes, refinance my mortgage, and enter into contracts of all kinds without ever making a mark on a physical piece of paper. I can’t remember the last time I actually signed something.
When was the last time anyone confirmed your ‘signature’ against some other document for validation?
I don’t think banks even check your check’s signature against your account record.
All they need is an identification number (account, SSN etc.).
Eventually, a national id will remove even the pretense of signing for something.
This year, actually, to create a family trust.
Interesting. We bought a house this year. Lots of signatures - mortgage, purchase agreement, insurance etc. but I don’t recall anyone ever confirming that the signature was legit. Some documents were e-signed and some were in person.
What did they compare your signature to?
The notary used our passports. Some documents also required two present witnesses, whom also had to sign in presence of the notary.
I can stand on a corner in Athens, Madrid, Moscow and Tel Aviv and, without noing the translation of a singl word, phonetically (foneticaly) rede strete sines.
Jeff,
No, you can’t, because it isn’t likely you know the non-Roman writing stems used in three of those cities.
As to your first point and the supposed difficulties of dealing with English’s often non-phonetic spelling system(s), answer me this. What would be the consequences? You are aware, aren’t you that all languages change over time? Also, how English is spoken in Sydney isn’t the same as the English spoken in London or New York or Bombay.
Which dialect should a “reformed” spelling system try to capture?
My suggestion would be this. Teach students the history of their language and how it has changed over time. Then they’d understand that what seems like a mismatched spelling is actually a valuable historical record that should be cherished and preserved.
On the flip side, since it has changed in the past there is no reason why it can’t change in the future. Back in the day (cough, wheeze) I had a dictionary on my desk so I could look up word spellings. And I’m a good speller. Not necessary today, but think of all the time we spent as kids learning spelling.
Heck, the English spoken in New York isn’t the same as in Boston. And they’re both different from the English spoken in Atlanta and New Orleans and Fargo and Los Angeles. And that’s just in one country.
This.
Well, “cherished and preserved” might be going a bit far. I’d be happy with the history of your native language being understood and appreciated.
–Peter
“…since it ----meaning the pronunciation of specific words— has changed in the past there is no reason why it can’t change in the future.”
syke,
The “correct” answer is that, of course, pronunciations will change. Hence, whatever spelling system were put into place would need further changes in a generation or two. The net effect would be to obscure the past.
As things now stand, texts written in Elizabethan English are still accessible to us today without much glossing. With a bit more effort, even Chaucer’s 13th century English is accessible. That’s one of the advantages of our admittedly awkward spelling system, and one I’m not willing to give up for the sake of phonetic ease.
Also, there’s the not insignificant problem of delegating authority. To some extant, the French and Spanish tried to solve the problem by creating governing boards for their languages. The English could have done the same, but didn’t, and now it’s far too late, given that English is so widely spoken, in so many varieties.
Yeah, English spelling is a hassle. But so are other features of other languages such as elaborate case systems, or inflection systems, which English has pretty much done away with.
“Heck, the English spoken in New York isn’t the same as in Boston. And they’re both different from the English spoken in Atlanta and New Orleans and Fargo and Los Angeles. And that’s just in one country.”
That’s exactly why a “reformed” spelling system isn’t possible. Whose dialect would be chosen to be the standard?
Peter,
Here’s an example of how one of our English words came to be spelled as it is.
window (n.)
c. 1200, literally “wind eye,” from Old Norse vindauga, from vindr “wind” (see wind (n.1)) + auga “eye” (from PIE root *okw- “to see”). Replaced Old English eagþyrl, literally “eye-hole,” and eagduru, literally “eye-door.” Compare Old Frisian andern “window,” literally “breath-door.”
Originally an unglazed hole in a roof. Most Germanic languages later adopted a version of Latin fenestra to describe the glass version (such as German Fenster, Swedish fönster), and English used fenester as a parallel word till mid-16c.
That last comment isn’t quite accurate. 'Fenestration" is still a viable word, as any competent architect would attest.
As is ‘defenestration’. Now that has some history.
I learned it from an early attempt at wearing contact lenses. I was having trouble, so the Dr ordered fenestrated lenses - lenses with small holes to allow more oxygen to reach the eye.
–Peter
Sorry, by “it” I thought you meant spelling. As I understand it, for a long time there were no standardized spelling rules for English, so people just spelled things however they wanted. For example, no one knows how Shakespeare spelled him name. Of his six known signatures, he spelled his own name five different ways. None of those were the modern spelling that we use today. His contemporary, Sir Walter Raleigh’s name was spelled about a dozen different ways. Because there was no standardization, typesetters–like for the King James Bible for example–simply made up their own rules and sometimes arbitrarily added or deleted letters to make lines the correct length. The differences in American English spelling and British English spelling are largely due to Noah Webster who preferred his own spelling rules.
Point is, it is all arbitrary anyway. Yes, contemporary English speakers can read Elizabethan English but it isn’t particularly easy and the spelling for some words is very different. For that reason, contemporary publications of Shakespeare plays use modern spelling. So I’m not sure how much of that direct bridge to the past is really left.
Well, actually I can - while I am not fluent in Greek, Russian or Hebrew, I know the phonetic pronunciations of all three alphabets and can understand the odd words printed on street signs, restaurants and so on because of that. More importantly, in the context of the post, others can understand words that II read “out-loud” even if I don’t because the sounds of the letters are unambiguous. There is the old joke that, in English, “ghoti” can be pronounced the same as “fish”.
Sure, English has a long, convoluted path - taking right turns at Anglo-Saxon and left turns into French, but that has left the spelling a hodgepodge of a couple of millennium of mashing - leaving so many “exceptions to the rule” in the connection between the spoken language and the spelling as to be bazaar to any foreigner who sees it.
As far as which dialect/accent should be used as the basis? Well, we already deviate a bit from what is written in England and thee English spoken by the general population of India deviates even more, so I would say that a common set of rules could still be pronounced differently in different countries (thee extreme case being Chinese ideograms which are pronounced completely differently between Cantonese and Mandarin - not to mention as Japanese kanji.
Shifting to a phonetic pronunciation of English has plenty of precedents in other languages (Hindi written in Arabic script as Urdu, German written in Hebrew script as Yiddish, Turkish written in “Latin” scripts instead of Arabic script, Serbo-Croatian written in Latin script or Cyrillic script depending on which side of the border you live and so on). And, as has been pointed out, English has dramatically changed between Chaucer’s time and ours and it is time that the spelling used accommodated those changes.
I can think clearly in either the Metric or the Imperial system of measurements and find metric easier. My wife can do arithmetic in half a dozen very different languages - a feat which is akin to quantum mechanics to me - but that it is a reflection of her interesting history, it is not a justification for everyone else to do it her way.
Jeff
You can’t change it too much of course, otherwise we’d all have to learn to read again. But there is lots of low hanging fruit. Most silent letters don’t serve any purpose and most double letters don’t either. Digraphs (two letters that make one sound like “ph’”) usually aren’t necessary. We don’t need soft Gs or soft Cs.
Cursive writing is a convenient way to teach fine motor skills, and when one considers the extent to which schools are childcare, it may also be a way to pass the time…
English is my first language. Learned French in high school and I remember “je vais a la plage” and that is it. But English is a truly fracked up language.
I went to a live concert years back. Here, “live” is pronounced with a long-i because the silent e after a single consonant. But I hope to live to at least reach 90. Short-i this time. Why? Who the frack knows, because we still have that silent e.