http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/rere.htm
While the lack of a central authority for English orthography hampers efforts toward a general reform, it also facilitates incremental changes. The spellings in English dictionaries are compiled simply on the basis of frequency. If enough people spell "tough" as "tuf," then that is how the dictionaries will present it. While this procedure sounds wonderfully democratic, it does have the disadvantage of being chaotic. http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/sch.htm If you are one of the large number of English-speakers who have been secretly tinkering with ways to reform English spelling for as long as you can remember, you may be relieved to learn that other people have been doing much the same thing. http://rudhar.com/lingtics/englspel.htm A rashnalized spelling sistim for dhe Ingglish langwij http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/alt10.htm Dr. [Richard] Feynman observes that "things have gotten out of whack in the English language" and blames English professors who neither jettisoned old errors nor made useful innovations. [Isaac] Asimov jumps right in and makes a stab at some suggested respellings. Consider "through," "coo," "do," "true," "knew" and "queue," he asks. Why not just spell them "throo," "koo," "doo," "troo," nyoo" and "kyoo"? In 1900, it was common sense to many educated people that English spelling should be reformed, while the suggestion that machines might someday read texts aloud was inconceivable even to science fiction writers. Today, just shy of the year 2000, I have software that reads texts aloud, while it is spelling reform that has become inconceivable. _______________________________________________ Eug-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
