Mike Spencer wrote: > > As the article says, no other language except french and english are > > impaired by this idea some batty academics have that the spelling of > > words is supposed to reflect its history, instead of how it is > > pronounced. > > Except Chinese where, if you can write the language correctly, you can > commuicate with people whose spoken language is totally > incomprehensible to you. > > Happens in English to a lesser degree. I knew a guy from the US south > who had stock in "Guff Ol" and played "Goff" and said, "Getchaseffa > cuppa coffee". Around here it's polite to say "K'mintha > hice".
I think we need to distinguish between dialects and standard language. The pronunciation of dialects _always_ differs from the written standard language -- also in languages where the standard language is pronounced as it is written! (e.g. German) But the criticism here is that in French and English, __not even the standard language__ is pronounced as it is written. This is indeed an unnecessary barrier to learning the language. So this: > if you can write the language correctly, you can > commuicate with people whose spoken language is totally > incomprehensible to you. ...is not an advantage of these languages, but applies to the others too. Btw, to facilitate the learning of German to pupils, recently they introduced a German spelling reform which writes foreign words (e.g. tip, stop, portemonnaie, boutique, spaghetti) as they are pronounced in German (Tipp, Stopp, Portmonee, Butike, Spagetti)! But they had to roll back this reform in part because foreigners complained that they had to re-learn their OWN language when they wanted to learn German... Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
