Glenn Miller wrote:
> On 29 Mar 2002, Garth Wallace was seen to have posted this wee note into
> netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news, to which I have responded as follows:
>
>>>>It's not an "artificial insertion of an apostrophe in a word," it is
>>>>the representation of the missing letters in the contraction of "it
>>>>is."
>>>
>>>
>>>And how do you say that?
>>
>>Do you want the pronunciation in the International Phonetic Alphabet?
>>My system's not set up with IPA fonts.
>
> My point is that if spellings do not reflect spoken English, then it is
> futile to insist on any given spelling as if it's correct - when quite
> clearly it is not!
>
> ("correct spelling" being defined as that which accurately reflects the
> spoken form of the language.
And *my* point is that English spelling *does not* reflect the spoken
form of the language. Or do you pronounce "through" as "throw-ug", and
"weight" as "we-iggit"? Is there an "a" sound in "sea"? Do semicolons
and quotation marks have a sound?
Written English is occasionally an approximation of the spoken language,
but not very often. And English spelling has *never* been
phonemic...just look at how Chaucer spelled things.
For what it's worth, even written Spanish isn't entirely phonemic,
although it's close.
