ARPAVAX:arnold (07/30/82)
Now, of all ideas in this debate about rational spelling, Michael Robinson's suggestion of changing pronunciation rather than spelling is the most interesting by far. Changing either pronunciation or spelling is a major hassle from an individual's point of view. Either reduces comprehension greatly at first until one becomes accustomed to the new system. So what other costs are there? Well, changing the spelling system makes all the old English books obselete. Someone who grew up with the new system couldn't read old-system books unless they were translated. This means that either every book must be translated, or someone must decide which is most important to translate, and many works with as-yet-unrecognized potential may be lost (many discoveries and insights are achieved because someone happened upon an old, unread work which, when read with current knowledge, became significant (or at least interesting)). Now THAT is a huge expense. And how do you tranlate older poetry which is chock full of older words that aren't used anymore? If you modify pronunciation, however, little capital outlay is required. Retraining is an expense in either system. The only technology which depends on current pronunciation patterns are (s/technology/technologies) speech recognition and poetry[1]. There isn't much that currently operates on speech recognition besides other humans, and they all must be retrained in any case. The only major loss is currently written poetry. Since you loose some poetry in either case, this is a regrettable but necessary loss. Besides, with rational spelling, how do you treat dialect? Much of the richness of certain works (Mark Twain's stories come to mind) is due to a generous use of dialect. In a rational spelling system (no, I don't assume rational == phonetic) how do you deal with variants? Ken
ARPAVAX:arnold (07/30/82)
This should be read after my other message, but since it's shorter it may arrive first. Sorry. I forgot to add my footnote labeled "[1]", which followed a reference to poetry as a technology. This is a rather loose definition of technology, but a nice one. There is no reason to seperate art from technology (I am also known to refer to technologies as "arts"), since they are both human artifacts and they both serve human needs. But this is a rather long discussion of its own, and unless this footnote generates enough interest, I will shut up. But read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" if you're interested in this subject. Ken P.S. I do NOT favor either rational spelling or rational pronunciation personally. I just think that if you have to choose, at the moment there is less capitial investment and inertia in pronunciation than in spelling.