[net.nlang] Italian spelling

rvpalliende (07/08/82)

If you can say a word in Italian you can write it.
I think this is true.
But there are several exceptions for being able to read anything written.
1) You can't tell apart when reading the "open o" and the "closed o".
2) You can't tell apart the "open e" and the "close e"
3) You can't tell apart the "sweet s" (s) and the "hard s" (z).
4) You can't say where the stress ov a word goes, unless the
   word is stressed in the last syllable.
   Eg: Umanita' (pronounced oo-ma-nee-TAH), but
       Rapido   (pronounced RAH-pee-do)
       It is told that during world war II, American soldiers in Italy
       would misplace the stress ov words all the time. They would
       stress the first syllable, instead ov the one before last. They
       soon learned the rule, but then they will call "rah-PEE-do" a river
       whose name was rapido.
A more impressing example on Italian spelling (at least for anyone who
knows "mute h" as in Portuguese, Spanish, or French) is that Holland
is Olanda.
And everybody knows that "ghoti" is pronounced "fish". That was invented
by Bernard Shaw, which proves that not all spelling reformers are crazy.
He left a lot ov his money for someone who would devise a phonetic
spelling for English. I think that he could have better thrown away
his money for the following reasons:
- the spelling should follow the pronunciation ov "good" English from
  England, or in Shaw's words "like the English spoken by the British King".
  I suppose that nobody would like a spelling which is completely different
  in Europe and North America, although it IS different right now.
- the new spelling didn't use Roman letters, which is very nice,since you
  may have one and only one symbol for each sound but that
  means that you would have to teach the new alphabet to all adults,
  and throw away all your typewriters and ASCII keyboards. The alphabet
  was very pleasing from a theoretician point ov view, because all
  pairs <voiced-voiceless> (as <b,p>, <d,t>, <j,ch>) were equal, but
  one was the mirror image ov the other, or the other upside down. That
  would mean nightmares for dyslexic children.

In the meantime, could those lovers ov mute consonants tell me a good
and non sentimental reason to spell "island" with an "s"?

thomas (07/09/82)

Sure, island is derived from isle.  (OF course, that only reduces it to
the next obvious question.)
=Spencer