I’m not gone! I am learning to use a new mic and have been hard at work on some new videos. Hopefully they’ll be properly underway soon! 😊 Update: Okay, wow, a bit more than 5k views in 5 days. I feel like I should be happy with that level of engagement. I will admit I feel more… overwhelmed. The good thing is that I appreciate a linguistics video doing so well for once. It really feels good. I’m also getting a lot of good comments that are making me want to remake the video. The original version of this was actually much longer and I cut it down because I felt rushed to get something out. But, between some of the insightful comments I’ve gotten and some other points I’ve realized really could be added to the argument, I think making a longer and more in-depth version of this could be fun. So since I was already planning to make new versions of all my other videos with better audio and nicer graphics, I might as well add this one to the mix. The bad is that I do dislike responding to comments. I appreciate them very much, but there’s something about talking with people in comments sections that gives me a lot of anxiety, especially because some people do have very… strong opinions about things. So given that, I might have to force myself to respond to fewer messages going forward or being less active in the comments section, because, while I feel obligated to give everyone responses, I can already tell that this might not be sustainable for my mental well being. Also, I know about the misspelling of “oiseau”. To the people who seem to think this undermines my argument, it doesn’t. There is a wide range of reason for why typos happen, and they happen in all languages, irrelevant of their writing system. Should I have caught it? Yeah, probably. But I’m neither a professional with the support of a team nor am I a French speaker, and my knowledge of French orthographic rules is from passive exposure. So it can’t be helped, and it doesn’t negate the fact that millions of French speakers learned to read this supposedly inane system. It doesn’t negate the fact that billions people learn to read languages like Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, English, and the various other complex systems which have existed throughout history. And if you still insist that it is… umm notice how it’s the caricature of you, the viewer, who misspells it? Yeah! Well what definitely was actually always the plan was to have the viewer misspell “oiseau”, thus portraying you as an illiterate buffoon. :P
@@CJMapping aww thank you so much, but these aren’t very good, they are somewhat rushed, pretty amateurish, and I’m hoping one day to remake every single one of them, but actually decently
Are you trying to say that we must discard all those extensive pages written on the English Wikipedia and Britannica and become illiterate dopes? What loss of knowledge, amigo.
@@HistoryLover08 Oral histories would keep us going just fine. They did for all of premodern humanity. I myself can't imagine that anyone would call Homer a dope.
No, no, no, what we need is a spelling deform. I'm tired of those proscriptivists at Webster putting squiggly red lines under my words. Just spell stuff how you want to, to hell with the consequences.
I feel this why languages are slowly dying out, in the past language came and leave. But now language are not allowed to evolve and form new language because apparently it's "wrong"
old scrolls were written like this many times. there was no right way of writing things, but each letter has an associated sound so monks would just write words down as they heard them (sometimes they'd write the same word differently a paragraph later even lol). For this reason they are an incredibly good sources to study the phonologies of older languages
2:09 meanwhile in Mauritius (an archipelago located to the east of Madagascar) the word "oiseau" is written "wazo" and their variation of French is basically what French would look like if it was written the way it's pronounced and [ʃ] and [ʒ] are replaced with [s] and [z] respectively
@@ЮрийБогомолов-б8щ 1. A very cool and interesting point that shows that it is definitely possible to reform spelling 2. 😢 I literally made a typo in the French example, but that’s what happens when you do things at 2am while rushing cause you’re guilty about not doing anything productive
@@NotMrGems lmao, if you like this, I’ve got a secret project another lingtuber gave me because he didn’t wanna make it and I’m excited for that because it’s my first project where I’ve had to call an expert to get their input, but that’s a bit down the line
@@LaugeHeiberg both genres and genders work here tho the intended meaning is different. I believe in this case they’re making a joke and so gender is the intended word
@@LaugeHeiberg It's a meme format. The "gotta be one of my favorite genders" is a set phrase, used tongue in cheek, often by people in the queer community.
A small note about the French example with peace, pay, pays, etc.: most people I know pronounce 'paie, paient, paies' with a final /j/, so it ends up sounding a lot like English 'pay'. Still a valid example, and there are plenty more just like it. Great video!
8:02 but that's a thing in almost every european (and probably in ANY) language, and it's not much of a problem. A good spelling reform doesn't mean write using IPA with less weird letters tho, I agree with you in that point.
"Your brain is actually pretty good at pattern recognition. It doesn't take very much effort to learn a couple more rules." So that makes the countless inconsistencies and exceptions easier than a standardized reformation with consistent rules? Basically "I think it's too hard so why try? :,(". What a weak mindset.
So that’s not really an accurate portrayal of what I’m saying. The point I’m making there is that the extra complexity of the system doesn’t actually result in a true barrier to learn the system and can actually cause further inconsistencies, which speakers nonetheless feel are more reasonable. Take for example the abbreviation of the word ‘probably’: ‘prolly’. Why are there two Ls in there? There are two Ls because speakers are subconsciously aware of the likelihood of a double L being in such an environment, and, prolly cause it was more likely, they spelled it as ‘prolly’. I can personally attest that ‘prolly’ looks more correct to me than the arguably more consistent ‘proly’. To me this indicates a fairly high level of understanding for the rules that speakers are attaining in the system. As to the difficulty, there simply is no consistent way to do an English spelling reform that would satisfy all parties. It’s next to impossible to do and would require the consent and active participation of hundreds of millions of people in dozens of different countries and would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Calling it hard is a comical understatement. So no, it’s not a ‘weak mindset’. It’s a practical one.
As a Dutchie I can speak out all English sounds like they are written even the "wr" and "kn", "gh", "ou" and "pt" clusters. But then in English "raw" and "dawn" would have an "au" sound while "road" and "gloat" would have the ô sound and the long "O" would almost dissapear, as "stone" is now "steun". But at least it makes the variant mutually intellectable with Dutch and that's what matters.
I agree. To many people get worried up over English speaking, but it's really not that bad. I'd say the real problem is that the way we teach spelling is just not comprehensive enough. Like yeah, we yeah the basic spelling rules for very common eyes, but then we fail to teach about how words in higher registers (which usually tend to be foreign words) usually retain their original pronunciation I guess it may not be practical for children, but I think it would atleast be good that we tell them that a lot of fancy words come from different languages so they can get a feel for it, and for older people this would probably be a great thing
@@lotgc it really does come down to aggressive underfunding of schools in the English speaking world. We don’t do enough to prepare children in general for the real world and understaffed English classrooms are just one small part of that.
My favorite repeat word sentence in English is "James While John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher" because it doesn't use weird definitions that nobody uses conjoined together in odd ways nobody would say.
@@aditopian yeah but even with all the correct punctuation it's better than buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo imo, and it even further shows that it is a real sentence that could be constructed under fairly normal circumstances
When I was working on a phonetic script to act as a shorthand, I considered using a glyph system for common roots and affixes that would preserve meaning and increase the speed of writing. I ultimately didn't do this because I decided if I had to do so then the primary goal of having it being quick to write wasn't being fulfilled; I redesigned the script to just be faster to write in general. A phonetic script for writing is unfeasible because of all the different accents (I have a hard enough time saying the words the same way in my own head), but I do like the idea of a system like the Japanese kanji. The one I had planned would have used an altered form of the initial phonetic character to act as the radical while a series of other symbols (perhaps derived from other radicals and their meanings) conjoin to it.
As a Spanish speaker, I truly believe English does need a spelling reform as soon as possible. It's an international language now. A spelling reform will benefit us all.
@@aditopianas an esl speaker, you could have cleaned up at least some of the sound shifts that happened in all major varieties (american, australian, british, south african) over the last couple of centuries. it's just that that there's no single one authoritative source for such a reform. the spelling is still getting simplified to avoid obvious hiccoughs tho
@@rajdhonsinghngangbam1848 that’s basically it, every country from England to India and America to Australia uses English to one degree or another, which makes coordination next to impossible on something like this
@aditopian yeah. I would say British English but taking at least American and Australian English into consideration as well. Maybe like this: A sound in cat can be written as æ (same IPA symbol) Example: bat -> bæt A sound in take can be written as ei Example: take -> teik. say -> sei (also removing silent letters like e in take for example) A sound in car can remain just a. EE sound can be written as ii Example: see -> sii. tea -> tii EA sound in dead can be written as e Example: dead -> ded I sound (pin) can remain the same I sound in line can be written as aí Example: shine -> shain. my -> mai O sound in lot can remain the same AU sound can be written as oo Example: pause -> poos. law -> loo OO sound in moon can be written as uu Example: soon -> suun OO sound in book can be written as u Example: look -> luk. would -> wud U sound in up can be written as â Example: cup -> kâp U sound in cube can be written as yuu Example: universe -> yuunivêrz Schwa sound like u in focus can be written as ê Example: carnival -> karnêvêl Y would only work as a consonant Ch in word chair can be written as c Example: Chain -> cein If c is pronounced as k, just write k. If c is pronounced as s, just write s. S sound in the word vision can be written as zh. Example: usually -> yuuzhêli If s is pronounced as z just write z. Change th to its older representations to differentiate both sounds. I don't have them on my keyboard so I'll just write them as th for now. No silent letters, no double consonants. This is an example with a short sentence: If English was written like this, it would be much more consistent with its spelling If Inglish wos ritên laik this, it wud bii mâc moor kênsistênt What about those words which have a weak pronunciation? Write them differently according to these rules or just write the strong form and mark them as exceptions. This is something I just made up. I hope you liked it. It could be improved
Something I've never really heard mentioned is the fact that the way in which words are spelled can make them look cool in writing and help keep a certain tone. Like the word "sword" would not sound as cool as if it were spelled "sord". And the word "acquiesce" sounds much more regal than "comply".
A reform could change some of the most strange and unnecessary things while keeping the morphological aspect intact. For example, with light - lighten keep the 't', no problem. But why would anyone in their right mind want this 'gh' which is literally NEVER pronounced and 'i' which is pronounced 'ai'? I'll die on the hill that it should be lait - laiten. Also, homophones aren't that much of a problem. A much lesser problem then what people like to present them as. We have this wonderful thing called CONTEXT. Thanks to it, the Chinese and the French can speak freely, without going: OMG, did he mean paix or pets... The same would apply to night and knight. There's no real need to distinguish them in writing, no one would confuse them if we didn't
@@mrgriboman371 well of course, my point is that it’s not impossible because of those facts, it’s that those facts do serve a useful purpose, the true barrier is and remains the broad diversity of English as a language
@@АлександрХазанчук the reason you even thought this way is that English orthography is a joke. No one would ever think that "lait" should be pronounced as late if it wasn't for hundreds of years of this inconsistent monstrosity. And spelling it as lite changes nothing. We still play by the arbitary rules of English spelling with 'i' being 'ai' and a silent 'e'
To my knowledge it's has very few problems, there's only different dialectal word and structural choices, but phonetically it's all standard. Writting outside of it can and likely will be understandable, but isn't the standard.
One thing people usually don't think about is what a nightmare a full-scale spelling reform would be for the deaf community. Those who are deaf from the birth still learn the written form of a language to exist in the society, but it's basically logography for them, as far as I understand.
@@astrOtuba oh shit you’re right, I hadn’t thought about that perspective. That’s a very good point. Honestly, it wouldn’t just be deaf people too, it would seriously affect those living with a lot of disabilities.
I don’t understand why discussions about spelling reform are always so hypothetical. Spelling reforms have happened all over the world in the last century or so, was that actually a problem for deaf people who write in those languages?
@@felipevasconcelos6736 well so part of the reason that spelling reforms are hypothetical is that they are hypothetical. Languages tend to create separate spaces and information doesn’t flow in or out of them perfectly. So knowing what spelling reforms were like for disabled and L2 speakers isn’t always the easiest, but the issue is that most spelling reforms haven’t been done in contexts where disabled or minority communities were relevant to or part of the discussion. So we can’t very easily check how deaf Chinese people handled the transition from traditional to simplified characters or how deaf Germans felt about their reform.
@@alexandersen1987 lmao, thanks! Be warned though, it’s only gonna get more mixed from here, my next video is partway done with the editing and it’s def not in either of those two categories. I also have a 17 page video script that I’ve been calling my opus magnum simply titled “Sleep”
A full reform is nearly impossible as you say and mostly unnecessary. Minor changes such as the odd diacritic for unusual stress or sounds and readding Eth/Thorn would be my recommendation.
Eth and thorn are mostly superfluous. I think their main reason they get so much attention is that people want quirky letters in their alphabet. Because let's face it, English uses a pretty boring version of the Latin alphabet (no ñ, no ą, no ō, no ǔ, no ĉ... just w, j and u, like everyone else). And how often people propose bringing back ï? Ï is just as valid and useful as thorn and eth. I'd argue that Æ is more useful than those three together. Not as funky looking, that's all. The main pain point is inconsistency, and th is pretty consistent, even if ambiguous. but gh? ough? ph? Even good old vowels are highly inconsistent, æ is the real way to go :D
The points you mention in the video feel more like challenges to be overcome rather than things that dissuade spelling reform, but I ultimately agree with your conclusion. Maintaining some etymological spelling to make writing more informative, but making some intuitive changes over time that native speakers agree on is the way to go in my opinion as well. My main gripe with the video is the dismissive tone towards spelling reform. If we are to hope that people will even want to try to suggest those intuitive changes, stating that spelling reforms aren't needed (or possible) just discourages that discussion from happening in the first place imo. Overall I think that spelling reform probably should take a long time and be done methodically and democratically as it shouldn't be just one person making the changes, but many people and that takes time. It's a language that *people* speak after all, the people should be in charge of how it's changed, not just one organization or even one person.
"If we are to hope that people will even want to try suggest those intuative changes" i think he meant nonstandard spellings (like tho) becoming more accepted, rather than people suggesting changes then agreeing on those changes to become the norm, unless i missunderstood you
@@donkbonk5430 So the thing is that you’re largely right that I am dismissive of spelling reforms, at least as far as English is concerned. The contexts where spelling reforms have been successful have largely been in contexts where there is a regulated formal standard (e.g. Mandarin or High German). Many people learn those languages, even in the countries where they’re used as second language varieties, and those reforms only really worked in one country. If you were to attempt that with English, you’d need the unified consent of every English speaking nation. Probably also the assistance of many countries which don’t use English as an official or de facto language, but where there’s a high population of learners. Any reform will, necessarily leave people behind or force them to learn a system that doesn’t make sense to them. For example, you’d almost certainly insist, were you in charge of the decision, to spell “February” without the first , but I pronounce that , many people do. It’s fairly rare, but by removing it people like me would need to learn to pronounce an extra letter. A professor of mine once pointed out that every weirdly spelled word is normal to someone, and that’s kind of an issue with the idea of a spelling reform in English. But that’s also the point I was making, I don’t oppose new spellings being added to the dictionary along side old ones. There’s nothing wrong with unabridged dictionaries having archaic spellings listed, and doing what organizations like the Spanish language academy does, where it just adds words as they come up is a far more appropriate way to update spelling than what I was saying wouldn’t work which was the controlled and directed reformation by a central body.
@@aditopian That's about my angle personally, it would be cool/useful but it's not necessary. We can understand each other through purely text just fine. For me now I find interest in it as a mode of expression/exploration of alternative ways in which English can be represented rather than something that needs to be done for moralistic reasons
Oiseau (and French in general) is a false example, because there are precise rules behind: "oi" is ALWAYS "wa", "s" between vowels is ALWAYS "z", "eau" is ALWAYS a closed "o", and in general is possible to write a word knowing its sound; they have true RULES. English... well, it needs a spelling reform, definitely!
Love your vids and your story towards a pragmatic perspective on prescriptiveness. I think this advice applies to all best practices. The best best practices tend to become self evident with time.
You italicize, bold, or ALLCAPS the word being accented in a sentence - depending on if the person is speaking slyly, dryly, or in an aggressively loud way.
@@TheGrinningViking see that would work in theory but I keep breaking my pencils when I try to bolden written words and don’t even get me started on handwriting italics! Cursive was already too hard 😢
@@dumbcarbattery5916 oh well that’s just too expensive, affording tickets that frequently in this economy? No thank you! I guess I’ll just have to stick to never stressing any words ever 😔
Okay, I admit french would have been incomprehensible even in its written form if a reform was put to place. So old archaic spelling can help someone be understood even for foreigners 🤔
I'm a major supporter of bringing back þ as a letter. It just looks cool plus if we can have a letter that just makes a ks sound (X) we should have one for th, which is a very common sound in English. I also think very minor changes that are universal would be beneficial, like eliminating ph for just f. So fone rather than phone. As far as I know not a single English speaking country pronounces ph not as an F. But also, I think a solution for foreigners learning English or English speaking kids is to take a page from what Japan does to teach kids Kanji. You put the Kanji in bold but then under it is hiragana so they learn to pronounce it. So an example for English could be read = rëd and red = red. Or apple = apple and able = äble
@@ImSomethingSpecial I’ve talked about that with some others, and I think it’s a good idea to have a system to assist learners like Arabic and Japanese have which might have to be regionally varied, but I think it couldn’t hurt.
I love this type of videos where people question the bases of a Spelling reform in English or other languages that haven't updated their spelling or way to write for the sake of etimology or any other reason such as laziness. And so... I'm gonna give my personal opinion for each point, that is without being an expert in both, English, and even less in French. So Do mind me if I have errors, I love to learn and to hear different types of opinions in this topic. (I have had to divide this comment into three parts because it was too long, sorry for that). 1) "Writting and Reading". I'll start this topic with something I have in mind and that's that there are two ways of looking at writting in general: The person who writes and the person who readas. We know for sure that the person who writes needs to be efficient at being able to put out the letters or characters from it's hand and the longer and unnecesary the word the more taxing it will be for the writer. Buuuut on the other hand we have the readers. If a word is longer but it gives you enough knowledge to know how to read it then it will be faster and not if the word is shorter but it doesn't give you any clear rules for how to read it. For example we have Chinese that has characters that can be related to one word or they'll need another character to form a full word. Most characters due to having this less-syllable possibilities issue will need a lot of strokes to be formed and it could be taxing for the hand. Meanwhile cursive writting in other languges like English allows the writer to well, Write without lifting the pen that many times or doing that many strokes for a single word. But as the strokes are much longer than just a single character it makes it harder to recognize what the meaning of a sentence is. With that I mean that if we connect one word to one character and we learn how to read this second type the sentences will be easier to read (Less space and compact) but it will be demanding for the writer. 2) 2:17 "Silent letters are useful at recognizing patterns". Patterns doesn't mean they need to keep the core word to know it comes from it. If you learn that "Light", a noun, after becoming a verb in its past participle version adds "-en" at the end of a word and it removes the "t" while reading then we have a pattern. For example: "Lighen". But that's not even what it's happening in the example you've given. All the words mentioned has that "t" at when they become a past participle such as: "Bright" /ˈbraɪt/ becoming "Brighten" /ˈbraɪ.t̬n/. And you may say "Yeah yeah but then why we have an "e" in middle of "then" for this example?" Well, that is because some accents don't remark what's called "Syllabic consonants" as much as the one I've mentioned. Usually it should be /ˈbraɪ.t̬ən/ but when an /n/ is word-final and it's followed by a schwa (/ə/) it tends to remove that schwa in favor of faster reading. And That's a pattern that works almost every single time for example it happens with this others examples too: Bottle /ˈbɑː.t̬l/, Bottom /ˈbɑː.t̬m/ or Father /ˈfɑ.ðɚ/ (And not /ˈfɑː.ðəɹ/, in other dialects it even removes the /ɹ/ like: /ˈfɑː.ðə/). What I mean by this is... "Centre" and "Center" is a word that was changed due to this same reason. Most words ending in were actually pronounced as /təɹ/ and not /tɹə/ so changing how they look doesn't affect at all and the pattern will still be there. Like: Centre -> Center, Metre -> Meter, Theatre -> Theater. But it can also work with other patterns such as "Colour" that aren't pronounced as /ˈkʌloʊɹ/ but as /ˈkʌl.əɹ/. So: Flavour -> Flavor, Savour -> Savor, Glamour -> Glamor. I know I could follow with this patterns... But I think it's clear that all this words were actually pronounced as they were written in past but due to French and the Printed Press not following the latest changes people keept this spellings. 3) 3:01 "Redundant or silent letters are useful to eliminate homophones". That's absolutely true, you have the "Knight / Night" example but I could also add "Hola / Ola" in Spanish or "Pero / Però" in Italian. I do understand that some of this in English were pronounced like it's written but it's useful as nobody would ever say /kˈnaɪt/. And I love your example of "Liaison" because it can happen in English too! Specially in Non-rhotic accents. For example: "The painter acts-", in non-rhotic accents "painter" is pronouned like /ˈpeɪn.tə/ buuut that final /ɹ/ is pronounced when the other word following starts with a vowel like: /ˈpeɪn.tə~ɹ ˈækts/ (I put ~ because even if it's in between the two words it connects motsly with the first word). That's what called in English "Linking R" that says that if a word ends with a vowel and the other starts with another vowel there will be an /ɹ/. It can even be recognized inside of words like: "Drawing" /ˈdrɔː~ɹɪŋ/ because "Draw" ends with a vowel and "-ing" starts with one. The proooblem comes when "Ough" for example where even if this words mostly end with that combination they all make considerable different sounds like: /ʌf/, /ɔ:/, /u:/ and even /ɒk/. And they are Not differentiated between each other as most words. Is it really necessary to keep the French's etimology once again? I don't think so.
4) 4:47, "Other accents can have features the other doesn't". I like this point but I also don't. For example in Spanish we have "Hierba" and "Yerba". Why does this happen? Well, because the semi-consonant /j/ tends to be pronounced as /ʝ/ when word-initial. Some places use it in one way and other in the other way. Does it make it more difficult? Another example is "Video" and "Vídeo", some people put the stress in the last syllable /bi.ˈdeo/ and others at the beginning /ˈbi.deo/. Does it represent a Big issue when people read or write? No. In English the same thing happens with the letter "Oo" that can be in some cases /ɑː/ or /ɒ/. Such as in : "Lot" and "Hard". In G.A. "Lot" and "Hard" had the phoneme /ɑ/ meanwhile in R.P. they are differentiated like /ɒ/ and /ɑ/. Does that mean it's solved? No really, we also have stuff like "Cloth" /klɒθ/ and /klɔθ/ in different accents too. And as /ɔ/ appears in both accents that means that we cannot simple remove /ɔ/ for the sake of having /ɒ/ instead even if some people don't have it. So in some cases it is clear that having a single phoneme is fine meanwhile in others not. Another example in Spanish, "Casa" and "Caza", in some accents the "z" in "Caza" is pronounced as /s/ (Just like in Casa) but as there are some accents that pronounce "Zz" as /θ/ instead they get differentiated. In Romance languages this difference tends to fall in consonants meanwhile in Germanic languages it is in the vowels as explained in 6:23. And most Germanic languages doesn't have any problem with this as they use this silent letters or Diacritics with strict rules even if they may have way differentiated accents. And yeah... even if people think rhotic and non-rhotic accents are so different in how they pronounce they all can be simplified and most people will understand the rules of homophones pretty easily as much as people have understood or took by "force" those rules that most natives doesn't care about. 5) 5:37 "Limitations in orthography and accents". Yeah... You gotta make changes and of course that means adding or removing letter in convinience and favor of efficient writting and faster reading + removing irregularities to make spelling and spoken words closer so people can learn faster. German for example had a "Recent" orthography reform in 1996 that chagned how some words and mostly consonants are put into the word in a way most people from the old way to write could understand it. And even if that's not the case we have extreme situations like Turkish that changed from the Arabic writting system to Latin's one without much trouble over the years. It is clear that if we want an English reform it has to be in a modified version of Latin, that is having the same letters but modifying them or introducing new but similar-looking letters for some words. The problem doesn't come from "This accent is stronger than this other one" but rather "How can we make people read older texts if we change the spelling?". It has risks and consequenses too. And even if the changes are perfect, they break Everything to make it perfectly suitable for the English languages and everything is solved... People still need to use it and like it so it doesn't fall into the oblivion. It's a long-term loan that takes a lot of time. Even more for people who are learning the English language around the world. Because yeah... Globalization means that most people will learn the English language and use it in different ambits, and changing them takes a lot of Money, Time and Effort. Something most people won't risk for as you said a ""Minor"" problem.
6) Yeah, the 7:24 example is hilarious, but that's why people will have to choose how different words look like the most appealing and not just what one person likes the most. Btw... "Bitches" even though reducted the final "s" is pronounced like /z/ so it should be . And I've never seen /aɪ/ being spelled like "uy". But for example if you spell it like "rait" or "rayt" most people will understand it much easier. Also... This "Syllable Reduction" mostly changing non-stressed syllables into /ə/ or /ɪ/ doesn't change the meaning of a word and it cannot be pronounced otherwise. For example "Banana" /bəˈnæn.ə/ or /bəˈnɑː.nə/ will never be something like: /bæˈnæn.æ/ as that's unnatural. What you must care about for example is "Syllable Stress" like "Conduct" /kənˈdʌkt/ and /ˈkɑːn.dʌkt/ depending on the context. And that's important, even though it has the same word "Conduct" it changes depending it's a noun or a verb. And the stress is mostly consistant when it's a noun at the first syllable while the verb in the second syllable. And still they are written the same. Wouldn't it be better if we add something in between so we can easily know when it's a verb or a noun just by looking at it without the context like in Spanish like: "Ejército", "Ejercito" and "Ejercitó". Where you can easily know where it's pronounced and also which type of word it is. And yes, "Word stress" is also a thing. But English speakers have never had any issue with it while reading. Also, there was a time in English where "--" was used to accomodate longer pauses and even more in English mostly in poetry. So for examply in that example we could use something like: "-I didn't stab him", "I didn't -stab him" or "I didn't stab -him" and it's easy to read, type and write but it comes with the issue of "Noise" when it's abundant. So it could just be a "Feature" in some types of texts and that's it. Even " ' " could replace it like "I didn't 'stab him" and most people won't mind that small line before the word. But we would be making up rules that they naturally didn't appear. So it will most likely never appear in real texts. Feeeew! That was long huh? Well, I've finished with this comment. If you have any question leave me know below and if I have any error comment it too! I love to learn and hear everyone's opinion. I'm so sorry for making it so long but I hope I made myself clear and that you learn something that you didn't know before. And that's important, even though it has the same word "Conduct" it changes depending it's a noun or a verb. And the stress is mostly consistant when it's a noun at the first syllable while the verb in the second syllable. And still they are written the same. Wouldn't it be better if we add something in between so we can easily know when it's a verb or a noun just by looking at it without the context like in Spanish like: "Ejército", "Ejercito" and "Ejercitó". Where you can easily know where it's pronounced and also which type of word it is. And yes, "Word stress" is also a thing. But English speakers have never had any issue with it while reading. Also, there was a time in English where "--" was used to accomodate longer pauses and even more in English mostly in poetry. So for examply in that example we could use something like: "-I didn't stab him", "I didn't -stab him" or "I didn't stab -him" and it's easy to read, type and write but it comes with the issue of "Noise" when it's abundant. So it could just be a "Feature" in some types of texts and that's it. Even " ' " could replace it like "I didn't 'stab him" and most people won't mind that small line before the word. But we would be making up rules that they naturally didn't appear. So it will most likely never appear in real texts. Feeeew! That was long huh? Well, I've finished with this comment. If you have any question leave me know below and if I have any error comment it too! I love to learn and hear everyone's opinion. I'm so sorry for making it so long but I hope I made myself clear and that you learn something that you didn't know before.
@@interbeamproductions it varies for me, but I’ve realised that mainly immigrants or something pronounce the words more like thy are spelt, and that regular civilians say Ofen
I think there's some value to some limited spelling reforms, even in English; it's just the broad "let's redo the whole alphabet according to IPA" reforms that scream "teenage linguist". There's a good case to be made for changing through to thru and though to tho, without needing to upend the whole language, you know? And we actually make such word-by-word reforms all the time (gaol into jail). Looking at situations like that, wondering whether it's spelled solvable or solveable, homogenous or homogeneous, embarrassed vs harassed, it's natural to look at a very phonemic system like Italian's or Romanian's and be jealous. English can be a difficult language to learn and the writing system doesn't help. Unfortunately though, standardization and reform won't help much at all with that. For example, you listed 6 words and claimed that they all contain silent t's, although only three of them (fasten, moisten, soften) do. The other three have a glottal stop, which is a common allophone of /t/ in English. If we didn't pronounce the t in brighten, it would be identical to Brian! So if we reformed the language to be phonemic, we'd likely have a lot of things like that pass through the cracks, and then what's the point? We'd lose the fantastic etymological nature of the language while not really gaining much phonetic value. I think we should honestly just teach IPA in schools. It addresses most of the issues that reformists have better than any reform ever could.
I don’t think spelling reform should be implemented for English at this point, but it’s still a super fun exercise to try to make a spelling reform that doesn’t look ugly and is still fairly phonemic
The spelling of modern English comes from standardising the language (most dialects in England pronounce things differently so written English is a compromise between them). It also partially comes from historical English spellings but hasn't changed like the spoken language, if you pronounce written English how it's spelt you'd essentially be speaking Middle English for example knight used to be pronounced k-nikht and light used to be pronounced likht. Every dialect is different and the only ones that matter are those from England. It's impossible to actually reform English spelling because most of the dialects pronounce it differently, for example if the phrase "A bottle of water" (which is used by americans to make fun of the English even though they don't pronounce it properly either) was spelt how you pronounce it in most American English dialects it would be "a baadul aa' waaderr", some English dialects would spell it as "u bo'ul o' wor'u" whilst many others would spell it as "a botul ov worter". This shows we couldn't restandardise English spelling because of all of the differences
@@zobandzeff exactly! That’s part of what I was saying! I’ve lived in a few parts of the US, and my accent is kinda mixed, but as a result no matter where I go I speak differently than everyone else. A spelling reform would almost certainly just result in me, and a lot of people needing to learn new and even more arbitrary spellings all for the sake of a system that doesn’t even solve the problems it would claim to fix.
French native, struggled with writing system as a child but always passionated by language so... That wasn't a problem (for French***). But, I thought it was a problem for the English language. And then, one day (thanks to poetry and poets), I saw it : I had a misconception about the spelling. I had a "French vision" so, I wasn't able to write what I was hearing, I wasn't able to pronounce (with the right phonetic) what I was reading. Eurêka ! After that, English was a new world : if we know the rules, we can apply the right vision. I see now the beauty of this language, I need to improve my skills about it, and I think that , English, by its nature, is beautiful and doesn't "need" a spelling reform. Or if it needs it, a looot of languages need it!! So : I agree. PS: in French we say (with the liaison) as if ut was written "the grant édifice" where "an" is pronounced the same. A part of the French population is using the liaisons, but not all of the French. So, even between us, sometimes, we need an explication, funny ! And it depends of the region, liaisons tend to be slightly different, a nightmare for the foreigners hahaha. Ps2: "Bichęs....", seems to have a "Turkish logic" (yes I exaggerate of course) but in the English language! It's easy to read but weird for now
About which variety you could use, you can perfectly make a standard variety that is easily recognizable by all varieties without being too familiar. Spanish have a special standarized variety for academic, formal and even dubing that is understood easily by all the spanish variants and isn't particularly close to neither of them. The transatlantic accent could be a good place to start
@@cranmzvg so that sounds like a lovely idea, but it probably wouldn’t work, there exists an incredible diversity of variation in English, and it’s very likely no such variety exists, and such a system might very well have more unusual spelling as a result of that. Even though I’m no stranger to them and eager to listen/understand, some of the rural varieties of English spoken in the UK are actually very hard for me to understand and the compromise between just those two may not be materially possible.
Just make the relation between the spelling and the pronunciation reliable, please. I’m tired of not knowing how to write words I’ve heard and used dozens of times and vice-versa
I think a spelling reform would be far more useful to non-natives (who learn the spoken language at the same time at which they learn the written language) than it would be for natives (who already know how to speak when they learn how to write).
@@Friday.S that’s certainly true, and proposals have been made for that, though such a thing would have to be specific to the communities in question. I advocate for something like what Arabic has for vowels where you have special markings, but you’re not expected to have to rely on those after a certain point and they’re mostly intended for learners and children
I think the issue is that while a lot of old ways of spelling maintain differences lost due to phonemic mergers, in some cases the opposite happened. And also, in some cases, existing words sounded differently and yet were spelled the same. Example: live (said laiv) and live (said liv) Abuse (said abyus) and abuse (said abyuz) In all of these cases when spoken the difference is clear, but when written, not so much. Which is a massive issue. One of the reasons for this is that spellings tend to be able to be pronounced in a few different way. Ow (as /ow/ and /aw/) the ough and s. But this has a simple fix. Diacritics. A spelling reform is needed to clear this out. And any massive one which undertakes the redoing of the whole spelling system is horrible and doomed to fail. But a simple diacritization, could really help. For example, ow for /ow/ and ów for /aw/ ś for /z/ and s for /s/ í for /ai/ and i for /i/ We could also add another layer for reduced vowels, and for emphasis, but u get the point. The system is not only outdated in preserving differences, but it’s outdated in not showing them too. Edit: I also dislike how you made the issue of not being able to spell according to speech seem so insignificant. Because it’s not. Further more, in a lot of the parts of the English world, people have issues with spelling correctly. This mainly hurts people from low socio economic levels, which don’t have the access to the education necessary to learn how to spell correctly. And this is why we need a spelling reform. Because if we continue to write in archaic ways, we are doomed to make correct spelling and writing a thing only accessible for high class society (the educated). This only furthers economic inequality. This could also hurt the poor and people from historically opressed social groups, who’s bad spelling could make them stand out in job markets in work environments. So yes, being able to spell according to speech is really necessary.
I agree, English and French do not need a spelling reform, they need a speech reform. We need to start to pronounce that silent letters again, like our ancestors did. It would help to avoid alophones, it would make languages reacher and cleaner. I've read recently that through 60 years in England people stopped pronouncing "R" in "Arm". Earlier English lost rolled "R". It's a pity. Of course I'm not serious. But I would like it to be so 🙂
Some English dialects still roll their Rs: look at the West Country or Scottish English (not the related Scots btw). Btw which R in February am I using since I say _feb ree_ ? 😆
I feel that the points you make are very valid but I do feel that if we could magically do it English would do well with a spelling reform the amount of people needing to learn English has grown a lot and having words not have silent letters would aid both young native speakers and learners the amount of homophones has certainly increased since the Old English period but based on my studies there would be even more homophones if half the old words of that time still existed which is why I think many homophones naturally dissapeared over time if I could have my own way though I would personally prefer us returning to the old Runic script since it is where thorn came from and has 10 vowel letters since it was designed for Germanic language to aid in spelling reform for English
@@Me-mt9rq thank you very much, I try my best, even if my videos are riddled with errors and are all made at 2am while listening to my friends yell about the most recent game we’ve been playing
8:05 I’ll be honest this is the only real beef I have with this video, there’s good points of keeping English how it is, and there’s good points for changing it, and I’m fine with most of it. This however isn’t a linguistic feature of English, no English textbook would teach you this as part of grammar or syntax, this falls more into pragmatics, the semantics of the word are all the same, the only reason the sentence changes is a result of spoken language, not written, in theory this can occur in every language, and isn’t specific to English, languages like Hungarian *can* move words freely and put focus heavy words first, that’s a linguistic feature of Hungarian and other possible languages with free word order specifically, because of the intense grammar laws the language has. I get that this is super petty and I may not even argue my points well, but what I’m trying to say is, great video, and although I personally want some modified English spelling for consistency, this *one* point of evidence just doesn’t work as well as the others in my mind.
@@radioactiveseaotter I don’t think it’s petty! It’s a good counterpoint. I do think that it’s important to remember that, as you have done, we do mark stressed words differently, and that’s going to have to contend with word internal stress. It also, might just be me, but when I emphasize a word, unstressed syllables do take on full vowels as part of that process, so if we want to accurately portray that, it’s something to be aware of.
Yea, most times when people propose spelling reforms, they don't want to reform the spelling. Rather throw out the whole system and start a new. A good spelling reform is legible to people now, without needing to learn new rules, rather expanding on what people know. The best spelling reform ideas I've had over some years are to take words that are just poorly spelled, like "limb", "delight", or "indict". Which have silent letters that are not historically accurate, and are confusing. You can also take a word like "impossible" and spell it "inpossible" to reconnect it to the "in-" perfix. Make double consonants more consistent. Often times there will be words with double consonants, and the it doesn't make sense historically or logically. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, so just trust me. Words that are spelled with a "-y" at the end and make a long E sound could be spelled with an "-ie" like in German and French. This would make it more logical when adding suffixes to words like taking "goodly" and changing it to "goodliness". Currently the change from Y to I doesn't make intuitive sense, but with this new system you'd be taking silent E ending and switching it out for the "-ness" suffix. Now going from "goodlie" to "goodliness". Except for words that ended in a G in Old English/Proto Germanic, which changed into a Y sound in Middle English. Those would be kept with the Y at the end, like "busy" or "holy". A way to indicate word stress would be nice too, especially for dictionaries and non English natives. Take the words "incite" and "inight". They are said the same, but have different stress patterns. So use an acute accent like Spanish or Italian making "incíte" and "ínight. When a word ends in an F and an S is added to make it plural, don't change the F to a V. People slurring words together to make it easier to pronounce is common in English speech. So why does the orthography in this one instance change. IT would make, "leaves", "calves", "elves" become "leafs", "calfs", "elfs". Finally removing silent E from words where it makes very little sense, like it "one", or "have", or "seethe". One problem, the "on" and "hav" don't look very good. However "seeth" looks good. You could change the weird "ve" ending where to E does nothing to a B, like in "have" or "give" or "live" or "leave". Making "hab", "gib", "lib", and "leab". I don't know about the last part. But I like English's historical spelling for the most part, I just wish the orthography represented its Germanic words better through the spelling. Unfortunately the best type of spelling reform is one where you take a look at every word, and individually change each one. Which takes time and is not very radical. Also I don't like the letter Q. I don't think it's going anywhere, but I don't like it for very complicated reasons. (Also the Latin alphabet does have 6 vowels, because Y is a vowel. Which meaning you can match them perfectly to the six vowel sounds of Proto-Germanic. Which would account for the vowel mergers that would account for all Germanic languages, which is why they have a lot of vowels.)
@@dragonapop these are all very good points, especially about the q, I also resent its existence. Though the thing about Latin is that yes, the Latin alphabet had 6 graphemes for vowels. It’s important to remember that was used to write Greek words. This is why the Spanish word for the letter is still translated into English as “Greek I”, because it made a sound that my Latin professor said was something like a rounded high front vowel.
@@dungeontnt language acquisition is a complicated topic and it’s even more complicated when it comes to second language acquisition. I don’t know where you’re from, but I’d be willing to bet that not enough was done early to properly prepare students for or support them in learning English and they weren’t given enough input in English to actually learn it sufficiently.
@@dungeontnt people will find excuses to complain about things when it comes to language. I find that, unfortunately, resources are not adequately provided to children to ensure success in learning languages. Here in the US, Spanish verb conjugations and Chinese characters/tone serve as the primary barrier to children learning languages. I very much sympathize with people who struggle to learn languages like English because of the spelling, but I wonder if it’s actually the fault of the spelling or if we aren’t setting children up for failure in their language learning journeys.
@@aditopian spelling is the only hard part of English, for a lot of people, only a few hard sounds like the are in the language... It would be an easier language then Macedonian if the spelling was good
6:10 No, you don't _need_ silent letters! Silent letters are an accident of sound changes that have not yet been corrected by a spelling reform. I think you're confusing digraphs (and trigraphs) with silent letters. The "h" in "she" isn't "silent", it's part of a digraph "sh". But yeah, English probably has too many digraphs too, and they should ideally be replaced with new letters. (And there's plenty of letters available in European languages for these sounds that already exists in most modern fonts, so you don't need to invent something entirely new.)
@@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug I would argue that digraphs and trigraphs are a form of extra letter, since they cannot be predicted from the others and just because they use up two character spaces doesn’t really mean they’re not a single cohesive unit
really English should use the Swiss method where everyone writes however they want, having a standard makes it unfair for everyone else that doesnt speak like them. so if everyone just wrote how they want to and say, then it'd be like listening to someone with a different accent except with writing.
Aye ner, this iznt gana work for inglind, fa ixampul everywans aksent iz different an slang isnt commin with everywan, leik am speekin hew a wud te me marras It wont work in england
I say we flip the whole thing upside down. Pronunciation reform... Hooked on phonics 2.0. Undo the Great Vowel Shift and the Norman invasion. I jest, but perhaps only a smidge.
@@andrewgraham2546 are you suggesting we invade France and force them to use English as the language of social prestige until they have a bunch of insane synonyms? Cause I’m 100% on board with that!
I'm not so sure about the "lots of vowels" argument at 6:30ish. I'm admittedly not too familiar with the other languages, but there's a perfectly reasonable analysis of English (that works for both GenAm and SSBE) that has only six phonemic vowels: [ɪ ɛ æ ɒ ə ʊ]. Absolutely agreed with the rest of this, though.
@@aditopian in this analysis, the vowels are categorized approximately as such: ɪ ɪː ɪj ɛ ɛː ɛj a ɑː ɑj aw ɔ ɔː oj əw ɵ ɵː ʉw ə əː left-to-right, the columns are the base vowel, pre-R vowels (in british english), j-diphthongs and w-diphthongs. Geoff Lindsey is advocating for such analysis i’m sure. you can watch his videos to learn more
May English orthography never, EVER change. I don’t want to disconnect us from the written works of our past, or from the clear etymology embedded in the spelling conventions, or fracture all our dialects by having a different spelling convention for each of them. And then what happens in 50 years when there are more sound changes? There would just be endless changing of spelling. It’s stupid. 5 year olds can learn English spelling, so all the ESLs complaining about it can go kick rocks.
@@EresirThe1st to quote the guy who wrote the closing song I used (tho this song is about teaching math, but close enough) 🎵it’s so simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it🎵
The Germanic script (runes) is better suited for Germanic languages precisely because it has more graphemes for vowels. The Anglo-Saxon futhorc has 11 (ᚢ, ᚩ, ᛁ, ᛇ, ᛖ, ᛟ, ᚪ, ᚫ, ᚣ, ᛡ, & ᛠ), making it quite suitable for writing today's English phonemically. As English spelling has always been descriptive, not prescriptive, it has never been fully standardised. Some variation does not exclude intelligibility in context, e.g. colo(u)r.
i don't believe in spelling reform, but I do think as a person who helps teach English that adding accents to vowels would be a huge benefit to people learning English as a second language
@@aditopian the fact that each vowel can be pronounced in a huge variety of ways is an issue for people learning English. As a Spanish and Portuguese speaker, I can tell you that accent marks are hugely beneficial in pronouncing new words
Another point to consider about an English spelling reform is how much longer will all these dialects remain simply dialects. Internationality plus the Internet may have slowed the process down, but I believe the dialect-to-language evolution is inevitable. If a spelling reform happens now, or soon, right before the divides bloom into true branches off the language tree, that could cause future (and perhaps worse) spelling issues with those languages, especially if the reform is based on another kind of contemporary-English than where the language came from.
English doesn't need a spelling reform, but it could definitely have one if the demand was there. In the US, spelling is typically a subject until sixth grade. Compare that to Spanish, where natives probably know the vast majority of spelling conventions of the language by the first grade. I don't know the situation with French, but I imagine it would be similar to English. With Chinese, until third grade, half the time in the classroom is just learning the Chinese characters. And with Japanese, they have a set list of joyo kanji that are taught until middle school. No, none of these languages NEED a spelling reform, but it does take much more effort to learn these writing systems.
@@tylerkostich6203 it arguably takes more effort to learn the systems, but the thing about learning them is that the course curriculum doesn’t really come at a cost. A lot of the resources spent teaching kids to read involves normal reading, exposure, in my experience, is the thing that really drives the process of learning to read. Even if we got rid of having kids take spelling tests we should still probably have vocabulary units to teach them words they should generally know. So while I’m not opposed to the system being easier I think that reformation doesn’t really work for a language like English, given the realities of the English language in the global context.
I agree wholeheartedly as also i think it shows history. why do we have the silent k? because it was /knix/ originally but we lost the /x/ (like in loch) and lost the k at the beginning. this is also shown in the french accent circumflex as it shows that there used to be an s after like in the french word forêt, which is forest. this can be super helpful and preserve things. i hate the people that are like 'i fixed the alphabet' no you didnt you made it worse. I would say though the vowel thing needs fixing... the vowel shift did really make english terrible.
@@thepenguinofspace9291 English spelling is far from perfect, but millions of people learn to read just fine, so I think that we deserve a little treat in the form of words like knight and indict
I understand that there are many problem we'll have to face if we want to make a spelling reform happen. I learnt English as a second language and I have no problems with rememberung the spellings, but I still want them to make sense. Although changing the spelling of all the words or changing the writing system will be to complicated, why don't we adjust the spellings a bit to make them match the existing spelling rules, We can keep silent letter when they are needed to distinguish between words (spell knight and night as knite and nite) or to show but relations. We can keep the letters that are only pronounced in certain places. Also we can keep historical spelling of words that are pronounced very differently depending on the dialect. But we could still do this and I see no harm in it: Replace c with either k or s. I see no point in this letter, unless it doing the ch sound. So we could make c sounds like ch Replace ph with f, ck with k, etc. Maybe even replace gh in rough with an f. Get rid of double letters, like t in scottish Replace the spellings of borrowed words - queue to q, creche to kresh, etc Keep the Magic E rule and make it always work - get rid of e on have, give, but leave in like. It will help distinguish between live and liv for example or the two pronouncations of dove. We could extend it to say the it also indicates to vowels being pronounced independently to distinguish between wound and wounde Replace ea to either ee or ea. Words like feaver, threat were very confusing for me as a beginner and there's no point in keaping e instead of spelling it as thret Use the speliing that native speakers already developed - thru, tho, nite, coz, etc I could keep writing, but there's a lot that can be done to simplify reading and writing, while keeping the spelling similar to old ones and understandable to all the speakers of English
@@АлександрХазанчук so the problem is that we can’t really resolve the issue without a central authority, we just have to start using new spellings and hope they catch on, which is sorta what I was getting at at the end there. The problem with that though is that some spellings which make sense to a lot of native English speakers may stick around for a while and are probably gonna be hard to get rid of as can be seen in the fact that when English speakers abbreviate “probably” it gets rendered as something like “prolly”, because it makes sense for there to be two ls there. In fact, one of my most common spelling errors is the accidental addition of double letters, not the omission of them. Ironically enough, a more consistent English might wind up with more digraphs than fewer.
I feel like only 2 things would be good to add to English. 1 is accent markers which would help remove confusing words like read vs read & help to make it clearer what sounds vowels make which is the largest problem. & 2 which is only because I feel like adding the letter for the TH sound would be kinda helpful. Its the most common sound in English without a letter but I only say that because I use it to speed up writing stuff & waste less paper (you'll save a page or two after a couple thousand words handwriting stuff). But I feel like it'd be stupid to try & make letters like S, C & Y more simple. Also G but that's because you'd make words look weirder by using zeds, S, J & vowels more. Edit: I also far prefer the idea of trying to keep dialects alive. I speak a wee dialect from Northern Ireland which would be a good healthy mix of Ballymena (from my great aunts), Belfast southern, Northern & Eastern dialects (from my parents, grandparents & cousins), Ards penisula rural (which has a good amount of ulster scots), South down rural (from my time in RedHigh in downpatrick) & likely a load of small loan words from the dialects my teachers & classmates spoke. Its like how you'd properly spell words like Now becomes Nai, Northern Ireland becomes Norn Iron & can't becomes cannae. I have found a bunch by arguing with the whole stupid word spelling because I prefer things to be written as I say not as some American or englishman says. Oh & another unique word is yous which is great why it isn't used in more english is wierd.
@@cillianennis9921 personally I think one of the few really good things about historical spelling is that they often still matter to someone somewhere. If we were to rework the whole system, a lot of people would be cut out from the connections to the existing system. Plus a reform would almost certainly favor a majority variety, which would double screw over minority varieties.
I still think it would be nice if we could change just a few words, ones whose spellings benefit neither connection nor dialects. Like changing indict back to indite, propelling the colloquial use of thru, tho, and altho, reducing homographs like by having both house and houce, add a helping letter to sugar and radish to get shugar and raddish, and even increasing connections with other words in cases like fiery, liquefy, and putrefy with firey, liquify, and putrify. And ideally, do SOMEthing about the word, colonel. My own reformist ideas aside, excellent video!
@@passerbypassinbi I think that would be a great idea too. I used to live not far from where Noah Webster lived when he was writing his dictionary and I think that allowing alternative spellings into the dictionary is a fairly effective way to go about things, and that’s kind of what a lot of them do. If we start writing them that way then they will eventually get recognized by the OED and Websters. I do also like the idea of adding more letters for etymological purposes. And fixing kernel is something I value highly, mostly because I don’t respect authority. lol Tho I will say I have to disagree about indict, because indict is related to a bunch of other words like interdict, dictate, dictionary, diction, dictator, and various others. And as an ardent nerd for etymology and Latin, that silent c just makes me happy to see.
English is the kind of language that changes way too often to maintain a phonetic spelling orthography stuff. It would definitely be better with a logographic writting system like Hanzi/Hanja/Kanji/Hantu. English has way too many dialects, has way too many phonetic shifts and so on.
@@Joridiy one could make an argument that there’s no real difference between characters and written words. It’s just that in Chinese they put all the shapes into blocks and in English they put all the shapes into strings.
I think English needs a spelling optimization rather than a full reform as a lot of proposal propose. I'd choose London English in the 1650, and only when spelling would yield a pronounciation ambiguity such as in -ough
@@jorgealbertogarridogallard3622 I’d say that’s still a reform, but I’ve never said I oppose reforms, I just don’t think they’ll catch on, but I’d love to see you try and I certainly think your solution is better than most
@@aditopian I added letters to eliminate digraphs as much as possible. It’s mostly the same as regular English but I borrowed a few letters from Greek and Russian and IPA, and changed some pronunciation rules on the letters. I hope that I can help non-native speakers read English better with my system. Would you like to see it?
@@aditopian try to figure this one out. Wy θʌ pypl ʌv θʌ Ywnayted Steyts, in ordr tw form ʌ mor prfekt ywnyʌn, establix justis, inxur domestik trankwility, provayd for θʌ komon defens, promowt θʌ jenerl welfer, and sekyur θʌ blesings ʌv librty tw aurselvs and aur posterity, dw ordeyn and establix θis Konstitwxn for θʌ Ywnayted Steyts ʌv Ωmerikʌ. And this one: Wʌns ʌ grand dwk in lʌndʌndery Θot hy kud rʌn hiz own grand dʌcy So hy slamd θʌ dor on Kwyn Geyv ful vent tw hiz splyn Naw hy’z left wiθ trilyʌn det treжury
@@ImaginatorJoren imma be honest, while I could read those, it took a decent amount of effort to figure some things out. One sound per letter isn’t really necessary, so I advise not using letters from Russian to handle sounds, Greek is already hard enough if you’re not used to it. A few of the words also had inconsistent spelling, the in common has two different pronunciations for me. The same is true for . You spelled the first vowel in trankwility different from the vowel in steyts, though I have them as the same. The vowel in perfect is debatably an i and I’d read that word as the verb perfect. The in provide is closer to a schwa for me. While I’d say that it’s a good attempt digraphs and diacritics are honestly a much better way to handle vowels and using w as a consonant and a vowel isn’t really the best solution to the /u/ sound.
@@callmeacutekitten8106I don’t think it wouldn’t be helpful, but it’s important to remember that we could just implement that for learners by textbook companies and have it be a regional thing, like how Arabic and Hebrew don’t mark vowels in anything intended for native adults
@@jtom2958 well it’s important to distinguish what’s going on there from a spelling reform. Speakers deciding to spell things differently from the bottom up isn’t quite the same thing as a spelling reform which is a top down process. Also tho and thru are actually pretty old and date back to at least the late 1900s.
@@АлександрХазанчук how do we make them official? There’s no central body for English like there is with French or Spanish, but from what I’ve seen Websters recognizes thru and tho as variant spellings
@@aditopian What else is that if not a spelling reform then? If there is no central body to dictate the spelling, then just accepting more intuitive forms of spelling would for all intents and purposes be a spelling reform. I always feel like this debate comes down to of 'all or nothing'. If someone says they'd like spelling to change, you imagine they want every single word respelled in a new advanced system, rather than for more consistent and simple spelling for commonly used words.
@@BurnBird1 I mean spelling reforms are pretty typically done by central bodies or authorities of one form or another handing out prescriptions for how languages should be written. This is also not about random people like us who may think that English needs some updates, this is about the real proposals, both modern and historical, to overhaul or update the system on masse. Part of why the general population choosing to update spelling wouldn’t be a reform is that such changes come organically from within the system, not from without it, and are often involuntary. The human brain makes a lot of predictions, and sometimes those predictions aren’t the best and that leads to words being misspelled, which may eventually lead to new spellings catching on. It’s like sound changes.
@@EgoistFemboy628 yeah, my family is from northern Spain and I’ve had the icon on social media for some time at this point mostly because I like the way he looks and glares. Though I am actually thinking about going for something new at some point, but I’m still figuring out what that will be.
@@EgoistFemboy628 see, I like the basque flag but unfortunately I can only see it as a color swapped version of the uk flag which makes me like it less
@@Imacrab398 I’ve been saying that to other commenters, though it’s not fully true, there’s a decently high correspondence between sound and spelling in English, it’s just not always 1-to-1
I'm interested in your reasoning for needing to pick a standard to make a spelling reform. Could you not just spell things according to their pronunciation in middle english and use diacritics for some of the weird sound changes. I.E use diaphonemes
So while you can do that, the issue is that Middle English was spoken hundreds of years ago and things have drifted a lot since then. Arguably such a reform might result in more unnecessary letters or unusual spellings. Part of the reason for a spelling reform is to bring the spelling in line with modern pronunciation in some way shape or form. If we base things off of Middle English that just kicks the can down the road, we’d need a new reformation in a few hundred years again, and arguably the new form would make limited sense to anyone because of all the changes since Middle English.
Spelling reform can systematize English spelling. TSR (Traditional Spelling Revised) by Stephen Linstead is good. It is not a phonetic reform, and it keeps the current systems. The word "glowing" is changed to "gloing". the letter pair "ow" now always means /aʊ/. and letter pair "ea" can no longer mean /eɪ/ nor /e/ (bear bair, health helth). A new letter pair is added, "uu", to represent the short "u" (stood stuud, foot fuut). It all makes more senss.
2:40 I say, do it in the vowel grapheme. As regionally me, that would've been switched to Saâfn, braîtn, laîttn, Táîttn (vs. Taitn), Moistn, fæssn, Though would put a diacritic below to make it clear the vowel has harsher contrast between Titan vs. Tighten. The Trema/Circumflex be used for 3:07 Clearing homophones, historical letters, or soundchanges that impacted to lead to more reduction. 4:14 To me, it's almost like you lost the S in contexts.... Also the homographs of lead, dove, read, and more.. 6:44 It's not entirely NEW, if know how to read, then you would simply adapt to a phonetic system and that is it. To be fair, the regional version here would end up in a funny " not intelligible if don't know what /œ/ is. As that is used in many words, often replacing the standard writen IPA "ʊ". Or having a nasty case of throatiness plaguing the pronunciation where T, D simply creak and make the vowels before them rise. It would be a case of High German dialect dialects where if know 90% of the vocab, you will grasp it quick, but the pronunciation being a nightmare. Though would change graphemes around. Specificaly CH < TSH, SH is normal, Turn J, ( romance GE, GI, du ), and DGE into DZH... While the S in pleasure is written as ZH. Make U + R, but give the R a diacritic to indicate "this is rhotic". As a Southerner, I hate monosyllables, hence we unintentionally make words longer and shorter, but to deal with schwa and stress. The acute is below a consonant, or first vowel. Second schwa is written with vowels with breve marks. Where the rhotic sounds Rhotic + Schwa is clear.... If got nasal sounds, then N and M get a dot. Have a clear " core vocabulary " as everyone just modifies it to suit their region.... 7:16, Sheet and Sh*t would be clear with vowel markings and write a circle below the t or above, as. Who and hue? To me are far from it due to different vowel quality and consonant being a fricative for hue leading to truncation on. Thy and Thigh, one of the few accents where we must write a pitch mark below the vowel as Thy... "These sound much different than they may appear" Thy basically went mid-high-mid, thigh is none-mid-low in progress. Due to how the consonants act. Did a Praat test. Pie, and Pine don't even match, also Pin barely shows. 7:27 That's acceptable to be blunt. Though would or must use double letters for inert purposes due to keeping unintentional system of connecting a handful sounds. As it looks weird due to no double letters. It seems your accent merged schwa and strut vowels? That didn't happen here, or slowly having /ɜ/ due to fronting the schwa and still keep lips unrounded due to consonants before it being produced that way. 7:42 more or less why I would use "Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ Y̆ y̆" ( not all of them, but show it in a latin word like memory, but the rhotic rule applies to reduced vowels, but when memory -> Memorial ), that would instantly work. 8:03 I would use double acute consonants to have a key word. It seems locally for me, that there would be more or less, would be a case of " Standard =/= Dialect " where the dialect's sounds are much more advanced that it's Danish vs. Swedish. Danish can hear it, Swedish can't. Also the speed difference is unfair, but it does lead to reduced syllables or sounds shifting.
what about thorn and eth? could actually be useful for outsiders so they can 1)know theyre pronounced differently(which some people i know which are russian didnt know) 2)make learners understand it a new sound so they pronounce it differently than d or f
@@pricefight well I would suggest a few things if we were to consider reviving thorn and eth, the first is that we could just as easily spell them as th and dh which would fit well with the existing sh pattern and the distinction between t and d, the other is if they’re really separate phonemes, they do seem to show up in different environments and I can’t seem to think of any minimal pairs that rely on them, so do we really need to represent them as different sounds? Or could we just treat them as allophones? Aspirated plosives and unaspirated plosives show up in English too, but we don’t really need to know that they exist.
@@aditopian To me, it makes no sense to use TH vs. DH as... We should need to memorize the rule if talking about Thailand? Also it helps tell vowels like for example the spoken form of English here typically it would be dumb to use TH/DH when Mother and Father, those final E's simply disappear, making a clear harsher R that can switch from Rhotic -> Tapped, and it's common, and also make stress easier to tell in words by writing a clear consonant vs. double vowel rule.
@@aditopian"either" and "ether" are a minimal pair for/ð/ and /θ/ in my British dialect. American dialects with the pin/pen merger could point to "then" and "thin". - **This** (voiced /ð/) vs **Thick** (voiceless /θ/) These two words only differ by the voicing of the initial "th" sound.
@@lexicoll1 oh there you go, I stand corrected. Though either might not be the best possible minimal pair because it can be realized in a few ways based on context.
I'm sorry, this might be because of my socioeconomic status, but I have NEVER even heard the concept of spell reform. Why the hell would anyone want to do that? What's the point?
English speakers should invest more in spelling pronunciations, as has already happened with several words in common use, rather than in radical spelling reform.
@@kauagirao we do, dictionaries fairly regularly add novel spellings of words to their rosters tho I do think they could do it more often, and that’s what I was arguing for. The issue with that is that it won’t necessarily result in easier or more consistent spelling, and if my typos are anything to go by might result in more double letters popping up.
I’m not gone! I am learning to use a new mic and have been hard at work on some new videos. Hopefully they’ll be properly underway soon! 😊
Update: Okay, wow, a bit more than 5k views in 5 days. I feel like I should be happy with that level of engagement. I will admit I feel more… overwhelmed.
The good thing is that I appreciate a linguistics video doing so well for once. It really feels good. I’m also getting a lot of good comments that are making me want to remake the video. The original version of this was actually much longer and I cut it down because I felt rushed to get something out. But, between some of the insightful comments I’ve gotten and some other points I’ve realized really could be added to the argument, I think making a longer and more in-depth version of this could be fun. So since I was already planning to make new versions of all my other videos with better audio and nicer graphics, I might as well add this one to the mix.
The bad is that I do dislike responding to comments. I appreciate them very much, but there’s something about talking with people in comments sections that gives me a lot of anxiety, especially because some people do have very… strong opinions about things. So given that, I might have to force myself to respond to fewer messages going forward or being less active in the comments section, because, while I feel obligated to give everyone responses, I can already tell that this might not be sustainable for my mental well being.
Also, I know about the misspelling of “oiseau”. To the people who seem to think this undermines my argument, it doesn’t. There is a wide range of reason for why typos happen, and they happen in all languages, irrelevant of their writing system. Should I have caught it? Yeah, probably. But I’m neither a professional with the support of a team nor am I a French speaker, and my knowledge of French orthographic rules is from passive exposure. So it can’t be helped, and it doesn’t negate the fact that millions of French speakers learned to read this supposedly inane system. It doesn’t negate the fact that billions people learn to read languages like Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, English, and the various other complex systems which have existed throughout history.
And if you still insist that it is… umm notice how it’s the caricature of you, the viewer, who misspells it? Yeah! Well what definitely was actually always the plan was to have the viewer misspell “oiseau”, thus portraying you as an illiterate buffoon. :P
I see are gonna have a bright youtube career ahead of you
@@CJMapping aww thank you so much, but these aren’t very good, they are somewhat rushed, pretty amateurish, and I’m hoping one day to remake every single one of them, but actually decently
@Booz2020 I’m not Indonesian
Yeah, people wouldn't have noticed the misspelling if there weren't rules on French pronunciation 😆
@@nealjroberts4050 oh absolutely, it’s certainly not a perfect system, but it works and people manage and that’s all that really matters
I used to believe in a spelling reform, but this video has convinced me that the easiest solution is to simply get rid of the written language.
@@minneelyyyy most humans who have ever lived were illiterate, I say we reject modernity and embrace tradition
TRADITION! tradition!
Are you trying to say that we must discard all those extensive pages written on the English Wikipedia and Britannica and become illiterate dopes? What loss of knowledge, amigo.
@@aditopian haha well said
@@HistoryLover08 Oral histories would keep us going just fine. They did for all of premodern humanity. I myself can't imagine that anyone would call Homer a dope.
6:12 "The Roman alphabet worked really well for Latin, but the Germans had to ruin in by learning how to read"
@@zahranmohammad3880 everything went wrong the day the Germans learned to read! Change my mind! /s
No, no, no, what we need is a spelling deform. I'm tired of those proscriptivists at Webster putting squiggly red lines under my words. Just spell stuff how you want to, to hell with the consequences.
Linguistic anarchy! Let’s goooooooooooo!
"fourty" supporters, rise
You just made a good spelling reform, now ill do that!
dis meethud iz sou guuuud
I feel this why languages are slowly dying out, in the past language came and leave. But now language are not allowed to evolve and form new language because apparently it's "wrong"
old scrolls were written like this many times. there was no right way of writing things, but each letter has an associated sound so monks would just write words down as they heard them (sometimes they'd write the same word differently a paragraph later even lol). For this reason they are an incredibly good sources to study the phonologies of older languages
2:09 meanwhile in Mauritius (an archipelago located to the east of Madagascar) the word "oiseau" is written "wazo" and their variation of French is basically what French would look like if it was written the way it's pronounced and [ʃ] and [ʒ] are replaced with [s] and [z] respectively
@@ЮрийБогомолов-б8щ 1. A very cool and interesting point that shows that it is definitely possible to reform spelling
2. 😢 I literally made a typo in the French example, but that’s what happens when you do things at 2am while rushing cause you’re guilty about not doing anything productive
Shoutout to experts with small UA-cam channels making videos about niche subjects, gotta be one of my favourite genders.
@@NotMrGems lmao, if you like this, I’ve got a secret project another lingtuber gave me because he didn’t wanna make it and I’m excited for that because it’s my first project where I’ve had to call an expert to get their input, but that’s a bit down the line
Is "gender" correct word use here? If it is please explain
In my mind that should be genres, is it autocorrect or just niche
@@LaugeHeiberg both genres and genders work here tho the intended meaning is different. I believe in this case they’re making a joke and so gender is the intended word
@@LaugeHeiberg It's a meme format. The "gotta be one of my favorite genders" is a set phrase, used tongue in cheek, often by people in the queer community.
I'm sure written English is a nightmare for new learners, but it's elegant the way it is. A spelling reform is the last thing we need.
2:04 is probably a typo of "oiseau" (i don't speak french but i've never seen it written like that)
yeah, eau is the french spelling of /o/ (and means water)
@@eduardoxenofonte4004 oh it quite literally is a typo and I’m dying of embarrassment over it 💀
I didn’t even notice that lol
@@aditopianNe vous en faites pas ! (Don't worry!) 🙂
English doesn't need a reform BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO HAVE A STROKE READING ANYTHING
@@spacemario mood
joining Misali in an agreement
A small note about the French example with peace, pay, pays, etc.: most people I know pronounce 'paie, paient, paies' with a final /j/, so it ends up sounding a lot like English 'pay'. Still a valid example, and there are plenty more just like it. Great video!
@@CasualConlanger fair enough, I don’t speak French, so I had to rely on resources which were themselves fallible
8:02 but that's a thing in almost every european (and probably in ANY) language, and it's not much of a problem. A good spelling reform doesn't mean write using IPA with less weird letters tho, I agree with you in that point.
"Your brain is actually pretty good at pattern recognition. It doesn't take very much effort to learn a couple more rules."
So that makes the countless inconsistencies and exceptions easier than a standardized reformation with consistent rules?
Basically "I think it's too hard so why try? :,(". What a weak mindset.
So that’s not really an accurate portrayal of what I’m saying. The point I’m making there is that the extra complexity of the system doesn’t actually result in a true barrier to learn the system and can actually cause further inconsistencies, which speakers nonetheless feel are more reasonable. Take for example the abbreviation of the word ‘probably’: ‘prolly’. Why are there two Ls in there? There are two Ls because speakers are subconsciously aware of the likelihood of a double L being in such an environment, and, prolly cause it was more likely, they spelled it as ‘prolly’. I can personally attest that ‘prolly’ looks more correct to me than the arguably more consistent ‘proly’. To me this indicates a fairly high level of understanding for the rules that speakers are attaining in the system.
As to the difficulty, there simply is no consistent way to do an English spelling reform that would satisfy all parties. It’s next to impossible to do and would require the consent and active participation of hundreds of millions of people in dozens of different countries and would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Calling it hard is a comical understatement.
So no, it’s not a ‘weak mindset’. It’s a practical one.
As a Dutchie I can speak out all English sounds like they are written even the "wr" and "kn", "gh", "ou" and "pt" clusters. But then in English "raw" and "dawn" would have an "au" sound while "road" and "gloat" would have the ô sound and the long "O" would almost dissapear, as "stone" is now "steun". But at least it makes the variant mutually intellectable with Dutch and that's what matters.
I agree. To many people get worried up over English speaking, but it's really not that bad.
I'd say the real problem is that the way we teach spelling is just not comprehensive enough. Like yeah, we yeah the basic spelling rules for very common eyes, but then we fail to teach about how words in higher registers (which usually tend to be foreign words) usually retain their original pronunciation
I guess it may not be practical for children, but I think it would atleast be good that we tell them that a lot of fancy words come from different languages so they can get a feel for it, and for older people this would probably be a great thing
@@lotgc it really does come down to aggressive underfunding of schools in the English speaking world. We don’t do enough to prepare children in general for the real world and understaffed English classrooms are just one small part of that.
But they're fun to make
yeyeyeyeye
As a conlanger I wholeheartedly agree that new writing systems are fun, I just don’t think that we need a spelling reform in real life.
I would like if we changed to "myuzik"
Also I think most z sounds should be z's, and most k sounds should be k's
I am a casual z enjoyer. I unironically think we should spell laser with a z, scifi words deserve scifi letters.
@@aditopianzdimulation (like the S in L.A.S.E.R.)
My favorite repeat word sentence in English is "James While John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher" because it doesn't use weird definitions that nobody uses conjoined together in odd ways nobody would say.
@@smoceany9478 I’m kinda dubious of that one because I feel like it needs commas
@@aditopian yeah but even with all the correct punctuation it's better than buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo imo, and it even further shows that it is a real sentence that could be constructed under fairly normal circumstances
James, while John had "had", had had "had had", had "had" had a better effect on the teacher.
@@interbeamproductions*while john had had "had", had had "had had", "had had" had had a better effect
@@smoceany9478 oh compared to the buffalo sentence, which I wholeheartedly reject as not a real sentence, the had sentence is much more believable.
When I was working on a phonetic script to act as a shorthand, I considered using a glyph system for common roots and affixes that would preserve meaning and increase the speed of writing. I ultimately didn't do this because I decided if I had to do so then the primary goal of having it being quick to write wasn't being fulfilled; I redesigned the script to just be faster to write in general.
A phonetic script for writing is unfeasible because of all the different accents (I have a hard enough time saying the words the same way in my own head), but I do like the idea of a system like the Japanese kanji. The one I had planned would have used an altered form of the initial phonetic character to act as the radical while a series of other symbols (perhaps derived from other radicals and their meanings) conjoin to it.
As a Spanish speaker, I truly believe English does need a spelling reform as soon as possible. It's an international language now. A spelling reform will benefit us all.
@@mep6302 a fair enough belief to hold, do you have a preferred variety for us to base it off of?
@@aditopianas an esl speaker, you could have cleaned up at least some of the sound shifts that happened in all major varieties (american, australian, british, south african) over the last couple of centuries. it's just that that there's no single one authoritative source for such a reform. the spelling is still getting simplified to avoid obvious hiccoughs tho
I think the fact its international is whats preventing a spelling reform
@@rajdhonsinghngangbam1848 that’s basically it, every country from England to India and America to Australia uses English to one degree or another, which makes coordination next to impossible on something like this
@aditopian yeah. I would say British English but taking at least American and Australian English into consideration as well.
Maybe like this:
A sound in cat can be written as æ (same IPA symbol)
Example: bat -> bæt
A sound in take can be written as ei
Example: take -> teik. say -> sei
(also removing silent letters like e in take for example)
A sound in car can remain just a.
EE sound can be written as ii
Example: see -> sii. tea -> tii
EA sound in dead can be written as e
Example: dead -> ded
I sound (pin) can remain the same
I sound in line can be written as aí
Example: shine -> shain. my -> mai
O sound in lot can remain the same
AU sound can be written as oo
Example: pause -> poos. law -> loo
OO sound in moon can be written as uu
Example: soon -> suun
OO sound in book can be written as u
Example: look -> luk. would -> wud
U sound in up can be written as â
Example: cup -> kâp
U sound in cube can be written as yuu
Example: universe -> yuunivêrz
Schwa sound like u in focus can be written as ê
Example: carnival -> karnêvêl
Y would only work as a consonant
Ch in word chair can be written as c
Example: Chain -> cein
If c is pronounced as k, just write k. If c is pronounced as s, just write s.
S sound in the word vision can be written as zh.
Example: usually -> yuuzhêli
If s is pronounced as z just write z.
Change th to its older representations to differentiate both sounds. I don't have them on my keyboard so I'll just write them as th for now.
No silent letters, no double consonants. This is an example with a short sentence:
If English was written like this, it would be much more consistent with its spelling
If Inglish wos ritên laik this, it wud bii mâc moor kênsistênt
What about those words which have a weak pronunciation? Write them differently according to these rules or just write the strong form and mark them as exceptions.
This is something I just made up. I hope you liked it. It could be improved
Something I've never really heard mentioned is the fact that the way in which words are spelled can make them look cool in writing and help keep a certain tone. Like the word "sword" would not sound as cool as if it were spelled "sord". And the word "acquiesce" sounds much more regal than "comply".
Wonderful! I am putting that in the updated version of this video when I make it!
A reform could change some of the most strange and unnecessary things while keeping the morphological aspect intact. For example, with light - lighten keep the 't', no problem. But why would anyone in their right mind want this 'gh' which is literally NEVER pronounced and 'i' which is pronounced 'ai'? I'll die on the hill that it should be lait - laiten.
Also, homophones aren't that much of a problem. A much lesser problem then what people like to present them as. We have this wonderful thing called CONTEXT. Thanks to it, the Chinese and the French can speak freely, without going: OMG, did he mean paix or pets... The same would apply to night and knight. There's no real need to distinguish them in writing, no one would confuse them if we didn't
@@mrgriboman371 well of course, my point is that it’s not impossible because of those facts, it’s that those facts do serve a useful purpose, the true barrier is and remains the broad diversity of English as a language
The problem with lait - laiten is that I immediately thought it would be pronounced as late and not light. But we could spell light as lite
@@АлександрХазанчук the reason you even thought this way is that English orthography is a joke. No one would ever think that "lait" should be pronounced as late if it wasn't for hundreds of years of this inconsistent monstrosity. And spelling it as lite changes nothing. We still play by the arbitary rules of English spelling with 'i' being 'ai' and a silent 'e'
@@АлександрХазанчук 🎵don’t add w, don’t add x, and don’t add y or z, just add silent e!🎵
@@АлександрХазанчукhmmm, so the sun's rays are low in sun, or maybe in calories? (Sunlite)
Portuguese's spelling reform is a sign of what not to do. Now everyone writes differently.
Maybe so but getting rid of Greek spellings was the correct way to go.
@@RoyalKnightVIIINope.
@@RomaIX kkkkkkkk
To my knowledge it's has very few problems, there's only different dialectal word and structural choices, but phonetically it's all standard. Writting outside of it can and likely will be understandable, but isn't the standard.
One thing people usually don't think about is what a nightmare a full-scale spelling reform would be for the deaf community. Those who are deaf from the birth still learn the written form of a language to exist in the society, but it's basically logography for them, as far as I understand.
@@astrOtuba oh shit you’re right, I hadn’t thought about that perspective. That’s a very good point. Honestly, it wouldn’t just be deaf people too, it would seriously affect those living with a lot of disabilities.
I don’t understand why discussions about spelling reform are always so hypothetical. Spelling reforms have happened all over the world in the last century or so, was that actually a problem for deaf people who write in those languages?
@@felipevasconcelos6736 well so part of the reason that spelling reforms are hypothetical is that they are hypothetical. Languages tend to create separate spaces and information doesn’t flow in or out of them perfectly. So knowing what spelling reforms were like for disabled and L2 speakers isn’t always the easiest, but the issue is that most spelling reforms haven’t been done in contexts where disabled or minority communities were relevant to or part of the discussion. So we can’t very easily check how deaf Chinese people handled the transition from traditional to simplified characters or how deaf Germans felt about their reform.
Somehow my favorite channel. You are a wonderful mix of language and esoteric game lore. Just like the ancient scholars a man of many skills.
@@alexandersen1987 lmao, thanks! Be warned though, it’s only gonna get more mixed from here, my next video is partway done with the editing and it’s def not in either of those two categories. I also have a 17 page video script that I’ve been calling my opus magnum simply titled “Sleep”
@@aditopian well still I figure a dude who appreciates the birthplace of the reconquista is gonna have good taste.
You are very eloquent and have very interesting points regarding language matters.
Plus your irony and humor are divine.
@@Rafford96 thanks! I do enjoy hearing that, especially cause my ling vids don’t do that well compared to my other ones lol 😊
A full reform is nearly impossible as you say and mostly unnecessary.
Minor changes such as the odd diacritic for unusual stress or sounds and readding Eth/Thorn would be my recommendation.
@@nealjroberts4050 I’m not even opposed to a large scale overhaul of the system, I just think it would never be feasible or effective in its goals
Eth and thorn are mostly superfluous. I think their main reason they get so much attention is that people want quirky letters in their alphabet. Because let's face it, English uses a pretty boring version of the Latin alphabet (no ñ, no ą, no ō, no ǔ, no ĉ... just w, j and u, like everyone else).
And how often people propose bringing back ï? Ï is just as valid and useful as thorn and eth. I'd argue that Æ is more useful than those three together. Not as funky looking, that's all.
The main pain point is inconsistency, and th is pretty consistent, even if ambiguous. but gh? ough? ph? Even good old vowels are highly inconsistent, æ is the real way to go :D
2:40 glottal stops aren’t silent…
The points you mention in the video feel more like challenges to be overcome rather than things that dissuade spelling reform, but I ultimately agree with your conclusion. Maintaining some etymological spelling to make writing more informative, but making some intuitive changes over time that native speakers agree on is the way to go in my opinion as well. My main gripe with the video is the dismissive tone towards spelling reform. If we are to hope that people will even want to try to suggest those intuitive changes, stating that spelling reforms aren't needed (or possible) just discourages that discussion from happening in the first place imo. Overall I think that spelling reform probably should take a long time and be done methodically and democratically as it shouldn't be just one person making the changes, but many people and that takes time. It's a language that *people* speak after all, the people should be in charge of how it's changed, not just one organization or even one person.
"If we are to hope that people will even want to try suggest those intuative changes" i think he meant nonstandard spellings (like tho) becoming more accepted, rather than people suggesting changes then agreeing on those changes to become the norm, unless i missunderstood you
@@donkbonk5430 So the thing is that you’re largely right that I am dismissive of spelling reforms, at least as far as English is concerned. The contexts where spelling reforms have been successful have largely been in contexts where there is a regulated formal standard (e.g. Mandarin or High German). Many people learn those languages, even in the countries where they’re used as second language varieties, and those reforms only really worked in one country. If you were to attempt that with English, you’d need the unified consent of every English speaking nation. Probably also the assistance of many countries which don’t use English as an official or de facto language, but where there’s a high population of learners. Any reform will, necessarily leave people behind or force them to learn a system that doesn’t make sense to them. For example, you’d almost certainly insist, were you in charge of the decision, to spell “February” without the first , but I pronounce that , many people do. It’s fairly rare, but by removing it people like me would need to learn to pronounce an extra letter. A professor of mine once pointed out that every weirdly spelled word is normal to someone, and that’s kind of an issue with the idea of a spelling reform in English.
But that’s also the point I was making, I don’t oppose new spellings being added to the dictionary along side old ones. There’s nothing wrong with unabridged dictionaries having archaic spellings listed, and doing what organizations like the Spanish language academy does, where it just adds words as they come up is a far more appropriate way to update spelling than what I was saying wouldn’t work which was the controlled and directed reformation by a central body.
What’s the point of spelling reform? It’s totally unnecessary
@@EresirThe1st spelling reforms can be and are certainly very useful, but useful and necessary aren’t quite the same thing.
@@aditopian That's about my angle personally, it would be cool/useful but it's not necessary. We can understand each other through purely text just fine. For me now I find interest in it as a mode of expression/exploration of alternative ways in which English can be represented rather than something that needs to be done for moralistic reasons
Oiseau (and French in general) is a false example, because there are precise rules behind: "oi" is ALWAYS "wa", "s" between vowels is ALWAYS "z", "eau" is ALWAYS a closed "o", and in general is possible to write a word knowing its sound; they have true RULES. English... well, it needs a spelling reform, definitely!
I feel like most English dialects pronounce the Ts in lighten and brighten.
Love your vids and your story towards a pragmatic perspective on prescriptiveness. I think this advice applies to all best practices. The best best practices tend to become self evident with time.
You italicize, bold, or ALLCAPS the word being accented in a sentence - depending on if the person is speaking slyly, dryly, or in an aggressively loud way.
@@TheGrinningViking see that would work in theory but I keep breaking my pencils when I try to bolden written words and don’t even get me started on handwriting italics! Cursive was already too hard 😢
@@aditopian To handwrite italics you need to travel to Italy, write the word there, then go back
@@dumbcarbattery5916 oh well that’s just too expensive, affording tickets that frequently in this economy? No thank you! I guess I’ll just have to stick to never stressing any words ever 😔
Aww cursive is easy@@aditopian
@@Napoleon_e2 cursive hasn’t been easy… at least not since the accident
Okay, I admit french would have been incomprehensible even in its written form if a reform was put to place. So old archaic spelling can help someone be understood even for foreigners 🤔
I'm a major supporter of bringing back þ as a letter. It just looks cool plus if we can have a letter that just makes a ks sound (X) we should have one for th, which is a very common sound in English. I also think very minor changes that are universal would be beneficial, like eliminating ph for just f. So fone rather than phone. As far as I know not a single English speaking country pronounces ph not as an F.
But also, I think a solution for foreigners learning English or English speaking kids is to take a page from what Japan does to teach kids Kanji. You put the Kanji in bold but then under it is hiragana so they learn to pronounce it. So an example for English could be read = rëd and red = red. Or apple = apple and able = äble
@@ImSomethingSpecial I’ve talked about that with some others, and I think it’s a good idea to have a system to assist learners like Arabic and Japanese have which might have to be regionally varied, but I think it couldn’t hurt.
I love this type of videos where people question the bases of a Spelling reform in English or other languages that haven't updated their spelling or way to write for the sake of etimology or any other reason such as laziness.
And so... I'm gonna give my personal opinion for each point, that is without being an expert in both, English, and even less in French. So Do mind me if I have errors, I love to learn and to hear different types of opinions in this topic.
(I have had to divide this comment into three parts because it was too long, sorry for that).
1) "Writting and Reading".
I'll start this topic with something I have in mind and that's that there are two ways of looking at writting in general: The person who writes and the person who readas.
We know for sure that the person who writes needs to be efficient at being able to put out the letters or characters from it's hand and the longer and unnecesary the word the more taxing it will be for the writer.
Buuuut on the other hand we have the readers. If a word is longer but it gives you enough knowledge to know how to read it then it will be faster and not if the word is shorter but it doesn't give you any clear rules for how to read it.
For example we have Chinese that has characters that can be related to one word or they'll need another character to form a full word. Most characters due to having this less-syllable possibilities issue will need a lot of strokes to be formed and it could be taxing for the hand. Meanwhile cursive writting in other languges like English allows the writer to well, Write without lifting the pen that many times or doing that many strokes for a single word. But as the strokes are much longer than just a single character it makes it harder to recognize what the meaning of a sentence is.
With that I mean that if we connect one word to one character and we learn how to read this second type the sentences will be easier to read (Less space and compact) but it will be demanding for the writer.
2) 2:17 "Silent letters are useful at recognizing patterns".
Patterns doesn't mean they need to keep the core word to know it comes from it.
If you learn that "Light", a noun, after becoming a verb in its past participle version adds "-en" at the end of a word and it removes the "t" while reading then we have a pattern.
For example: "Lighen". But that's not even what it's happening in the example you've given.
All the words mentioned has that "t" at when they become a past participle such as: "Bright" /ˈbraɪt/ becoming "Brighten" /ˈbraɪ.t̬n/.
And you may say "Yeah yeah but then why we have an "e" in middle of "then" for this example?" Well, that is because some accents don't remark what's called "Syllabic consonants" as much as the one I've mentioned.
Usually it should be /ˈbraɪ.t̬ən/ but when an /n/ is word-final and it's followed by a schwa (/ə/) it tends to remove that schwa in favor of faster reading.
And That's a pattern that works almost every single time for example it happens with this others examples too:
Bottle /ˈbɑː.t̬l/, Bottom /ˈbɑː.t̬m/ or Father /ˈfɑ.ðɚ/ (And not /ˈfɑː.ðəɹ/, in other dialects it even removes the /ɹ/ like: /ˈfɑː.ðə/).
What I mean by this is... "Centre" and "Center" is a word that was changed due to this same reason. Most words ending in were actually pronounced as /təɹ/ and not /tɹə/ so changing how they look doesn't affect at all and the pattern will still be there.
Like: Centre -> Center, Metre -> Meter, Theatre -> Theater.
But it can also work with other patterns such as "Colour" that aren't pronounced as /ˈkʌloʊɹ/ but as /ˈkʌl.əɹ/.
So: Flavour -> Flavor, Savour -> Savor, Glamour -> Glamor.
I know I could follow with this patterns... But I think it's clear that all this words were actually pronounced as they were written in past but due to French and the Printed Press not following the latest changes people keept this spellings.
3) 3:01 "Redundant or silent letters are useful to eliminate homophones".
That's absolutely true, you have the "Knight / Night" example but I could also add "Hola / Ola" in Spanish or "Pero / Però" in Italian.
I do understand that some of this in English were pronounced like it's written but it's useful as nobody would ever say /kˈnaɪt/.
And I love your example of "Liaison" because it can happen in English too! Specially in Non-rhotic accents.
For example: "The painter acts-", in non-rhotic accents "painter" is pronouned like /ˈpeɪn.tə/ buuut that final /ɹ/ is pronounced when the other word following starts with a vowel like: /ˈpeɪn.tə~ɹ ˈækts/ (I put ~ because even if it's in between the two words it connects motsly with the first word). That's what called in English "Linking R" that says that if a word ends with a vowel and the other starts with another vowel there will be an /ɹ/.
It can even be recognized inside of words like: "Drawing" /ˈdrɔː~ɹɪŋ/ because "Draw" ends with a vowel and "-ing" starts with one.
The proooblem comes when "Ough" for example where even if this words mostly end with that combination they all make considerable different sounds like: /ʌf/, /ɔ:/, /u:/ and even /ɒk/. And they are Not differentiated between each other as most words.
Is it really necessary to keep the French's etimology once again? I don't think so.
4) 4:47, "Other accents can have features the other doesn't".
I like this point but I also don't.
For example in Spanish we have "Hierba" and "Yerba". Why does this happen? Well, because the semi-consonant /j/ tends to be pronounced as /ʝ/ when word-initial. Some places use it in one way and other in the other way. Does it make it more difficult?
Another example is "Video" and "Vídeo", some people put the stress in the last syllable /bi.ˈdeo/ and others at the beginning /ˈbi.deo/. Does it represent a Big issue when people read or write? No.
In English the same thing happens with the letter "Oo" that can be in some cases /ɑː/ or /ɒ/. Such as in : "Lot" and "Hard".
In G.A. "Lot" and "Hard" had the phoneme /ɑ/ meanwhile in R.P. they are differentiated like /ɒ/ and /ɑ/.
Does that mean it's solved? No really, we also have stuff like "Cloth" /klɒθ/ and /klɔθ/ in different accents too. And as /ɔ/ appears in both accents that means that we cannot simple remove /ɔ/ for the sake of having /ɒ/ instead even if some people don't have it.
So in some cases it is clear that having a single phoneme is fine meanwhile in others not.
Another example in Spanish, "Casa" and "Caza", in some accents the "z" in "Caza" is pronounced as /s/ (Just like in Casa) but as there are some accents that pronounce "Zz" as /θ/ instead they get differentiated.
In Romance languages this difference tends to fall in consonants meanwhile in Germanic languages it is in the vowels as explained in 6:23. And most Germanic languages doesn't have any problem with this as they use this silent letters or Diacritics with strict rules even if they may have way differentiated accents.
And yeah... even if people think rhotic and non-rhotic accents are so different in how they pronounce they all can be simplified and most people will understand the rules of homophones pretty easily as much as people have understood or took by "force" those rules that most natives doesn't care about.
5) 5:37 "Limitations in orthography and accents".
Yeah... You gotta make changes and of course that means adding or removing letter in convinience and favor of efficient writting and faster reading + removing irregularities to make spelling and spoken words closer so people can learn faster.
German for example had a "Recent" orthography reform in 1996 that chagned how some words and mostly consonants are put into the word in a way most people from the old way to write could understand it.
And even if that's not the case we have extreme situations like Turkish that changed from the Arabic writting system to Latin's one without much trouble over the years. It is clear that if we want an English reform it has to be in a modified version of Latin, that is having the same letters but modifying them or introducing new but similar-looking letters for some words.
The problem doesn't come from "This accent is stronger than this other one" but rather "How can we make people read older texts if we change the spelling?".
It has risks and consequenses too. And even if the changes are perfect, they break Everything to make it perfectly suitable for the English languages and everything is solved... People still need to use it and like it so it doesn't fall into the oblivion.
It's a long-term loan that takes a lot of time. Even more for people who are learning the English language around the world.
Because yeah... Globalization means that most people will learn the English language and use it in different ambits, and changing them takes a lot of Money, Time and Effort. Something most people won't risk for as you said a ""Minor"" problem.
6) Yeah, the 7:24 example is hilarious, but that's why people will have to choose how different words look like the most appealing and not just what one person likes the most.
Btw... "Bitches" even though reducted the final "s" is pronounced like /z/ so it should be . And I've never seen /aɪ/ being spelled like "uy". But for example if you spell it like "rait" or "rayt" most people will understand it much easier.
Also... This "Syllable Reduction" mostly changing non-stressed syllables into /ə/ or /ɪ/ doesn't change the meaning of a word and it cannot be pronounced otherwise. For example "Banana" /bəˈnæn.ə/ or /bəˈnɑː.nə/ will never be something like: /bæˈnæn.æ/ as that's unnatural.
What you must care about for example is "Syllable Stress" like "Conduct" /kənˈdʌkt/ and /ˈkɑːn.dʌkt/ depending on the context.
And that's important, even though it has the same word "Conduct" it changes depending it's a noun or a verb. And the stress is mostly consistant when it's a noun at the first syllable while the verb in the second syllable. And still they are written the same.
Wouldn't it be better if we add something in between so we can easily know when it's a verb or a noun just by looking at it without the context like in Spanish like: "Ejército", "Ejercito" and "Ejercitó". Where you can easily know where it's pronounced and also which type of word it is.
And yes, "Word stress" is also a thing. But English speakers have never had any issue with it while reading.
Also, there was a time in English where "--" was used to accomodate longer pauses and even more in English mostly in poetry.
So for examply in that example we could use something like: "-I didn't stab him", "I didn't -stab him" or "I didn't stab -him" and it's easy to read, type and write but it comes with the issue of "Noise" when it's abundant. So it could just be a "Feature" in some types of texts and that's it. Even " ' " could replace it like "I didn't 'stab him" and most people won't mind that small line before the word. But we would be making up rules that they naturally didn't appear. So it will most likely never appear in real texts.
Feeeew! That was long huh? Well, I've finished with this comment.
If you have any question leave me know below and if I have any error comment it too! I love to learn and hear everyone's opinion.
I'm so sorry for making it so long but I hope I made myself clear and that you learn something that you didn't know before.
And that's important, even though it has the same word "Conduct" it changes depending it's a noun or a verb. And the stress is mostly consistant when it's a noun at the first syllable while the verb in the second syllable. And still they are written the same.
Wouldn't it be better if we add something in between so we can easily know when it's a verb or a noun just by looking at it without the context like in Spanish like: "Ejército", "Ejercito" and "Ejercitó". Where you can easily know where it's pronounced and also which type of word it is.
And yes, "Word stress" is also a thing. But English speakers have never had any issue with it while reading.
Also, there was a time in English where "--" was used to accomodate longer pauses and even more in English mostly in poetry.
So for examply in that example we could use something like: "-I didn't stab him", "I didn't -stab him" or "I didn't stab -him" and it's easy to read, type and write but it comes with the issue of "Noise" when it's abundant. So it could just be a "Feature" in some types of texts and that's it. Even " ' " could replace it like "I didn't 'stab him" and most people won't mind that small line before the word. But we would be making up rules that they naturally didn't appear. So it will most likely never appear in real texts.
Feeeew! That was long huh? Well, I've finished with this comment.
If you have any question leave me know below and if I have any error comment it too! I love to learn and hear everyone's opinion.
I'm so sorry for making it so long but I hope I made myself clear and that you learn something that you didn't know before.
Finnish has perferct letter to sound and sound to letter synchronisation
I actually pronounce the 't' in words like "soften".
many people with English as not their first language say those words like that
@@htq248don't we say "ofTen"?
@@interbeamproductions it varies for me, but I’ve realised that mainly immigrants or something pronounce the words more like thy are spelt, and that regular civilians say Ofen
I think there's some value to some limited spelling reforms, even in English; it's just the broad "let's redo the whole alphabet according to IPA" reforms that scream "teenage linguist". There's a good case to be made for changing through to thru and though to tho, without needing to upend the whole language, you know? And we actually make such word-by-word reforms all the time (gaol into jail). Looking at situations like that, wondering whether it's spelled solvable or solveable, homogenous or homogeneous, embarrassed vs harassed, it's natural to look at a very phonemic system like Italian's or Romanian's and be jealous. English can be a difficult language to learn and the writing system doesn't help. Unfortunately though, standardization and reform won't help much at all with that. For example, you listed 6 words and claimed that they all contain silent t's, although only three of them (fasten, moisten, soften) do. The other three have a glottal stop, which is a common allophone of /t/ in English. If we didn't pronounce the t in brighten, it would be identical to Brian! So if we reformed the language to be phonemic, we'd likely have a lot of things like that pass through the cracks, and then what's the point? We'd lose the fantastic etymological nature of the language while not really gaining much phonetic value.
I think we should honestly just teach IPA in schools. It addresses most of the issues that reformists have better than any reform ever could.
I don’t think spelling reform should be implemented for English at this point, but it’s still a super fun exercise to try to make a spelling reform that doesn’t look ugly and is still fairly phonemic
Keep up the good content. (Been here since the first Cultist Simulator Lore video) ♥
@@RockerInASuit thanks! I’ve got some stuff in the works that I’m excited for and I’m looking forward to trying to make more things again 😊
@@aditopian that sounds great and I'm here for it.
The spelling of modern English comes from standardising the language (most dialects in England pronounce things differently so written English is a compromise between them). It also partially comes from historical English spellings but hasn't changed like the spoken language, if you pronounce written English how it's spelt you'd essentially be speaking Middle English for example knight used to be pronounced k-nikht and light used to be pronounced likht. Every dialect is different and the only ones that matter are those from England. It's impossible to actually reform English spelling because most of the dialects pronounce it differently, for example if the phrase "A bottle of water" (which is used by americans to make fun of the English even though they don't pronounce it properly either) was spelt how you pronounce it in most American English dialects it would be "a baadul aa' waaderr", some English dialects would spell it as "u bo'ul o' wor'u" whilst many others would spell it as "a botul ov worter". This shows we couldn't restandardise English spelling because of all of the differences
@@zobandzeff exactly! That’s part of what I was saying! I’ve lived in a few parts of the US, and my accent is kinda mixed, but as a result no matter where I go I speak differently than everyone else. A spelling reform would almost certainly just result in me, and a lot of people needing to learn new and even more arbitrary spellings all for the sake of a system that doesn’t even solve the problems it would claim to fix.
French native, struggled with writing system as a child but always passionated by language so... That wasn't a problem (for French***). But, I thought it was a problem for the English language. And then, one day (thanks to poetry and poets), I saw it : I had a misconception about the spelling. I had a "French vision" so, I wasn't able to write what I was hearing, I wasn't able to pronounce (with the right phonetic) what I was reading. Eurêka ! After that, English was a new world : if we know the rules, we can apply the right vision. I see now the beauty of this language, I need to improve my skills about it, and I think that , English, by its nature, is beautiful and doesn't "need" a spelling reform. Or if it needs it, a looot of languages need it!! So : I agree.
PS: in French we say (with the liaison) as if ut was written "the grant édifice" where "an" is pronounced the same. A part of the French population is using the liaisons, but not all of the French. So, even between us, sometimes, we need an explication, funny ! And it depends of the region, liaisons tend to be slightly different, a nightmare for the foreigners hahaha.
Ps2: "Bichęs....", seems to have a "Turkish logic" (yes I exaggerate of course) but in the English language! It's easy to read but weird for now
About which variety you could use, you can perfectly make a standard variety that is easily recognizable by all varieties without being too familiar. Spanish have a special standarized variety for academic, formal and even dubing that is understood easily by all the spanish variants and isn't particularly close to neither of them. The transatlantic accent could be a good place to start
@@cranmzvg so that sounds like a lovely idea, but it probably wouldn’t work, there exists an incredible diversity of variation in English, and it’s very likely no such variety exists, and such a system might very well have more unusual spelling as a result of that. Even though I’m no stranger to them and eager to listen/understand, some of the rural varieties of English spoken in the UK are actually very hard for me to understand and the compromise between just those two may not be materially possible.
English must not have any spelling reform for its spellings are just fine. That's my opinion.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it, that's what I think
Interesting that this appeared on my recommended. Hello.
Just make the relation between the spelling and the pronunciation reliable, please.
I’m tired of not knowing how to write words I’ve heard and used dozens of times and vice-versa
@@Avalk it is a pain we must all bear unfortunately 😔
Spelling riform shud cume natrallee via THE INTERNET!!! (The best example i have is Tho)
I think a spelling reform would be far more useful to non-natives (who learn the spoken language at the same time at which they learn the written language) than it would be for natives (who already know how to speak when they learn how to write).
@@Friday.S that’s certainly true, and proposals have been made for that, though such a thing would have to be specific to the communities in question. I advocate for something like what Arabic has for vowels where you have special markings, but you’re not expected to have to rely on those after a certain point and they’re mostly intended for learners and children
I think the issue is that while a lot of old ways of spelling maintain differences lost due to phonemic mergers, in some cases the opposite happened. And also, in some cases, existing words sounded differently and yet were spelled the same.
Example: live (said laiv) and live (said liv)
Abuse (said abyus) and abuse (said abyuz)
In all of these cases when spoken the difference is clear, but when written, not so much. Which is a massive issue.
One of the reasons for this is that spellings tend to be able to be pronounced in a few different way. Ow (as /ow/ and /aw/) the ough and s.
But this has a simple fix. Diacritics. A spelling reform is needed to clear this out. And any massive one which undertakes the redoing of the whole spelling system is horrible and doomed to fail. But a simple diacritization, could really help.
For example, ow for /ow/ and ów for /aw/
ś for /z/ and s for /s/
í for /ai/ and i for /i/
We could also add another layer for reduced vowels, and for emphasis, but u get the point.
The system is not only outdated in preserving differences, but it’s outdated in not showing them too.
Edit: I also dislike how you made the issue of not being able to spell according to speech seem so insignificant. Because it’s not. Further more, in a lot of the parts of the English world, people have issues with spelling correctly. This mainly hurts people from low socio economic levels, which don’t have the access to the education necessary to learn how to spell correctly. And this is why we need a spelling reform. Because if we continue to write in archaic ways, we are doomed to make correct spelling and writing a thing only accessible for high class society (the educated). This only furthers economic inequality. This could also hurt the poor and people from historically opressed social groups, who’s bad spelling could make them stand out in job markets in work environments. So yes, being able to spell according to speech is really necessary.
I agree, English and French do not need a spelling reform, they need a speech reform. We need to start to pronounce that silent letters again, like our ancestors did. It would help to avoid alophones, it would make languages reacher and cleaner. I've read recently that through 60 years in England people stopped pronouncing "R" in "Arm". Earlier English lost rolled "R". It's a pity.
Of course I'm not serious. But I would like it to be so 🙂
@@JekaterinaZyryanova I already pronounce the first in February in my native idiolect, so I’m right there with you!
Some English dialects still roll their Rs: look at the West Country or Scottish English (not the related Scots btw).
Btw which R in February am I using since I say _feb ree_ ? 😆
@@nealjroberts4050 no clue but I pronounce it like Feb-rue-airy
@@aditopian Hmmm, I suppose if I stress the word I'll say _feb roo ee_ like January is usually _jan yoo ee_
I feel that the points you make are very valid but I do feel that if we could magically do it English would do well with a spelling reform the amount of people needing to learn English has grown a lot and having words not have silent letters would aid both young native speakers and learners the amount of homophones has certainly increased since the Old English period but based on my studies there would be even more homophones if half the old words of that time still existed which is why I think many homophones naturally dissapeared over time if I could have my own way though I would personally prefer us returning to the old Runic script since it is where thorn came from and has 10 vowel letters since it was designed for Germanic language to aid in spelling reform for English
The damage is done
this channel is a hidden gem
@@Me-mt9rq thank you very much, I try my best, even if my videos are riddled with errors and are all made at 2am while listening to my friends yell about the most recent game we’ve been playing
8:05 I’ll be honest this is the only real beef I have with this video, there’s good points of keeping English how it is, and there’s good points for changing it, and I’m fine with most of it. This however isn’t a linguistic feature of English, no English textbook would teach you this as part of grammar or syntax, this falls more into pragmatics, the semantics of the word are all the same, the only reason the sentence changes is a result of spoken language, not written, in theory this can occur in every language, and isn’t specific to English, languages like Hungarian *can* move words freely and put focus heavy words first, that’s a linguistic feature of Hungarian and other possible languages with free word order specifically, because of the intense grammar laws the language has. I get that this is super petty and I may not even argue my points well, but what I’m trying to say is, great video, and although I personally want some modified English spelling for consistency, this *one* point of evidence just doesn’t work as well as the others in my mind.
@@radioactiveseaotter I don’t think it’s petty! It’s a good counterpoint. I do think that it’s important to remember that, as you have done, we do mark stressed words differently, and that’s going to have to contend with word internal stress. It also, might just be me, but when I emphasize a word, unstressed syllables do take on full vowels as part of that process, so if we want to accurately portray that, it’s something to be aware of.
Yea, most times when people propose spelling reforms, they don't want to reform the spelling. Rather throw out the whole system and start a new. A good spelling reform is legible to people now, without needing to learn new rules, rather expanding on what people know.
The best spelling reform ideas I've had over some years are to take words that are just poorly spelled, like "limb", "delight", or "indict". Which have silent letters that are not historically accurate, and are confusing. You can also take a word like "impossible" and spell it "inpossible" to reconnect it to the "in-" perfix.
Make double consonants more consistent. Often times there will be words with double consonants, and the it doesn't make sense historically or logically. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, so just trust me.
Words that are spelled with a "-y" at the end and make a long E sound could be spelled with an "-ie" like in German and French. This would make it more logical when adding suffixes to words like taking "goodly" and changing it to "goodliness". Currently the change from Y to I doesn't make intuitive sense, but with this new system you'd be taking silent E ending and switching it out for the "-ness" suffix. Now going from "goodlie" to "goodliness". Except for words that ended in a G in Old English/Proto Germanic, which changed into a Y sound in Middle English. Those would be kept with the Y at the end, like "busy" or "holy".
A way to indicate word stress would be nice too, especially for dictionaries and non English natives. Take the words "incite" and "inight". They are said the same, but have different stress patterns. So use an acute accent like Spanish or Italian making "incíte" and "ínight.
When a word ends in an F and an S is added to make it plural, don't change the F to a V. People slurring words together to make it easier to pronounce is common in English speech. So why does the orthography in this one instance change. IT would make, "leaves", "calves", "elves" become "leafs", "calfs", "elfs".
Finally removing silent E from words where it makes very little sense, like it "one", or "have", or "seethe". One problem, the "on" and "hav" don't look very good. However "seeth" looks good. You could change the weird "ve" ending where to E does nothing to a B, like in "have" or "give" or "live" or "leave". Making "hab", "gib", "lib", and "leab". I don't know about the last part.
But I like English's historical spelling for the most part, I just wish the orthography represented its Germanic words better through the spelling. Unfortunately the best type of spelling reform is one where you take a look at every word, and individually change each one. Which takes time and is not very radical. Also I don't like the letter Q. I don't think it's going anywhere, but I don't like it for very complicated reasons. (Also the Latin alphabet does have 6 vowels, because Y is a vowel. Which meaning you can match them perfectly to the six vowel sounds of Proto-Germanic. Which would account for the vowel mergers that would account for all Germanic languages, which is why they have a lot of vowels.)
@@dragonapop these are all very good points, especially about the q, I also resent its existence. Though the thing about Latin is that yes, the Latin alphabet had 6 graphemes for vowels. It’s important to remember that was used to write Greek words. This is why the Spanish word for the letter is still translated into English as “Greek I”, because it made a sound that my Latin professor said was something like a rounded high front vowel.
@@aditopian ya
@aditopian But also, Y is used for Slavic languages and Germanic ones. But your point stands.
Learning English was easy for me, but many people almost repeated a year because of it's horrible to learn spelling
@@dungeontnt language acquisition is a complicated topic and it’s even more complicated when it comes to second language acquisition. I don’t know where you’re from, but I’d be willing to bet that not enough was done early to properly prepare students for or support them in learning English and they weren’t given enough input in English to actually learn it sufficiently.
@@aditopian it's common around the world, I'm form north Macedonia where people complain that a total of three words are not spelled phonetically 🤔
@@dungeontnt people will find excuses to complain about things when it comes to language. I find that, unfortunately, resources are not adequately provided to children to ensure success in learning languages. Here in the US, Spanish verb conjugations and Chinese characters/tone serve as the primary barrier to children learning languages. I very much sympathize with people who struggle to learn languages like English because of the spelling, but I wonder if it’s actually the fault of the spelling or if we aren’t setting children up for failure in their language learning journeys.
@@aditopian spelling is the only hard part of English, for a lot of people, only a few hard sounds like the are in the language...
It would be an easier language then Macedonian if the spelling was good
6:10 No, you don't _need_ silent letters! Silent letters are an accident of sound changes that have not yet been corrected by a spelling reform. I think you're confusing digraphs (and trigraphs) with silent letters. The "h" in "she" isn't "silent", it's part of a digraph "sh". But yeah, English probably has too many digraphs too, and they should ideally be replaced with new letters. (And there's plenty of letters available in European languages for these sounds that already exists in most modern fonts, so you don't need to invent something entirely new.)
@@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug I would argue that digraphs and trigraphs are a form of extra letter, since they cannot be predicted from the others and just because they use up two character spaces doesn’t really mean they’re not a single cohesive unit
really English should use the Swiss method where everyone writes however they want, having a standard makes it unfair for everyone else that doesnt speak like them.
so if everyone just wrote how they want to and say, then it'd be like listening to someone with a different accent except with writing.
Aye ner, this iznt gana work for inglind, fa ixampul everywans aksent iz different an slang isnt commin with everywan, leik am speekin hew a wud te me marras
It wont work in england
@@Shinathen ąv cǫrs it wud, äftr ä bit ąv taim, jyd get jūws tu moust pīpuls wæj ąv raiting änd id luc pritī cūl.
pląs ði wæj jiūw rait waz instinlī rīdibul wiþ nou problims
I say we flip the whole thing upside down. Pronunciation reform... Hooked on phonics 2.0. Undo the Great Vowel Shift and the Norman invasion. I jest, but perhaps only a smidge.
@@andrewgraham2546 are you suggesting we invade France and force them to use English as the language of social prestige until they have a bunch of insane synonyms? Cause I’m 100% on board with that!
great explanation! keep it up, dude, you`re fire!
Thanks!
7:05 this joke is brilliant
@@vladthemagnificent9052 thanks lol, I am fond of jokes like that
7:27 yes I do, weirdly agressive stranger
I'm not so sure about the "lots of vowels" argument at 6:30ish. I'm admittedly not too familiar with the other languages, but there's a perfectly reasonable analysis of English (that works for both GenAm and SSBE) that has only six phonemic vowels: [ɪ ɛ æ ɒ ə ʊ].
Absolutely agreed with the rest of this, though.
@@Deusovi I’m not familiar with that analysis, but it seems at least initially dubious, do you have any links? I’d be glad to read about it!
@@aditopian in this analysis, the vowels are categorized approximately as such:
ɪ ɪː ɪj
ɛ ɛː ɛj
a ɑː ɑj aw
ɔ ɔː oj əw
ɵ ɵː ʉw
ə əː
left-to-right, the columns are the base vowel, pre-R vowels (in british english), j-diphthongs and w-diphthongs.
Geoff Lindsey is advocating for such analysis i’m sure. you can watch his videos to learn more
@@kijeenki ah I think I’ve seen that one, I’m not sure I fully buy it but maybe. I’m not a phoneticist so I wouldn’t be the best to respond to that
Yo bro is back!
May English orthography never, EVER change. I don’t want to disconnect us from the written works of our past, or from the clear etymology embedded in the spelling conventions, or fracture all our dialects by having a different spelling convention for each of them.
And then what happens in 50 years when there are more sound changes? There would just be endless changing of spelling. It’s stupid. 5 year olds can learn English spelling, so all the ESLs complaining about it can go kick rocks.
@@EresirThe1st to quote the guy who wrote the closing song I used (tho this song is about teaching math, but close enough) 🎵it’s so simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it🎵
NO WAY ASTURIAS PFP
Asturias is the best. Not a day goes by that I don't wish I were in Uviéu.
OH MY GOD YES I WAS GONNA MAKE THIS EXACT VIDEO! thank you for saving the work on my end 🙏 EXACTLY my thoughts :]
great video!
The Germanic script (runes) is better suited for Germanic languages precisely because it has more graphemes for vowels. The Anglo-Saxon futhorc has 11 (ᚢ, ᚩ, ᛁ, ᛇ, ᛖ, ᛟ, ᚪ, ᚫ, ᚣ, ᛡ, & ᛠ), making it quite suitable for writing today's English phonemically. As English spelling has always been descriptive, not prescriptive, it has never been fully standardised. Some variation does not exclude intelligibility in context, e.g. colo(u)r.
This was a really good video, dude.
@@MaxiusTheGod thanks! 😊 I really appreciate it! Though I definitely have a lot of improvement on the audio and visuals I need to work on!
i don't believe in spelling reform, but I do think as a person who helps teach English that adding accents to vowels would be a huge benefit to people learning English as a second language
@@jackathupurtill1948 it certainly couldn’t help, we’d just need to find a system that works best for the people learning the language
@@aditopian the fact that each vowel can be pronounced in a huge variety of ways is an issue for people learning English. As a Spanish and Portuguese speaker, I can tell you that accent marks are hugely beneficial in pronouncing new words
@@jackathupurtill1948 this is completely true
Another point to consider about an English spelling reform is how much longer will all these dialects remain simply dialects. Internationality plus the Internet may have slowed the process down, but I believe the dialect-to-language evolution is inevitable. If a spelling reform happens now, or soon, right before the divides bloom into true branches off the language tree, that could cause future (and perhaps worse) spelling issues with those languages, especially if the reform is based on another kind of contemporary-English than where the language came from.
@@voidinvoid0001 absolutely true and to make things more complicated there’s already varieties of English that have trouble with each other.
English doesn't need a spelling reform, but it could definitely have one if the demand was there. In the US, spelling is typically a subject until sixth grade. Compare that to Spanish, where natives probably know the vast majority of spelling conventions of the language by the first grade. I don't know the situation with French, but I imagine it would be similar to English. With Chinese, until third grade, half the time in the classroom is just learning the Chinese characters. And with Japanese, they have a set list of joyo kanji that are taught until middle school.
No, none of these languages NEED a spelling reform, but it does take much more effort to learn these writing systems.
@@tylerkostich6203 it arguably takes more effort to learn the systems, but the thing about learning them is that the course curriculum doesn’t really come at a cost. A lot of the resources spent teaching kids to read involves normal reading, exposure, in my experience, is the thing that really drives the process of learning to read. Even if we got rid of having kids take spelling tests we should still probably have vocabulary units to teach them words they should generally know. So while I’m not opposed to the system being easier I think that reformation doesn’t really work for a language like English, given the realities of the English language in the global context.
I agree wholeheartedly as also i think it shows history. why do we have the silent k? because it was /knix/ originally but we lost the /x/ (like in loch) and lost the k at the beginning. this is also shown in the french accent circumflex as it shows that there used to be an s after like in the french word forêt, which is forest. this can be super helpful and preserve things. i hate the people that are like 'i fixed the alphabet' no you didnt you made it worse. I would say though the vowel thing needs fixing... the vowel shift did really make english terrible.
@@thepenguinofspace9291 English spelling is far from perfect, but millions of people learn to read just fine, so I think that we deserve a little treat in the form of words like knight and indict
I understand that there are many problem we'll have to face if we want to make a spelling reform happen. I learnt English as a second language and I have no problems with rememberung the spellings, but I still want them to make sense. Although changing the spelling of all the words or changing the writing system will be to complicated, why don't we adjust the spellings a bit to make them match the existing spelling rules, We can keep silent letter when they are needed to distinguish between words (spell knight and night as knite and nite) or to show but relations. We can keep the letters that are only pronounced in certain places. Also we can keep historical spelling of words that are pronounced very differently depending on the dialect. But we could still do this and I see no harm in it:
Replace c with either k or s. I see no point in this letter, unless it doing the ch sound. So we could make c sounds like ch
Replace ph with f, ck with k, etc. Maybe even replace gh in rough with an f.
Get rid of double letters, like t in scottish
Replace the spellings of borrowed words - queue to q, creche to kresh, etc
Keep the Magic E rule and make it always work - get rid of e on have, give, but leave in like. It will help distinguish between live and liv for example or the two pronouncations of dove. We could extend it to say the it also indicates to vowels being pronounced independently to distinguish between wound and wounde
Replace ea to either ee or ea. Words like feaver, threat were very confusing for me as a beginner and there's no point in keaping e instead of spelling it as thret
Use the speliing that native speakers already developed - thru, tho, nite, coz, etc
I could keep writing, but there's a lot that can be done to simplify reading and writing, while keeping the spelling similar to old ones and understandable to all the speakers of English
@@АлександрХазанчук so the problem is that we can’t really resolve the issue without a central authority, we just have to start using new spellings and hope they catch on, which is sorta what I was getting at at the end there. The problem with that though is that some spellings which make sense to a lot of native English speakers may stick around for a while and are probably gonna be hard to get rid of as can be seen in the fact that when English speakers abbreviate “probably” it gets rendered as something like “prolly”, because it makes sense for there to be two ls there. In fact, one of my most common spelling errors is the accidental addition of double letters, not the omission of them. Ironically enough, a more consistent English might wind up with more digraphs than fewer.
Runes.
I feel like only 2 things would be good to add to English. 1 is accent markers which would help remove confusing words like read vs read & help to make it clearer what sounds vowels make which is the largest problem. & 2 which is only because I feel like adding the letter for the TH sound would be kinda helpful. Its the most common sound in English without a letter but I only say that because I use it to speed up writing stuff & waste less paper (you'll save a page or two after a couple thousand words handwriting stuff). But I feel like it'd be stupid to try & make letters like S, C & Y more simple. Also G but that's because you'd make words look weirder by using zeds, S, J & vowels more.
Edit: I also far prefer the idea of trying to keep dialects alive. I speak a wee dialect from Northern Ireland which would be a good healthy mix of Ballymena (from my great aunts), Belfast southern, Northern & Eastern dialects (from my parents, grandparents & cousins), Ards penisula rural (which has a good amount of ulster scots), South down rural (from my time in RedHigh in downpatrick) & likely a load of small loan words from the dialects my teachers & classmates spoke. Its like how you'd properly spell words like Now becomes Nai, Northern Ireland becomes Norn Iron & can't becomes cannae. I have found a bunch by arguing with the whole stupid word spelling because I prefer things to be written as I say not as some American or englishman says. Oh & another unique word is yous which is great why it isn't used in more english is wierd.
@@cillianennis9921 personally I think one of the few really good things about historical spelling is that they often still matter to someone somewhere. If we were to rework the whole system, a lot of people would be cut out from the connections to the existing system. Plus a reform would almost certainly favor a majority variety, which would double screw over minority varieties.
I still think it would be nice if we could change just a few words, ones whose spellings benefit neither connection nor dialects. Like changing indict back to indite, propelling the colloquial use of thru, tho, and altho, reducing homographs like by having both house and houce, add a helping letter to sugar and radish to get shugar and raddish, and even increasing connections with other words in cases like fiery, liquefy, and putrefy with firey, liquify, and putrify. And ideally, do SOMEthing about the word, colonel.
My own reformist ideas aside, excellent video!
@@passerbypassinbi I think that would be a great idea too. I used to live not far from where Noah Webster lived when he was writing his dictionary and I think that allowing alternative spellings into the dictionary is a fairly effective way to go about things, and that’s kind of what a lot of them do. If we start writing them that way then they will eventually get recognized by the OED and Websters.
I do also like the idea of adding more letters for etymological purposes. And fixing kernel is something I value highly, mostly because I don’t respect authority. lol
Tho I will say I have to disagree about indict, because indict is related to a bunch of other words like interdict, dictate, dictionary, diction, dictator, and various others. And as an ardent nerd for etymology and Latin, that silent c just makes me happy to see.
Really well made video, interesting and entertaining.
why fix english when you can just not use it?
@@deleted_handle I advocate for everyone switching to my new international auxiliary language, the design is very human.
You got new subscriber
English is the kind of language that changes way too often to maintain a phonetic spelling orthography stuff. It would definitely be better with a logographic writting system like Hanzi/Hanja/Kanji/Hantu. English has way too many dialects, has way too many phonetic shifts and so on.
@@Joridiy one could make an argument that there’s no real difference between characters and written words. It’s just that in Chinese they put all the shapes into blocks and in English they put all the shapes into strings.
I think English needs a spelling optimization rather than a full reform as a lot of proposal propose. I'd choose London English in the 1650, and only when spelling would yield a pronounciation ambiguity such as in -ough
@@jorgealbertogarridogallard3622 I’d say that’s still a reform, but I’ve never said I oppose reforms, I just don’t think they’ll catch on, but I’d love to see you try and I certainly think your solution is better than most
Fantastic video. Good luck with your channel
I will go the opposite way and speak out stuff like "through" with it's stem "hard gh" sound and I will use as few french stemmed words as possible.
@@leoaraujo8590 but debris is so much more entertaining to say when you pronounce it letter for letter
I’ve actually been working on a reformed spelling system.
@@ImaginatorJoren which variety is is based on?
@@aditopian I added letters to eliminate digraphs as much as possible. It’s mostly the same as regular English but I borrowed a few letters from Greek and Russian and IPA, and changed some pronunciation rules on the letters.
I hope that I can help non-native speakers read English better with my system. Would you like to see it?
@@ImaginatorJoren sure! Feel free to post an example
@@aditopian try to figure this one out.
Wy θʌ pypl ʌv θʌ Ywnayted Steyts, in ordr tw form ʌ mor prfekt ywnyʌn, establix justis, inxur domestik trankwility, provayd for θʌ komon defens, promowt θʌ jenerl welfer, and sekyur θʌ blesings ʌv librty tw aurselvs and aur posterity, dw ordeyn and establix θis Konstitwxn for θʌ Ywnayted Steyts ʌv Ωmerikʌ.
And this one:
Wʌns ʌ grand dwk in lʌndʌndery
Θot hy kud rʌn hiz own grand dʌcy
So hy slamd θʌ dor on Kwyn
Geyv ful vent tw hiz splyn
Naw hy’z left wiθ trilyʌn det treжury
@@ImaginatorJoren imma be honest, while I could read those, it took a decent amount of effort to figure some things out. One sound per letter isn’t really necessary, so I advise not using letters from Russian to handle sounds, Greek is already hard enough if you’re not used to it. A few of the words also had inconsistent spelling, the in common has two different pronunciations for me. The same is true for . You spelled the first vowel in trankwility different from the vowel in steyts, though I have them as the same. The vowel in perfect is debatably an i and I’d read that word as the verb perfect. The in provide is closer to a schwa for me.
While I’d say that it’s a good attempt digraphs and diacritics are honestly a much better way to handle vowels and using w as a consonant and a vowel isn’t really the best solution to the /u/ sound.
I think english needs some accent markers ngl
@@callmeacutekitten8106 certainly could be useful
@@aditopian I think it would help language learners just like in Portuguese there's nasal markers for vowels
@@callmeacutekitten8106I don’t think it wouldn’t be helpful, but it’s important to remember that we could just implement that for learners by textbook companies and have it be a regional thing, like how Arabic and Hebrew don’t mark vowels in anything intended for native adults
I mean, it does seem like spelling reform is somewhat happening because of the way we text
Through = thru
Though = tho
@@jtom2958 well it’s important to distinguish what’s going on there from a spelling reform. Speakers deciding to spell things differently from the bottom up isn’t quite the same thing as a spelling reform which is a top down process. Also tho and thru are actually pretty old and date back to at least the late 1900s.
@@aditopian So why don't we make make them official then? I pretty sure everyone pronounce them in roughly the same way and it won't confuse anyone.
@@АлександрХазанчук how do we make them official? There’s no central body for English like there is with French or Spanish, but from what I’ve seen Websters recognizes thru and tho as variant spellings
@@aditopian What else is that if not a spelling reform then? If there is no central body to dictate the spelling, then just accepting more intuitive forms of spelling would for all intents and purposes be a spelling reform.
I always feel like this debate comes down to of 'all or nothing'. If someone says they'd like spelling to change, you imagine they want every single word respelled in a new advanced system, rather than for more consistent and simple spelling for commonly used words.
@@BurnBird1 I mean spelling reforms are pretty typically done by central bodies or authorities of one form or another handing out prescriptions for how languages should be written. This is also not about random people like us who may think that English needs some updates, this is about the real proposals, both modern and historical, to overhaul or update the system on masse. Part of why the general population choosing to update spelling wouldn’t be a reform is that such changes come organically from within the system, not from without it, and are often involuntary. The human brain makes a lot of predictions, and sometimes those predictions aren’t the best and that leads to words being misspelled, which may eventually lead to new spellings catching on. It’s like sound changes.
I just noticed your profile pic is Asturias lol. Great video btw
@@EgoistFemboy628 yeah, my family is from northern Spain and I’ve had the icon on social media for some time at this point mostly because I like the way he looks and glares. Though I am actually thinking about going for something new at some point, but I’m still figuring out what that will be.
@@aditopian it is a pretty cool flag, probably my second favorite Iberian flag after the Basque Country.
@@EgoistFemboy628 see, I like the basque flag but unfortunately I can only see it as a color swapped version of the uk flag which makes me like it less
Stay winning Adi!
@@Yes_im_Water 😢😭 water, this is torture, please just end my suffering! I hate replying to comments so much!
When you get rich and famous hire people to do it for you ez😂@@aditopian
@@aditopianyou are the most famous person I know after all
The English writing system is like a logography. You have to memorize the spelling of every single word.
@@Imacrab398 I’ve been saying that to other commenters, though it’s not fully true, there’s a decently high correspondence between sound and spelling in English, it’s just not always 1-to-1
I'm interested in your reasoning for needing to pick a standard to make a spelling reform. Could you not just spell things according to their pronunciation in middle english and use diacritics for some of the weird sound changes. I.E use diaphonemes
So while you can do that, the issue is that Middle English was spoken hundreds of years ago and things have drifted a lot since then. Arguably such a reform might result in more unnecessary letters or unusual spellings. Part of the reason for a spelling reform is to bring the spelling in line with modern pronunciation in some way shape or form. If we base things off of Middle English that just kicks the can down the road, we’d need a new reformation in a few hundred years again, and arguably the new form would make limited sense to anyone because of all the changes since Middle English.
Spelling reform can systematize English spelling.
TSR (Traditional Spelling Revised) by Stephen Linstead is good. It is not a phonetic reform, and it keeps the current systems.
The word "glowing" is changed to "gloing". the letter pair "ow" now always means /aʊ/. and letter pair "ea" can no longer mean /eɪ/ nor /e/ (bear bair, health helth). A new letter pair is added, "uu", to represent the short "u" (stood stuud, foot fuut).
It all makes more senss.
It's certainly better than anything people on the Internet have come up with but it could be better still.
2:40 I say, do it in the vowel grapheme. As regionally me, that would've been switched to Saâfn, braîtn, laîttn, Táîttn (vs. Taitn), Moistn, fæssn, Though would put a diacritic below to make it clear the vowel has harsher contrast between Titan vs. Tighten. The Trema/Circumflex be used for 3:07 Clearing homophones, historical letters, or soundchanges that impacted to lead to more reduction. 4:14 To me, it's almost like you lost the S in contexts.... Also the homographs of lead, dove, read, and more.. 6:44 It's not entirely NEW, if know how to read, then you would simply adapt to a phonetic system and that is it. To be fair, the regional version here would end up in a funny " not intelligible if don't know what /œ/ is. As that is used in many words, often replacing the standard writen IPA "ʊ". Or having a nasty case of throatiness plaguing the pronunciation where T, D simply creak and make the vowels before them rise. It would be a case of High German dialect dialects where if know 90% of the vocab, you will grasp it quick, but the pronunciation being a nightmare. Though would change graphemes around. Specificaly CH < TSH, SH is normal, Turn J, ( romance GE, GI, du ), and DGE into DZH... While the S in pleasure is written as ZH. Make U + R, but give the R a diacritic to indicate "this is rhotic". As a Southerner, I hate monosyllables, hence we unintentionally make words longer and shorter, but to deal with schwa and stress. The acute is below a consonant, or first vowel. Second schwa is written with vowels with breve marks. Where the rhotic sounds Rhotic + Schwa is clear.... If got nasal sounds, then N and M get a dot. Have a clear " core vocabulary " as everyone just modifies it to suit their region....
7:16, Sheet and Sh*t would be clear with vowel markings and write a circle below the t or above, as. Who and hue? To me are far from it due to different vowel quality and consonant being a fricative for hue leading to truncation on. Thy and Thigh, one of the few accents where we must write a pitch mark below the vowel as Thy... "These sound much different than they may appear" Thy basically went mid-high-mid, thigh is none-mid-low in progress. Due to how the consonants act. Did a Praat test. Pie, and Pine don't even match, also Pin barely shows.
7:27 That's acceptable to be blunt. Though would or must use double letters for inert purposes due to keeping unintentional system of connecting a handful sounds. As it looks weird due to no double letters. It seems your accent merged schwa and strut vowels? That didn't happen here, or slowly having /ɜ/ due to fronting the schwa and still keep lips unrounded due to consonants before it being produced that way. 7:42 more or less why I would use "Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ Y̆ y̆" ( not all of them, but show it in a latin word like memory, but the rhotic rule applies to reduced vowels, but when memory -> Memorial ), that would instantly work. 8:03 I would use double acute consonants to have a key word.
It seems locally for me, that there would be more or less, would be a case of " Standard =/= Dialect " where the dialect's sounds are much more advanced that it's Danish vs. Swedish. Danish can hear it, Swedish can't. Also the speed difference is unfair, but it does lead to reduced syllables or sounds shifting.
"Oiseau" is misspelled at 2:11, although /wazaø/ is funnier to say
@@nopretzelsforu4728 I know, you’re the third person to point out that typo 😢
This is why you don’t edit videos at 2am, kids
wazo 🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥
HELL YEAH TOM LEHRER
@@etheraelespeon1986 I have loved Tom Lehrer since I was a child and I respect him so much for putting his works into the public domain
7:25 bruthurs, unles yoo wunt too rait laik dhis, bee kwaiet
UA-cam censorship is heavy. This is how I say it, but I know it merges a lot of vowels.
@@aaronspeedy7780 hmm interesting, where are you from?
what about thorn and eth? could actually be useful for outsiders so they can 1)know theyre pronounced differently(which some people i know which are russian didnt know) 2)make learners understand it a new sound so they pronounce it differently than d or f
@@pricefight well I would suggest a few things if we were to consider reviving thorn and eth, the first is that we could just as easily spell them as th and dh which would fit well with the existing sh pattern and the distinction between t and d, the other is if they’re really separate phonemes, they do seem to show up in different environments and I can’t seem to think of any minimal pairs that rely on them, so do we really need to represent them as different sounds? Or could we just treat them as allophones? Aspirated plosives and unaspirated plosives show up in English too, but we don’t really need to know that they exist.
@@aditopian To me, it makes no sense to use TH vs. DH as... We should need to memorize the rule if talking about Thailand? Also it helps tell vowels like for example the spoken form of English here typically it would be dumb to use TH/DH when Mother and Father, those final E's simply disappear, making a clear harsher R that can switch from Rhotic -> Tapped, and it's common, and also make stress easier to tell in words by writing a clear consonant vs. double vowel rule.
@@aditopian"either" and "ether" are a minimal pair for/ð/ and /θ/ in my British dialect. American dialects with the pin/pen merger could point to "then" and "thin".
- **This** (voiced /ð/) vs **Thick** (voiceless /θ/)
These two words only differ by the voicing of the initial "th" sound.
@@lexicoll1 oh there you go, I stand corrected. Though either might not be the best possible minimal pair because it can be realized in a few ways based on context.
There’s also thigh and thy, though “thy” is pretty archaic now
I'm sorry, this might be because of my socioeconomic status, but I have NEVER even heard the concept of spell reform. Why the hell would anyone want to do that? What's the point?
English speakers should invest more in spelling pronunciations, as has already happened with several words in common use, rather than in radical spelling reform.
@@kauagirao we do, dictionaries fairly regularly add novel spellings of words to their rosters tho I do think they could do it more often, and that’s what I was arguing for. The issue with that is that it won’t necessarily result in easier or more consistent spelling, and if my typos are anything to go by might result in more double letters popping up.