User talk:Angr/Unified English Spelling
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[edit] Responses to the essay
Fascinating piece of work (thanks!) and a thorny topic which I'd love to see a resolution to on Wikipedia — though I don't expect to see one any time soon!
For what it's worth (and intended as friendly discussion, not argument), I think some of the reasoning here is at odds; "Fewer letters; in Latinate words also nearer the etymological source" is given as a reason for preferring UES for the first examples, yet "Better reflects the pronunciation" is given for the last example. My problem with this is that pronunciation is another issue altogether. The first examples may match U.S. pronunciation, but "color" is certainly not the British pronunciation of that word... I think the extra "u" helps reflect the softening of the word. And then we get into regional accents and it gets even more complicated — I expect some "archaic" pronunciations in rich regional accents (in the U.K. at least) are closer to the sources of words than the "Queen's English" versions.
(EDIT) Also, "deflexion, reflexion" — what dictionary lists these as valid British English? Not the online Chambers, at least. Sadly I don't have access to a massive OED to have a look though. (Or are they just Commonwealth?) – Kieran T (talk) 12:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
- I disagree about color not representing the British pronunciation. The u in colour doesn't "reflect the softening" at all; on the contrary, having more vowel letters puts more emphasis on the syllable. Consider contour and tenor (both of which are spelled the same in en-GB and en-US)--which of those words has a final syllable that's more like the final syllable of colo(u)r in pronunciation? Deflexion and reflexion are both in the OED, where it's revealed the Latin is deflexio and reflexio (in the latter case reflectio only in Late Latin). But the OED does concede both spellings are rare now. —Angr 16:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Jewelery
Interesting idea Angr: smooth the problem of varient spelling out into a solution that nobody will be happy with ... at least not till the end of the century. I will, however, make one suggestion. You suggest jewelry but it seems to me that there's something the jewellery has going for it which the shorter version lacks. Jewel(le)ry is jewel + er + y, right? So, wouldn't you say that the longer spelling is the better reflexion of the word's meaning? Of course, you're not doubling the ls so it would have to become jewelery, which isn't standard anywhere ... oh well. Jimp 00:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
- Why can't it just be jewel + -ry? Anyway, that's the nature of a good compromise: it leaves everyone equally unhappy. —Angr 05:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Gray
Although I do not agree with all your solutions, I welcome your work. It is a pity that the English language with its strange mix of (pseudo-)phonetic and etymologic orthography has different standards of it. There is no legitimate standardi[s|z]ation body for spelling in most languages – some linguists even consider it wrong for any language. Therefore it would be quite okay for Wikipedia to define an inhouse spelling of its own. Contributors would of cause not be required to follow this convention, but articles should obey it at the time they are considered somehow final, i.e. recommended and featured articles. Alas the community prefers compromise to consent, which usually leaves us with an inconsistent mishmash or the worse solution (e.g. for apostrophes and quotation marks or the silly thing of “UK” but “U.S.”).
The decision between “grey” and “gray” doesn’t have to be done by coin if you consider other European languages, in German the color is “grau”. Christoph Päper 12:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
- Just for interest, and I couldn't say whether this is a Scottish English convention – or just an even more local thing to the area in which I grew up – but I was always taught that "grey" was the colour (although we were aware that the US spelling was "gray") and that for us "Gray" was the surname. – Kieran T (talk) 12:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Thoughtful and logical
Nice idea. I find oestrogen and encyclopaedia awkward vowel combinations and connexion an unnecessary consonant conversion akin to sox, but otherwise you've got a convert. I wrote something[1] recently for my own site that is somewhat related. --Tysto 01:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, from an etymological point of view, it's not an consonant conversion nor anything like sox. Jɪmp 07:32, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Hm. Thoughtful but illogical
Good intention, but you have many contradictions in your essay:
You say "defense, offense, pretense : The -se forms are etymologically preferable and reduce the likelihood of misspelling derivatives like defensive, offensive, and pretension."; yet you go on to say "vice : Better reflects the pronunciation". Which is it; -ce to better reflect pronunciation, or -se for etymological preference?
To me, your strangest assertion is this: "licence (n. & v.) and practise (n. & v.) : These homophonous noun/verb pairs should be spelled the same. The -ce form is etymologically preferable in licence, while in practise the -se form is. Drawback: licensure can't conveniently be spelled any other way.". What about licentiate and practical, etc.? Are they now licenciate, practisal?
The forms you label "etymologically preferable" simply ignores the spelling shifts that occurred in the words' untidy etymological past. (In fact, you ignore the Latin word licens completely.) Take the same approach with other words – ignoring whole swathes of history – and you might end up recommending that shirt and skirt are both spelled scirt.
For all the words above, the noun form should end in -ce, the verb form in -se. What could be more logical? Words beginning licenti- have valid etymology in that spelling, so should stand. English is a complex language, and not every "standard" follows such simple logic, however. My suggestion, if you want to see some logical change? Write a few plays and sonnets in your own "standard" spelling. Then maybe someone will take notice.
(For what it's worth, I had similar ideals a while back; but I wanted to dump out as much Latin influence as possible. Maybe a better use of our time would be a study on the shifts and changes in spelling, and how they got to where things are today?) --Rfsmit (talk) 21:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
- Well, anything would be better than having homophonous nouns and verbs spelled differently. That's frankly insane. As for writing my own plays and sonnets, I'm not a playwright or a poet. But this isn't a plan to completely overhaul English spelling so it's "logical" (an unattainable goal); it's just a plan to eliminate British and American spelling differences in a neutral way, not giving a priori preference to either country's spelling traditions. Words like "licentiate" and "practical" that are spelled the same in both systems would be unaffected by this proposal. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 21:57, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
