Talk:English spelling reform

Why spelling reforms won't happen
The bakery product eaten with cream and jam is pronounced two different ways, and the place in Scotland from which the stone was taken has a third; 'you say tomayto I say tomato'; I say 'book, us and five' others in the UK say 'buuk, uz and faive.'

No doubt there was as much discussion on Spelling Reform when 'scholars, traders to towns outside the locality and others' communicated outside their localities - and when printing made general literacy practical. (And wasn't the reference in 1066 and All That to 'weeny, weedy and weakly' a reference to different pronunciation systems in Latin - which might have caused problems). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 17:58, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

The existing system
Can have a certain logic to it (some of the prefixes, suffixes, verbal endings etc) which would be lost if the spelling were 'reformed.'

Quite a lot of puns and other humour, and other aspects would be lost (the Sherlock Holmes story where 'plow/plough' on a business card is a giveaway).

The peculiarities and paradoxes of English as it is can be used to confound malign computers (in the stories) and the spell check (in reality). Anna Livia (talk) 23:08, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion
Add some variant of the 'English spelling reformed into German' joke. Anna Livia (talk) 23:08, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Not familiar with it. How does it go? - Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 03:35, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Here is one version - though it produces 'Deutlish' rather than German. Anna Livia (talk) 10:47, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * A version of that first one is already in the article. - Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 18:31, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Please strike out this absurd association of graphic reform with crankhood
Being crank has nothing to do with linguistic/semiotic expression. Just look at all the sensational spellings in brands & art. Drawing a line between art & formality is beyond the scope of science, to which pertain the topic of pseudoversions & crankhood. Yoandri Dominguez Garcia (talk) 21:00, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Changes over time
Can occur in a very short time - look at 'TV and sound recordings' of even a few decades ago (and when was written the last two lines of the first verse rhymed).

Should there be mention of Newspeak? Anna Livia (talk) 17:09, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I think this article...
... vastly overestimates how much people who speak languages with "official" regulators (e.g. la Académie Française or the Real Academia Española) care about what the regulators say. First of all, these institutions don't actually regulate language. They don't have the power to do so. Nobody has the power to do so. It's like setting up an institution to regulate the laws of physics so that electrons don't misbehave. Secondly, regulators are all widely agreed to be absolute jokes nobody takes seriously—how many French people spell it nenufar instead of nenuphar? Finally, those institutions fold against the popular will far more often than the opposite. In the few moments those institutions stop huffing their own farts and see everyone is doing something different than they prescribe, they quietly make whatever everyone's doing official. Hell, actually caring what any of those regulators say is universally considered to be a sign of a pedantic asshole. Marquee Moon (talk) 09:20, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Smaller languages are more amenable to this sort of treatment. Hungarian and Rumanian went through major prescriptive lexicon changes in the 19th century as a result of nationalistic purist movements.  Hammeershaimb imposed an unwieldy orthography on Faeroese, meant to make it resemble Icelandic and be partially intelligible in Iceland, at the expense of being quite ungainly and including a character that is always silent.  With the 'big' languages, though, the main influence seems to be major texts that everyone is familiar with, like Luther's German Bible or Samuel Johnson's Dictionary.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 17:59, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Didn't German have major spelling reforms in about 1895 or 1905 or something? Avida Dollarsher again 18:03, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know quite enough about German to comment extensively, but my understanding is that the early 20th century 'reform' was not so much a set of planned changes, as it was a declaration that the spellings recommended in the Duden dictionaries were decided to be official and prescribed. Again, it's a matter of some authority having enough clout, and in German at the time there was one, as there was for English in the days of Johnson and Webster.  Now, one consequence of this reform of German spelling in English is the doublet Neanderthal and Neandertal, which never were pronounced differently in German, but gave rise to two separate pronunciations in English. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 22:33, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Natural spelling reform
This can occur to some extent - in written BritEnglish 'program' is 'synonymous with or superseding' 'programme', cooperation and co-operation, 'many accents on import words naturalised into English' etc.

One major omission from the 'sunk costs' - the human brain: we have learnt to read 'present standard English (and several variants thereof - BritEnglish, USEnglish, Scots (including this variant). Anna Livia (talk) 12:37, 3 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Up to a point, Lord Copper. Computers run “programs” but the BBC1 broadcasts “programmes”. Mr Larrington (talk) 23:55, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 1: Other broadcasters are available…