Discussion Groups / English Usage / September 2009

Ed Cryer wrote, in <h9gdtr$ddj$1@news.eternal-september.org>
on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:30:01 +0100:

Both first syllable in MyE

Ok for the verb, the noun is an abomination

Quoth "Peter Duncanson (BrE)" <mail@peterduncanson.net>, and I
quote:

That's a very good question. If they choose my non-elite dialect
there will continue to be a difference between "four/fourteen"
and "forty", reflecting two different vowel sounds.

Peter Duncanson (BrE) asked [on the issue of phonetic spelling]:-

I find this to be a very tired argument, which is always brought up in
defence of the status quo. The Spanish language has phonetic spelling, yet
there are wide differences of regional pronunciation across Spain and in
Latin America. The issue presents no real problem for speakers of Spanish.

I can understand without difficulty any mainstream speaker from any of the
four constituent countries of the UK, and from the Irish Republic. By a
"mainstream" Scottish accent (for example), I mean an  accent that everybody
from Scotland can understand. If most Scots can understand it, then so can
I.

In the same terms, I can understand all mainstream speakers from the USA,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and most Commonwealth
countries.

I would therefore propose a mainstream USA accent as the standard for
phonetic spelling, on the grounds that America, with a population five times
that of the UK, is the largest single block of English speakers. I might
even propose the accent of President Obama as the standard for phonetic
spelling. Everybody can clearly hear every word that he says.

This does not mean that I would expect the spoken word in  Britain and
Australia to change into Obama English. We (in Britain) would have to learn
a few non-phonetic spellings, such as Norleens (=New Orleans). In the
written language we would buy a "noo pair uv shoos", but in the spoken
language we would still buy "a nyoo pair uv shoos".

Therefore, for non-USAmericans, we would still need to learn a small number
of non-phonetic spellings. This number would be much less than that of the
complicated non-phonetic spelling system we currently use.

Richard Chambers       Leeds   UK.

Guy Barry skrev:

James Hogg has already pointed out that the first syllables in
"four" and "forteen" are pronounced differently. That is not the
case with the corresponding names for the other numbers.

Not so long ago the German spelling was revised. One of the
changes is that e.g. "Schifffahrt" now keeps all three f's.
Previously three such consonants were written only as two:
"Schiffahrt". The word is composed of two words, "Schiff" and
"Fahrt".

Really?  I pronounce eighth "ayth."  I don't see where another 't' would
befit the pronunciation.

--Jeff

Guy Barry set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
continuum:

So why do the Krauts say siebzehn, siebzig, siebte which (presumably) are
scrunchings of original siebenzehn, siebenzig, siebente respectively?
Similarly a few other ordinals: drei, dritte - and acht, achte by exact
analogy with the English.

I'm happy with the correct spellings and never had any great difficulty in
spelling or leaning to read. In *my* infants' school days (start of the
1960's) we were still taught the correct spellings and pronunciations
rather than left to grope in the dark with ITA, phonics and other weird and
wonderful systems that have sprung up since my time.

The one big difficulty I recall as a kid was with words that end in -ine
where that ending is pronounced "in", e.g. "engine", "genuine". For some
reason I always wanted to insert an e before the ending to make "engeine"
or "genueine". This was possibly in a vague attempt to mark the different
pronunciation, for I had no such problem where the ending had its more
usual pronunciation e.g. "line", "combine".