I think we should also take into account the value of English spellings that maintain common forms with other languages, even at the expense of being phonetic.
For instance, to a speaker of French or Spanish, the English word “diversification” would certainly seem less alien than a hypothetical respelling as “daiversifikeishun”. Does having a common (or very similar) cross-language orthography for latinate words offer more advantages than the benefits of phonetic spellings? I’m not sure, but it should certainly be part of the discussion.
I suspect the benefit is greatest in technical fields with lots of latin-derived vocabulary (i.e. health & biology). Would international scientific cooperation become more difficult if French and Spanish speakers had to relearn spellings for words like “capillaries” [kapileirīs] or “canine” [keinain] whereas the original english was almost identical to the spelling in their native language.
I think we should also take into account the value of English spellings that maintain common forms with other languages, even at the expense of being phonetic.
For instance, to a speaker of French or Spanish, the English word “diversification” would certainly seem less alien than a hypothetical respelling as “daiversifikeishun”. Does having a common (or very similar) cross-language orthography for latinate words offer more advantages than the benefits of phonetic spellings? I’m not sure, but it should certainly be part of the discussion.
I suspect the benefit is greatest in technical fields with lots of latin-derived vocabulary (i.e. health & biology). Would international scientific cooperation become more difficult if French and Spanish speakers had to relearn spellings for words like “capillaries” [kapileirīs] or “canine” [keinain] whereas the original english was almost identical to the spelling in their native language.