So you want X to have a sound it has in no other language...so that the very international words “taxi” and “kiosk” have to be respelt “taksi” and “xiosx” ?
Why not do something with “s”? Indeed why insist on one-letter-per-sound, in addition one-sound-per-letter?
Why the lack of interest in vowels?
Why the lack of interest in -gh and -ough? “(”Cough”, “hiccough”, “through”, “plough”, thorough”, etc)
I don’t see 1 as a real problem. Plenty of orthographies use letters to make sounds they don’t in any other language. It’s just confusing because of the status quo, but it’s also kind of confusing that English “i” doesn’t make the /i/ sound most of the time.
For 2, this is a bit of an idiosyncratic thing, but “s” and “k” kind of suck to write, especially on a blackboard, especially if you’re writing math. “s” looks like “5″. “k” quickly becomes “lc”. I want to remove letters that are ambiguous when you write them. I agree that “s” and “k” are the easier options given they already make the intended sounds.
For 3-4, it’s not that I’m not interested, it’s that I think these are too hard to take on as a first fix. English vowels are complicated so I chose to just ignore them, even where there’s low hanging fruit that others have been actively picking (like replacing “through” with “thru”, “doughnut” with “donut”, etc.).
For 5, I’m actually quite interested in dialects! In particular, I want the spelling the hold across dialects, and am sensitive to changes that would make the spelling more favorable to a particular dialect. Luckily most all dialect differences in pronunciation in English are about vowel placement, so by ignoring vowels I can put that problem off for later. I’d like to maintain the single spelling system (with minor local variations, if necessary) for all dialects, and that means having the spelling make sense for most dialects, e.g. by preserving differences that exist in some dialects and not in others (e.g. don’t merge the spelling of “cot” and “caught” or “pen” and “pin”).
Plenty of orthographies use letters to make sounds they don’t in any other language.
Yes but that’s a bad thing, so you don’t want more of it. English has plenty of orthographic inconsistencies , but the point of spelling reform is to reduce the number, not create new ones.
So you want X to have a sound it has in no other language...so that the very international words “taxi” and “kiosk” have to be respelt “taksi” and “xiosx” ?
Why not do something with “s”? Indeed why insist on one-letter-per-sound, in addition one-sound-per-letter?
Why the lack of interest in vowels?
Why the lack of interest in -gh and -ough? “(”Cough”, “hiccough”, “through”, “plough”, thorough”, etc)
Why the lack of interest in dialects?
I don’t see 1 as a real problem. Plenty of orthographies use letters to make sounds they don’t in any other language. It’s just confusing because of the status quo, but it’s also kind of confusing that English “i” doesn’t make the /i/ sound most of the time.
For 2, this is a bit of an idiosyncratic thing, but “s” and “k” kind of suck to write, especially on a blackboard, especially if you’re writing math. “s” looks like “5″. “k” quickly becomes “lc”. I want to remove letters that are ambiguous when you write them. I agree that “s” and “k” are the easier options given they already make the intended sounds.
For 3-4, it’s not that I’m not interested, it’s that I think these are too hard to take on as a first fix. English vowels are complicated so I chose to just ignore them, even where there’s low hanging fruit that others have been actively picking (like replacing “through” with “thru”, “doughnut” with “donut”, etc.).
For 5, I’m actually quite interested in dialects! In particular, I want the spelling the hold across dialects, and am sensitive to changes that would make the spelling more favorable to a particular dialect. Luckily most all dialect differences in pronunciation in English are about vowel placement, so by ignoring vowels I can put that problem off for later. I’d like to maintain the single spelling system (with minor local variations, if necessary) for all dialects, and that means having the spelling make sense for most dialects, e.g. by preserving differences that exist in some dialects and not in others (e.g. don’t merge the spelling of “cot” and “caught” or “pen” and “pin”).
Though I had a professor who somehow managed to make “x” looked like “n”, so maybe we just need to eliminate handwriting entirely.
Yes but that’s a bad thing, so you don’t want more of it. English has plenty of orthographic inconsistencies , but the point of spelling reform is to reduce the number, not create new ones.