Slowly, he changed the spelling of words, such that they became
'Americanized'. He chose s over c in words like defense; he changed
the re to er in words like center; he dropped one of the Ls in
traveller; at first, he kept the u in words like colour or favour, but
he dropped it in later editions.
At the moment I'm teaching English to Lao kids, and the English
writing system is an absolute pain in the ass for teaching. The
English writing system is such an embarrassment that we actually have
"spelling bees", it's actually an /accomplishment/ to be able to spell
stuff properly in English!
When I'm teaching I might write a sentence like:
I eat fish every day
And then write:
I ate fish yesterday
but they haven't got a clue how to say it. The "vowel after the next
consonant" thing really screws things up, such as:
hope Versus hop
hoping Versus hopping
And then you have just plain inconsistency:
steak Versus peak
And you have the two "th" sounds, both voice and unvoiced, represented
by the same symbol:
thanks
them
And you have the ambiguity of whether S is pronounced as an S or a Z,
and whether C is pronounced as K or S.
It's almost embarrassing to have to tell them that English speakers
pretty much memorise how to spell words. There about about two weeks
ago a Lao person was trying to tell me in the Lao language that he
sewed his own hand supports for weightlifting, but I didn't understand
him so I got out a dictionary; I looked up the word he said and found
that it meant "sew", and then he asked me how to spell it in English,
and all I could say was "S - E - W, yes it makes no sense, just
memorise it.".
A lot of the time when I'm teaching and writing on the board I'll
rewrite the word using the Lao writing system, which is 100% phonetic.
Even if I were to rewrite it using the English writing system, e.g. by
changing "through" to "thru", it would still be ambiguous a lot of the
time.
The only thing that keeps the current English writing system alive is
eliteness. Now that I've experienced a language that has a brilliant
writing system, I'd definitely be in favour of revamping written
English. It would have three benefits:
1) Our kids would have less trouble learning it
2) Foreign adults would have less trouble learning English
3) Native adults who have bad spelling skills would have less trouble
Has anyone ever encountered a writing system that works on a
"consonant + vowel pair" system? In the Lao writing system, you always
have a "consonant + vowel pair" at the start of a syllable. If a
syllable doesn't start with a consonant, then they have a symbol for a
silent consonant. It's because of this that they can write without
putting spaces between words, because they always know whether a
particular consonant is the end of the previous syllable or the
beginning of the next syllable (if it's the end of the previous
syllable then it won't have a vowel after it). Given the "consonant +
vowel pair" system, and given that the written language is 100%
phonetic (you always know how to say a word when you read it), it's
got to be one of the best writing systems in the world. You can master
it in just a week or two if you're diligent enough.
If true it's rather annoying that someone should choose his own
opinions about how a language should be changed. As has been said
Brits and Americans are two groups of people separated by a common
tongue.
That's a load of nonsense. The differences between British and
American English take only a few seconds to resolve. Take the
following:
- James is after cutting his knee, have you got a plaster?
- A plaster... what's a plaster?
- To put on his knee to cover the wound
- Oh you mean a band-aid
- What, a band-aid?
- Yeah we call it a band-aid
Other examples are "sweater" instead of "jumper", "sneakers" instead
of "runners", "sidewalk" instead of "path", but again these only take
a few seconds to resolve. If you were to sit down for half an hour and
read an article on differences between American and British English
vocabulary, you'd be flying.
European native English speakers are already aware of words such as
"sweater" from watching US television; but they don't use these words
themselves. It doesn't go the other way though, Americans tend to not
have a clue about British words like "jumper". The situation is
similar between Lao and Thailand; Lao people can speak and read Thai
just fine from watching Thai television, but Thai people don't know
Lao words.