We did address it. And then everyone immediately changed how they pronounced every vowel.
We should address it again, and fix the way a ton of words have been Anglicized at the same time, but we’re far from alone. French is loaded with needlessly silent letters as well, just as the first example that springs to mind.
(actually, can we just switch directly to the International Phonetic Alphabet?) (This is a bad idea for reasons that are probably obvious, it’s a lateral move at best)
We did address it. And then everyone immediately changed how they pronounced every vowel.
What do you mean? The Great Vowel Shift happened well before any standardisation of spelling I’m aware of. And there’s plenty of problems beyond just the vowels.
French is probably number two on the shit list, but there’s at least a consistent pattern there.
The printing press, and more importantly the people running them, codified spelling toward the beginning of the Shift. I may have implied more intent than actually existed but spelling became a lot more standardized with the mass production of written works, particularly the bible.
Speaking as someone whose native language uses phonetic writing, it simply makes sense. You just write what you say. Yes, some people talk differently, and because the writing is phonetic you can easily capture that in writing and you have multiple spellings for the same word in the dictionary (some marked as regionalisms). And as pronunciation of certain words shifts in time, so does the spelling. When more and more people start writing the word as it sounds, instead of the “correct” spelling, the new version gets added to the dictionary.
We did address it. And then everyone immediately changed how they pronounced every vowel.
We should address it again, and fix the way a ton of words have been Anglicized at the same time, but we’re far from alone. French is loaded with needlessly silent letters as well, just as the first example that springs to mind.
(actually, can we just switch directly to the International Phonetic Alphabet?) (This is a bad idea for reasons that are probably obvious, it’s a lateral move at best)
What do you mean? The Great Vowel Shift happened well before any standardisation of spelling I’m aware of. And there’s plenty of problems beyond just the vowels.
French is probably number two on the shit list, but there’s at least a consistent pattern there.
The printing press, and more importantly the people running them, codified spelling toward the beginning of the Shift. I may have implied more intent than actually existed but spelling became a lot more standardized with the mass production of written works, particularly the bible.
Adopting IPA would be wrong because it would require that everyone talk exactly the same way.
It just means abandoning the idea of a “correct spelling”.
Speaking as someone whose native language uses phonetic writing, it simply makes sense. You just write what you say. Yes, some people talk differently, and because the writing is phonetic you can easily capture that in writing and you have multiple spellings for the same word in the dictionary (some marked as regionalisms). And as pronunciation of certain words shifts in time, so does the spelling. When more and more people start writing the word as it sounds, instead of the “correct” spelling, the new version gets added to the dictionary.