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August 17, 2018 1:29 PM

What If English Were Phonetically Consistent?
posted by not_the_water (23 comments total)

See also: Jelly Belly Pet Rat Gummi Candy Review
posted by stinkfoot at 1:33 PM on August 17, 2018

Fantastic. Let's make it so!
Many years ago when learning English, my teacher would speak old English to us when reading aloud Chaucer. This had a "Middle English" ring to it.
posted by greenhornet at 1:38 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

What would it take for a spelling reform to actually happen? I can't imagine it.
posted by dilaudid at 1:40 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Its hard enough to get people to agree on what we have had for years without changing it!!
posted by Burn_IT at 1:48 PM on August 17, 2018

SEENIK VISTA
posted by johngoren at 2:00 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

This had a "Middle English" ring to it.

The Hamlet but put me more in mind of, “I’ve got good news for you! That gum you like is going to come back in style.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:01 PM on August 17, 2018 [7 favorites]

I'm getting a very Scandinavian sort of vibe from it.
posted by SansPoint at 2:02 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

ghoti
posted by thelonius at 2:05 PM on August 17, 2018 [7 favorites]

So, it should be made clear that Shakespeare didn't write in anything approaching modern English. He was a habitual free-speller, like many of the day, and internally inconsistent at that. In fact, a lot of the better 'many authors' theories of Shakespeare rely on these inconsistencies to map possible extra attributions, even while taking into account the expected inconsistencies of a single man writing at the time. English spell-fuckery still has hardly anything on French, especially given the greater amount of poly in the polyglot-melting-pot.

Also, this is a variation on an old joke.

Also, still kinda a fun variation on that old joke, and Gawd Blehs that man for doing that vocal work. Wicked cool.
posted by es_de_bah at 2:37 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

*by the way, I don't mean to imply that the English to German joke is from that 2006 post. I think that joke is as old post-war dirt. I'd love to know if anyone can name the original source, tho.*
posted by es_de_bah at 2:42 PM on August 17, 2018

Literally just got to the episode of the History of English podcast that dealt with how early monastic scribes from Ireland were dealing with the sound shift from G to J in Old English, when the Latin alphabet had no J as of yet, and they landed on CG, which later was changed to DG by Norman scribes, and that's how we ended up with "bridge" instead of "brij", and we'd all have been a lot better off in elementary school had the revised Latin alphabet with a J got to the Irish and Scottish monks before they started messing with letter pairs.
posted by linux at 3:04 PM on August 17, 2018 [5 favorites]

English spell-fuckery still has hardly anything on French

Not really -- French spelling rules are bizarre-looking but mostly consistent, while English pronunciation is often unpredictable even if you know the rules.
posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 4:05 PM on August 17, 2018 [7 favorites]

What would it take for a spelling reform to actually happen?

If by this you mean "make spelling conform to pronunciation" (at least until the next vowel shift comes along), I don't think we can do it until we agree on how to pronounce English. As a simple word like "bath" has several distinct pronunciations even within Britain, finding one consistent spelling is going to be a challenge.

Changing pronunciation to match orthography, the subject of this charming video, has a greater chance of success, I would suspect.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 4:38 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

For those who don't like mystery meat, the link goes to a four-minute video by Aaron Alon, "an award-winning, internationally-performed classical composer, musical theatre composer-lyricist, playwright, and teacher." He is not a linguist, and I'm not sure why the "linguistics" tag is used. It's basically a gag about how English sounds weird if you pronounce each letter the same way all the time; I hit the back button after a little over a minute when I realized it was just going to be four minutes of that. (If a gorilla runs across the screen at some point, or he explodes at the end, let me know and I'll give it another look.) It is, as es_de_bah says, an old joke, and unlike es_de_bah, I didn't find it especially interesting. But I am a grouch.
posted by languagehat at 5:07 PM on August 17, 2018 [13 favorites]

→ What would it take for a spelling reform to actually happen?

They tried it in Britain from the 1960s-70s. Based in part on Pitman (jr) & Shaw's work in spelling reform, it was the disaster known as the Initial Teaching Alphabet. I don't know anyone who had the slightest positive experience with it
posted by scruss at 5:23 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

English isn't phonologically consistent because it's not etymologically consistent. (I'm sure someone will be along with the exact text of the James Nicoll quote momentarily.)

If you're interested in the history and weirdness of how English came to its current wild state, may I instead suggest the History of English podcast?
posted by Lexica at 6:11 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

One of my four year old daughter's quirks is that, when she wants to speak with emphasis, she will not only half-yell; she will move all of the vowel sounds in her speech towards another vowel (e.g. "ae"). So instead of "DADDY WILL YOU PLEASE GET ME SOME MILK" it becomes "DEAD-EH WELL YEH PLESS GET MEH SEMM MEHLK!" It's ridiculous and adorable and a little sad that some day she'll grow out of it.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:33 PM on August 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

Sounds to me more like what Rhodic English probably sounded like long before RP English took over.
posted by Liquidwolf at 12:12 AM on August 18, 2018

If it were phonetically consistent, that would mean it would have to have different spellings according to accent and dialect. I don't know where you are from, not_the_water, but I know it's not where I am from, because your post heading sounds phonetically frankly bizarre to me.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 3:51 AM on August 18, 2018

Spelling reform: The great idea that brought us into universal agreement and harmony on the great questions of language such as how to spell words like colour, analogue, and programme.
posted by sfenders at 4:35 AM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I found this strangely soothing.
posted by duffell at 5:43 AM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I hit the back button after a little over a minute when I realized it was just going to be four minutes of that. (If a gorilla runs across the screen at some point, or he explodes at the end, let me know and I'll give it another look.) It is, as es_de_bah says, an old joke, and unlike es_de_bah, I didn't find it especially interesting.

I think the thing that makes this one interesting is not the underlying point, but the flawlessness of the performance. By the time he gets to the end and has changed all the vowels to a single pronunciation, it sounds odd, but still understandable and his delivery is every bit as smooth as it was when he was still speaking in his normal accent.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:04 AM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

To me it sounds like a robot speaking Middle English.
posted by Botanizer at 7:45 AM on August 18, 2018