Comment by bozey07 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bozey07 | Hacker News Reader

jan Misali has a great video on why most spelling reforms are bad[0][1] and this one falls for a very very common fallacy - spelling makes more sense when it "maps" to "pronunciation".

> VJScript fixes these issues [...] no silent letters, and one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds.

You cannot do this. It's impossible, because not everybody speaks English the same.

How do I spell "hour" in VJScript? Do I write down the h, or not? How about "potato", or "tomato"? Or "Graham" - is it pronounced Grayham or Gray'm? You have to either choose one, and forfeit every claim you've made to VJScript's accurate representation of speech, or pretend every other dialect of English doesn't exist. Neither are particularly constructive given the typical goal of a language reform is to get everybody on the same page.

[0] https://youtu.be/TEsqY4MH40s

[1] And a cathartic rant on people moaning about English orthography.

I'm sorry if this sounds a bit brash. Linguistics inspires that in me.

> this one falls for a very very common fallacy - spelling makes more sense when it "maps" to "pronunciation"

True. It's no wonder that many alphabetical writing systems are morpho-phonologic (English, French, Korean, Czech, etc.) instead if being phonetic, since they still works well evolving slower than the spoken language. Actually I can't think of any phonetic writing systems, most are phonemic at best.

Both “Grahyam” and “Gray’m” are writable in VJScript. Even if the script has some ambiguity because regional variations in pronunciation, it is still a substantial improvement over ordinary English spelling

Also, thanks to you and all the other commenters for the detailed feedback and for engaging with the post

I came here to say exactly this! I got thrown by the second image right at the top before the article has even started: "K(AW)MPL(E)KS". All well and good, if you want to write in an American accent.

On a related note, writing accents is usually a bad idea. I remember reading Asimov's "Foundation" when I was a teenager in Australia. One of the characters is a lord and speaks like this: "Ah, Hahdin. You ah looking foah us, no doubt?" Because of course everyone in the future is American and everyone who's not American speaks with a comical (and completely unreadable) accent. Trying to read that dialogue makes me feel like I'm having a stroke.

Heh - I got hung up on trying to understand the difference between the “i” in “fight” to the “i” in “island”.

> Or "Graham" - is it pronounced Grayham or Gray'm?

You would never choose either of those.

/gɹæm/

No, I'm afraid we're talking about English, not American.

Maybe we could vote. ;D

If that IPA is grey-um, that's the British pronunciation

I'm confused

Are you? You seem to have correctly noted that (1) the ash is a symbol from the IPA; (2) you don't know what it means; and (3) if it meant the FACE vowel, the conversation wouldn't make any sense.

Since you already know how it's being used, it would be the work of a few seconds to look up the IPA value, but, as you might guess from the name "ash", it represents the TRAP vowel, the same thing it represents in the orthography of Old English. (And Norwegian, apparently, but I would put good money on the IPA usage deriving from Old English.)

Hah, wow. You come across like a total ahole, by the way.

Was there something you were confused about?

Yes! Thanks for asking. I'm wondering what you get out of mostly posting comments about small grammatical/language issues, and taking every opportunity to metaphorically wave your phallus on the Internet? It's basically trolling.

I bet you're one of those people who think their sole purpose in life is to be correct, and care not one iota for getting on with people. I imagine that's working out absolutely amazing for you.

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