hypothetically, let’s say you were tasked with simplifying the English language. how would you go about doing that, and why?

to start with an easy one, the first thing I would do is eliminate silent letters from all words and make it so no letters share sounds. for example, example would become exampel. then, because x would no longer be around or at least wouldn’t have that sound, ekzampel. I would also consider eliminating mulit-letter sounds like ch, and replacing them with single characters (probably the ones that got removed).

  • urata@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    17 hours ago

    I’ve thought things like what you’re saying. Couldn’t you just spell it e-k-z-a-m-p-l? I don’t think there is an e sound in there.

    How would you handle when to use the long and short sounds for vowels? For example how would you differentiate between the word lick and like. Would you just have more vowels or put symbols above them? Personally I like using multiple vowels in a row to make different sounds like in the word sound. I would come up with a standard way of doing those so you would spell town t-o-u-n.

    People pronounce things differently, so you’d really be forcing pronunciations if you reworked the language. Like Some people actually pronounce egg with an e sound but most people use a long a sound. Also now that I think of it I think I pronounce example wore like e-g-z-a-m-p-l.

    • unknown1234_5@kbin.earthOP
      1·
      17 hours ago

      that spelling of example would work too. I was trying to make the letters show a ek-zam-pel pronunciation, but I’m not sure if the e is necessary.

      lick and like could be lik (no c or silent letters) and lyk (no silent letters and the I sound used replaced with a y). I agree that multi-vowel sounds (oo) should stay around, but I think some could be replaced such as ee, which I would represent with a single I similar to Spanish. toun looks good.

      I also pronounce it that way, what I was trying to do was represent the same sounds in a way that is simpler to read. realistically people will still pronounce things however they want and with whatever accent they have, but it will be easier to sound an unfamiliar word out or to determine how a word should be written if you’ve only heard it out loud and not written down.