![]() | This page was nominated for deletion on 13 May 2020. The result of the discussion was Speedy Keep. |
Fascinating piece of work (thanks!) and a thorny topic which I'd love to see a resolution to on Wikipedia — though I don't expect to see one any time soon!
For what it's worth (and intended as friendly discussion, not argument), I think some of the reasoning here is at odds; "Fewer letters; in Latinate words also nearer the etymological source" is given as a reason for preferring UES for the first examples, yet "Better reflects the pronunciation" is given for the last example. My problem with this is that pronunciation is another issue altogether. The first examples may match U.S. pronunciation, but "color" is certainly not the British pronunciation of that word... I think the extra "u" helps reflect the softening of the word. And then we get into regional accents and it gets even more complicated — I expect some "archaic" pronunciations in rich regional accents (in the U.K. at least) are closer to the sources of words than the "Queen's English" versions.
(EDIT) Also, "deflexion, reflexion" — what dictionary lists these as valid British English? Not the online Chambers, at least. Sadly I don't have access to a massive OED to have a look though. (Or are they just Commonwealth?) – Kieran T ( talk) 12:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Interesting idea Angr: smooth the problem of varient spelling out into a solution that nobody will be happy with ... at least not till the end of the century. I will, however, make one suggestion. You suggest jewelry but it seems to me that there's something the jewellery has going for it which the shorter version lacks. Jewel(le)ry is jewel + er + y, right? So, wouldn't you say that the longer spelling is the better reflexion of the word's meaning? Of course, you're not doubling the ls so it would have to become jewelery, which isn't standard anywhere ... oh well. J i m p 00:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Although I do not agree with all your solutions, I welcome your work. It is a pity that the English language with its strange mix of (pseudo-)phonetic and etymologic orthography has different standards of it. There is no legitimate standardi[s|z]ation body for spelling in most languages – some linguists even consider it wrong for any language. Therefore it would be quite okay for Wikipedia to define an inhouse spelling of its own. Contributors would of cause not be required to follow this convention, but articles should obey it at the time they are considered somehow final, i.e. recommended and featured articles. Alas the community prefers compromise to consent, which usually leaves us with an inconsistent mishmash or the worse solution (e.g. for apostrophes and quotation marks or the silly thing of “UK” but “U.S.”).
The decision between “grey” and “gray” doesn’t have to be done by coin if you consider other European languages, in German the color is “grau”. Christoph Päper 12:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Nice idea. I find oestrogen and encyclopaedia awkward vowel combinations and connexion an unnecessary consonant conversion akin to sox, but otherwise you've got a convert. I wrote something [1] recently for my own site that is somewhat related. -- Tysto 01:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Good intention, but you have many contradictions in your essay:
You say "defense, offense, pretense : The -se forms are etymologically preferable and reduce the likelihood of misspelling derivatives like defensive, offensive, and pretension."; yet you go on to say "vice : Better reflects the pronunciation". Which is it; -ce to better reflect pronunciation, or -se for etymological preference?
To me, your strangest assertion is this: "licence (n. & v.) and practise (n. & v.) : These homophonous noun/verb pairs should be spelled the same. The -ce form is etymologically preferable in licence, while in practise the -se form is. Drawback: licensure can't conveniently be spelled any other way.". What about licentiate and practical, etc.? Are they now licenciate, practisal?
The forms you label "etymologically preferable" simply ignores the spelling shifts that occurred in the words' untidy etymological past. (In fact, you ignore the Latin word licens completely.) Take the same approach with other words – ignoring whole swathes of history – and you might end up recommending that shirt and skirt are both spelled scirt.
For all the words above, the noun form should end in -ce, the verb form in -se. What could be more logical? Words beginning licenti- have valid etymology in that spelling, so should stand. English is a complex language, and not every "standard" follows such simple logic, however. My suggestion, if you want to see some logical change? Write a few plays and sonnets in your own "standard" spelling. Then maybe someone will take notice.
(For what it's worth, I had similar ideals a while back; but I wanted to dump out as much Latin influence as possible. Maybe a better use of our time would be a study on the shifts and changes in spelling, and how they got to where things are today?) -- Rfsmit ( talk) 21:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Surely the purpose of written language is to facilitate communication rather than spelling? If so, then homophonous words with different meanings should be kept - practice/practise, program/programme, analog/analogue, kerb/curb.
Also, your removal of double consonants causes confusion about whether to apply the silent e modifications and would cause some words with different sounds to be spelt the same. – OrangeDog ( talk • edits) 21:18, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
I just made a userbox for the support of their revival, here it is:
ÆȜÞ | Ðis user feels its only riȝht to revive some or all of ðe former English letters Æ, Ð, Ȝ, Þ, ænd Ƿ. |
Use it if you'd like.
— ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ (
talk)
12:24, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Dhe problem with using þ for dhe unvoiced dental fricative, and ð for dhe voiced is that Old English used dhe two letters interchangeably to represent both sounds. (And Middle English still used þͤ for dhe word dhat Modern English currently spells "the"). I think a better solution is to keep th but use it only for dhe unvoiced sound (as in "bath"), and spell the voiced sound (as in "badhe") with dh -- ABehrens ( talk) 04:56, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
and you can get an OED spellchecker if you use Open Office wordprocessing software. I remember -ize being used in the UK, where I went to school (not too long ago - I left secondary school in 1985) and all of a sudden the change to -ise has become total, in the UK at least, and it strikes me as wrong. Djwebb1969 ( talk) 10:49, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
<Fulfill(ment)> is better than <fulfil(ment)>, because one of the stems is <fill> (just as <skillful> contains <skill>).-- 91.148.159.4 ( talk) 16:51, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Angr, this is a very interesting essay (but being a stuffed up Brit I cannot agree with it!). However, I think I need to point out that 'disc' is not a verb in British English. 'To disk' (Amer. Spelling) may be a verb in US Eng. (meaning something to do with ploughing), and this will be why the inflected forms appear as 'disking' and 'disked'. The forms *discking and *discked could not exist simply because 'disc' when spelt with a '-c' is British English and is not a verb. -- KageTora - (影虎) ( A word...?) 13:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
At last, a practical application of optimality theory.
jnestorius( talk) 21:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Nice try, but a century too late, Angr. We Canadians have already completed this project, successfully, and the results have been stable for decades. And we're polite, so we won't tell you how we really feel about your totally ignoring the third variety of English spelling. Cheers. — Michael Z. 2010-03-15 22:31 z
You said above that you prefer the shorter (American) spellings. As a writer of American English, I've always cringed whenever I've had to write them this way; I prefer the British spellings, which conform better to pronunciation. So I think that conformity to pronunciation ought to be higher in your ranking of criteria. 75.183.96.242 ( talk) 17:42, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
You list the American spellings as analog, catalog, dialog, demagog, pedagog, monolog, homolog. But my American English dictionary (Random House Webster's College Dictionary) in every case gives both spellings, and with the exception of catalog it lists the longer spelling (with "...gue") first, implying that it is the preferred spelling. I suggest you put both spellings in the American English cell. 75.183.96.242 ( talk) 18:07, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi, Loved your essay. I have had some thoughts in this direction my self. My goal was not only to unify English spelling, but to make it more consistent and easier. I like the ideas you have here as beginning that.
I do have one thing I'd like to comment on: ter vs tre. As in center vs centre. Everytime I see tre I want to pronounce the "lettres" in the order they appear. :-) As used in outré. So I end up with sen-tray for centre and sen-ter for center. I agree it would be better to have just one unified way to spell the "r" sound. I understand your point about etymology, but I'm seeing eventual confusion of people over centres and lettres, bettres, wettres (letters, betters, wetters ). There are many more words that end in er in Commonwealth English, (CE) than ones that end in "re". Its a smaller change to have all words with the "r" sound at the end in "er" form, then changing them all to the "re" form. This reflects the idea that simpler, more internally consistent spelling is best, and it still provides a path to the Unified spelling that is your goal. Jjk ( talk) 17:48, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
P.S - have you seen Mark Twain's ideas for fixing English Spelling? http://web.archive.org/web/20030629161605/http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/simple.html. Funny and True!
[didn't see all these comments before making mine. moving them here.]
for counselor, etc, maybe another reason: doubling the el is done in other words to indicate the preceding short vowel is stressed, which this one is not. but calliper should retain the double el for just that reason.
british usage is split on -ize, so commonwealth spelling is -ise/-ize.
storey would be nice to dab a homonym, but AFAICT is minority commonwealth usage.
connexion - not parallel to connect?
you say vice better reflects the pron. but then wouldn't practice as well?
is the verb 'cosy up to' in the US? anyway, no-one spells it *nozy.
no etym. exception for moustache?
My spell checker is constantly correcting my mixed English, so I have it memorize UK spellings I use. Bit of an annoyance for those who follow me on WP, though.
— kwami ( talk) 08:23, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
"Drawback: licensure can't conveniently be spelled any other way." Ibid "practicable". — kwami ( talk) 20:01, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
This is an excellent, thought-provoking read. It's sad that I can't see such a reform (even if not this specific one) ever being adopted; but at the same time I can anticipate, with some degree of hope, a change in attitudes that would allow it to happen. A few thoughts:
-- Perey ( talk) 14:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
As an American, I'd adopt these in a heartbeat if the rest of the English-speaking world would do so, as well. I'd even throw in the metric system for good measure (yes, I'm aware it's already the legally prescribed system on a federal basis). Now if we could only move forward on US/Canada unification.... (topic for another day) White Whirlwind 咨 04:01, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
Curb is a verb. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
18:14, 27 November 2016 (UTC).
The table states that -ize is closer to the etymological source, except in recognise. This is false; the etymological source, either from Latin or Greek, is always -ise. SpikeballUnion ( talk) 22:20, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Have created a userbox displaying general support for this proposal at User:UBX/Unified English Spelling. White Whirlwind 咨 07:39, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
So why not make it license (n. and v.)? S is a more reasonable spelling than "soft c" for the /s/ sound anyway. Double sharp ( talk) 21:03, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
As a Brit, I can tell you this spelling is almost never used - it's really a relic of the older education system and few people would recognise it as an "alternate spelling" rather than simply wrong nowadays. Stan traynor ( talk) 10:08, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
In UK and US English, the word ends in the sound /zi/ making the “cozy” spelling preferable assuming the sound is a factor. 98.109.207.142 ( talk) 22:47, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are—to my knowledge—mutually intelligible, as are Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian. Ergo, just rename America's bastardised variation of English to something more appropriate: Yanklish (yk can be used as an
IETF language tag). Tell Canada to pick a side already (either Yanklish or English, but not "bolth"), and make usage of the term "British English" punishable by death (okay, that's probably taking it too far 😉).
In all seriousness, English is—by its very nature—inimical to consistency and sanity. Any attempt to reform the language will only splinter it further, because nothing about English phonetics makes a lick of sense (we have "c", "k", "q", and "s", for example, and silent letters everywhere). (Also, no self-respecting and educated member of the
Commonwealth is gonna choose US orthography over their own country's, and vice versa).
</unhinged-rant>
Alhadis (
talk)
23:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
![]() | This page was nominated for deletion on 13 May 2020. The result of the discussion was Speedy Keep. |
Fascinating piece of work (thanks!) and a thorny topic which I'd love to see a resolution to on Wikipedia — though I don't expect to see one any time soon!
For what it's worth (and intended as friendly discussion, not argument), I think some of the reasoning here is at odds; "Fewer letters; in Latinate words also nearer the etymological source" is given as a reason for preferring UES for the first examples, yet "Better reflects the pronunciation" is given for the last example. My problem with this is that pronunciation is another issue altogether. The first examples may match U.S. pronunciation, but "color" is certainly not the British pronunciation of that word... I think the extra "u" helps reflect the softening of the word. And then we get into regional accents and it gets even more complicated — I expect some "archaic" pronunciations in rich regional accents (in the U.K. at least) are closer to the sources of words than the "Queen's English" versions.
(EDIT) Also, "deflexion, reflexion" — what dictionary lists these as valid British English? Not the online Chambers, at least. Sadly I don't have access to a massive OED to have a look though. (Or are they just Commonwealth?) – Kieran T ( talk) 12:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Interesting idea Angr: smooth the problem of varient spelling out into a solution that nobody will be happy with ... at least not till the end of the century. I will, however, make one suggestion. You suggest jewelry but it seems to me that there's something the jewellery has going for it which the shorter version lacks. Jewel(le)ry is jewel + er + y, right? So, wouldn't you say that the longer spelling is the better reflexion of the word's meaning? Of course, you're not doubling the ls so it would have to become jewelery, which isn't standard anywhere ... oh well. J i m p 00:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Although I do not agree with all your solutions, I welcome your work. It is a pity that the English language with its strange mix of (pseudo-)phonetic and etymologic orthography has different standards of it. There is no legitimate standardi[s|z]ation body for spelling in most languages – some linguists even consider it wrong for any language. Therefore it would be quite okay for Wikipedia to define an inhouse spelling of its own. Contributors would of cause not be required to follow this convention, but articles should obey it at the time they are considered somehow final, i.e. recommended and featured articles. Alas the community prefers compromise to consent, which usually leaves us with an inconsistent mishmash or the worse solution (e.g. for apostrophes and quotation marks or the silly thing of “UK” but “U.S.”).
The decision between “grey” and “gray” doesn’t have to be done by coin if you consider other European languages, in German the color is “grau”. Christoph Päper 12:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Nice idea. I find oestrogen and encyclopaedia awkward vowel combinations and connexion an unnecessary consonant conversion akin to sox, but otherwise you've got a convert. I wrote something [1] recently for my own site that is somewhat related. -- Tysto 01:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Good intention, but you have many contradictions in your essay:
You say "defense, offense, pretense : The -se forms are etymologically preferable and reduce the likelihood of misspelling derivatives like defensive, offensive, and pretension."; yet you go on to say "vice : Better reflects the pronunciation". Which is it; -ce to better reflect pronunciation, or -se for etymological preference?
To me, your strangest assertion is this: "licence (n. & v.) and practise (n. & v.) : These homophonous noun/verb pairs should be spelled the same. The -ce form is etymologically preferable in licence, while in practise the -se form is. Drawback: licensure can't conveniently be spelled any other way.". What about licentiate and practical, etc.? Are they now licenciate, practisal?
The forms you label "etymologically preferable" simply ignores the spelling shifts that occurred in the words' untidy etymological past. (In fact, you ignore the Latin word licens completely.) Take the same approach with other words – ignoring whole swathes of history – and you might end up recommending that shirt and skirt are both spelled scirt.
For all the words above, the noun form should end in -ce, the verb form in -se. What could be more logical? Words beginning licenti- have valid etymology in that spelling, so should stand. English is a complex language, and not every "standard" follows such simple logic, however. My suggestion, if you want to see some logical change? Write a few plays and sonnets in your own "standard" spelling. Then maybe someone will take notice.
(For what it's worth, I had similar ideals a while back; but I wanted to dump out as much Latin influence as possible. Maybe a better use of our time would be a study on the shifts and changes in spelling, and how they got to where things are today?) -- Rfsmit ( talk) 21:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Surely the purpose of written language is to facilitate communication rather than spelling? If so, then homophonous words with different meanings should be kept - practice/practise, program/programme, analog/analogue, kerb/curb.
Also, your removal of double consonants causes confusion about whether to apply the silent e modifications and would cause some words with different sounds to be spelt the same. – OrangeDog ( talk • edits) 21:18, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
I just made a userbox for the support of their revival, here it is:
ÆȜÞ | Ðis user feels its only riȝht to revive some or all of ðe former English letters Æ, Ð, Ȝ, Þ, ænd Ƿ. |
Use it if you'd like.
— ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ (
talk)
12:24, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Dhe problem with using þ for dhe unvoiced dental fricative, and ð for dhe voiced is that Old English used dhe two letters interchangeably to represent both sounds. (And Middle English still used þͤ for dhe word dhat Modern English currently spells "the"). I think a better solution is to keep th but use it only for dhe unvoiced sound (as in "bath"), and spell the voiced sound (as in "badhe") with dh -- ABehrens ( talk) 04:56, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
and you can get an OED spellchecker if you use Open Office wordprocessing software. I remember -ize being used in the UK, where I went to school (not too long ago - I left secondary school in 1985) and all of a sudden the change to -ise has become total, in the UK at least, and it strikes me as wrong. Djwebb1969 ( talk) 10:49, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
<Fulfill(ment)> is better than <fulfil(ment)>, because one of the stems is <fill> (just as <skillful> contains <skill>).-- 91.148.159.4 ( talk) 16:51, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Angr, this is a very interesting essay (but being a stuffed up Brit I cannot agree with it!). However, I think I need to point out that 'disc' is not a verb in British English. 'To disk' (Amer. Spelling) may be a verb in US Eng. (meaning something to do with ploughing), and this will be why the inflected forms appear as 'disking' and 'disked'. The forms *discking and *discked could not exist simply because 'disc' when spelt with a '-c' is British English and is not a verb. -- KageTora - (影虎) ( A word...?) 13:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
At last, a practical application of optimality theory.
jnestorius( talk) 21:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Nice try, but a century too late, Angr. We Canadians have already completed this project, successfully, and the results have been stable for decades. And we're polite, so we won't tell you how we really feel about your totally ignoring the third variety of English spelling. Cheers. — Michael Z. 2010-03-15 22:31 z
You said above that you prefer the shorter (American) spellings. As a writer of American English, I've always cringed whenever I've had to write them this way; I prefer the British spellings, which conform better to pronunciation. So I think that conformity to pronunciation ought to be higher in your ranking of criteria. 75.183.96.242 ( talk) 17:42, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
You list the American spellings as analog, catalog, dialog, demagog, pedagog, monolog, homolog. But my American English dictionary (Random House Webster's College Dictionary) in every case gives both spellings, and with the exception of catalog it lists the longer spelling (with "...gue") first, implying that it is the preferred spelling. I suggest you put both spellings in the American English cell. 75.183.96.242 ( talk) 18:07, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi, Loved your essay. I have had some thoughts in this direction my self. My goal was not only to unify English spelling, but to make it more consistent and easier. I like the ideas you have here as beginning that.
I do have one thing I'd like to comment on: ter vs tre. As in center vs centre. Everytime I see tre I want to pronounce the "lettres" in the order they appear. :-) As used in outré. So I end up with sen-tray for centre and sen-ter for center. I agree it would be better to have just one unified way to spell the "r" sound. I understand your point about etymology, but I'm seeing eventual confusion of people over centres and lettres, bettres, wettres (letters, betters, wetters ). There are many more words that end in er in Commonwealth English, (CE) than ones that end in "re". Its a smaller change to have all words with the "r" sound at the end in "er" form, then changing them all to the "re" form. This reflects the idea that simpler, more internally consistent spelling is best, and it still provides a path to the Unified spelling that is your goal. Jjk ( talk) 17:48, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
P.S - have you seen Mark Twain's ideas for fixing English Spelling? http://web.archive.org/web/20030629161605/http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/simple.html. Funny and True!
[didn't see all these comments before making mine. moving them here.]
for counselor, etc, maybe another reason: doubling the el is done in other words to indicate the preceding short vowel is stressed, which this one is not. but calliper should retain the double el for just that reason.
british usage is split on -ize, so commonwealth spelling is -ise/-ize.
storey would be nice to dab a homonym, but AFAICT is minority commonwealth usage.
connexion - not parallel to connect?
you say vice better reflects the pron. but then wouldn't practice as well?
is the verb 'cosy up to' in the US? anyway, no-one spells it *nozy.
no etym. exception for moustache?
My spell checker is constantly correcting my mixed English, so I have it memorize UK spellings I use. Bit of an annoyance for those who follow me on WP, though.
— kwami ( talk) 08:23, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
"Drawback: licensure can't conveniently be spelled any other way." Ibid "practicable". — kwami ( talk) 20:01, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
This is an excellent, thought-provoking read. It's sad that I can't see such a reform (even if not this specific one) ever being adopted; but at the same time I can anticipate, with some degree of hope, a change in attitudes that would allow it to happen. A few thoughts:
-- Perey ( talk) 14:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
As an American, I'd adopt these in a heartbeat if the rest of the English-speaking world would do so, as well. I'd even throw in the metric system for good measure (yes, I'm aware it's already the legally prescribed system on a federal basis). Now if we could only move forward on US/Canada unification.... (topic for another day) White Whirlwind 咨 04:01, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
Curb is a verb. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
18:14, 27 November 2016 (UTC).
The table states that -ize is closer to the etymological source, except in recognise. This is false; the etymological source, either from Latin or Greek, is always -ise. SpikeballUnion ( talk) 22:20, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Have created a userbox displaying general support for this proposal at User:UBX/Unified English Spelling. White Whirlwind 咨 07:39, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
So why not make it license (n. and v.)? S is a more reasonable spelling than "soft c" for the /s/ sound anyway. Double sharp ( talk) 21:03, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
As a Brit, I can tell you this spelling is almost never used - it's really a relic of the older education system and few people would recognise it as an "alternate spelling" rather than simply wrong nowadays. Stan traynor ( talk) 10:08, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
In UK and US English, the word ends in the sound /zi/ making the “cozy” spelling preferable assuming the sound is a factor. 98.109.207.142 ( talk) 22:47, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are—to my knowledge—mutually intelligible, as are Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian. Ergo, just rename America's bastardised variation of English to something more appropriate: Yanklish (yk can be used as an
IETF language tag). Tell Canada to pick a side already (either Yanklish or English, but not "bolth"), and make usage of the term "British English" punishable by death (okay, that's probably taking it too far 😉).
In all seriousness, English is—by its very nature—inimical to consistency and sanity. Any attempt to reform the language will only splinter it further, because nothing about English phonetics makes a lick of sense (we have "c", "k", "q", and "s", for example, and silent letters everywhere). (Also, no self-respecting and educated member of the
Commonwealth is gonna choose US orthography over their own country's, and vice versa).
</unhinged-rant>
Alhadis (
talk)
23:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)