Timeline for Why doesn’t a language modernization initiative adopt pure phonetic spelling?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
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| Mar 10, 2023 at 15:17 | comment | added | Will | @JohnHall the logical conclusion of prioritising the benefits to potentially infinite generations of descendants over the efforts of the living generation isn't the modernization of an extant language with more phonetic spelling, it's the adoption of a constructed language designed for efficiency in all its characteristics, not just phonetics. | |
| Mar 9, 2023 at 22:37 | comment | added | Colin Fine | @Stef: yes, that is part of what I meant by the costs. It is a cost that has been borne by several different generations in some of the central Asian republics. For example, Azerbaijani was traditionally written in a version of Arabic script, but in Soviet Azerbaijan it was changed to a Latin script in 1928 and then to a Cyrillic one in 1939. After the breakup of the Soviet Union it again went Latin, but the alphabet is not the same as the earlier Soviet Latin alphabet. | |
| Mar 9, 2023 at 22:12 | comment | added | Stef | I guess a second reason is that old writings would become inaccessible, even to new learners. And by "old writings" I mean "all writings until today". If we change the system now, and assuming for simplicity that in three generations everyone will know the new system and no one will remember the current system, then everything written until today will be unreadable. | |
| Mar 9, 2023 at 10:35 | comment | added | Sam Dean | @JohnHall who says they don't care about their children? According to the 2021 UK census 98.2% of the population, over 3 years old, has English as their primary language or are proficient in it. That would suggest most people are able to learn English. So hardly making life difficult for our children. Furthermore I'd argue that removing challenges (e.g. making English trivial to learn) is not always in the best interest of our children. Challenges prompt learning and exploration, fairly vital things to becoming a well rounded adult. | |
| Mar 8, 2023 at 23:07 | comment | added | Colin Fine | It's a practical explanation for what observably happens. I'm not saying that many people explicitly think in terms of a Cost Benefit Analysis; but once you have learnt a system, what is going to make you give it up and change to a different system? As far as I know, this has actually happened only for political (including religious and nationalistic) reasons. Also, (even leaving aside that "learners" means foreigners as well as children) your assumption that people want to make things easier for their children is not always borne out. Some people think that education should be tough. | |
| Mar 8, 2023 at 21:20 | comment | added | John Hall | This is an economic explanation of resistance to any language reform. You need to discount the future benefits to make it complete and obviously we are taking about the children of current users. Why don't they care about their children? | |
| Mar 7, 2023 at 17:53 | history | answered | Colin Fine | CC BY-SA 4.0 |