Ha! most excellent rant. I am convinced. Our current spelling system is atrociously bad when viewed as a phonetic alphabet, but considering English's status as a new global interlingua, perhaps it's more important that
spelling be (at least roughly) consistent across dialects
we use the same alphabet as (at least some) other languages (because Unifon not portable to e.g. Spanish)
spelling not privilege one (modern, functional) dialect over another
Regarding the turned-c vs. a vs. script-a -- British makes a 3-way distinction here, generally (I can never remember the minimal triplet) while generally, American East Coasters have a two-way distinction and West Coasters --especially the Great Plains -- have only one enormous vowel region low and back.
Since I am, dialectally-speaking, an East Coaster, I distinguish between caught and cot, to the endless frustration of my Montana-born labmates, who can't hear it at all.
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Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 02:58 pm (UTC)Ha! most excellent rant. I am convinced. Our current spelling system is atrociously bad when viewed as a phonetic alphabet, but considering English's status as a new global interlingua, perhaps it's more important that
Regarding the turned-c vs. a vs. script-a -- British makes a 3-way distinction here, generally (I can never remember the minimal triplet) while generally, American East Coasters have a two-way distinction and West Coasters --especially the Great Plains -- have only one enormous vowel region low and back.
Since I am, dialectally-speaking, an East Coaster, I distinguish between caught and cot, to the endless frustration of my Montana-born labmates, who can't hear it at all.