(Untitled)

[thesparque]

I wonder if the same people who chastise Americans for not going metric (since metric is more universal and logical) would agree to spelling reform of English, to make it more universal and logical.  Nah, they'd probably just bemoan the downfall of Western civilization and education.

Oh well, it was an idea at least.

Comments

[dewdropsonrosa]

My idea of a spelling reform would be instituting the IPA as the only system to reign forever and ever.

[thesparque]

My only problem with that is the same problem I have with people co-opting any kind of specialized terminology... someone will eventually fuck it up.

I still remember a conversation I had with a Mexican coworker of mine a year or so ago, who was convinced that indigenous non-Spanish languages in Mexico were properly called "dialects," regardless of my insistence that that isn't what a dialect is. And it's ubiquitous -- indigenous languages are known in colloquial Spanish around here as "dialectos," and oftentimes the people themselves are called that.

The same thing would happen with IPA-as-spelling-system, and I think the IPA's much safer where it is.