Peter: (Aug. 20) If English were written
phonetically, with different spellings in Australia, NZ, India,
Singapore, Kenya, US, Canada, England, etc. (and all that
multiplied many times by the many different dialects within
those countries), the language - spoken and written - would not
have 1% of the current status that it has in the world today.
and on Aug. 22 (P.C.): You might be able to come up with a way of using CC
to write
English such that every English speaker can read and write it,
but the fact is that language changes. 300 years from now, our
descendents would be having this same argument over getting rid
of the difficult-to-learn, arbitrary spellings based upon CC
and replacing that impediment to functional literacy with
something else.
(JM) Are you trying to have it both ways? First that (phonemic writing) is
far too variable, and then that it (would become?) far too fixed (rigid)?
I don't see why it couldn't keep pace with the 'evolution' of English.
>(JM) I'm not sure what you mean by iconic
(PC) That meaning of a linguistic sign is somehow suggested by the
form, or that there is some correlation between variation of
form for a set of signs and the corresponding variation in
meaning.
(JM) I prefer to think of the Camion Code as 'featural'; I also discovered
the term 'glotto-gtaphic' which seems to me to fit the bill :-)
JoAnne Marie, jmarie@filnet.fr
CV, Phonetics and Poetry on:
http://www.filnet.fr/perso/jmarie
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