Re: "Fransin" simplified orthography for French

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 9:55 AM, Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email protected]>
wrote:

Indeed, I've read a few discussions about "fransin" and one of the
> most common objections is that it claims to be based on pronunciation
> but does not take into account the fact that the pronunciation is not
> the same in Marseille, Bruxelles, Kinshasa or Algiers.
>

Quite so.  Nevertheless, French does have a standard pronunciation, of
course varying a bit with time, which all francophones (except Quebecois)
aspire to speak, and a set of complex rules for converting essentially all
written forms into this pronunciation, though not vice versa.  English has
neither of these, with pluricentric accents and at least 15% of all words
spelled by no comprehensible rule. Judicious spelling reform for English
would at best remove some of that 15% and perhaps simplify some of the
rules, while being exceedingly careful not to obliterate distinctions which
are made in some accents but not others.  (There is also the minor
practical problem that at least 50 countries would have to agree on it, and
there is no reason to expect that their citizens, their schools, or their
publishers would pay any attention.)

-- 
John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        [email protected]
Being understandable rather than obscurantist poses certain
risks, in that one's opinions are clear and therefore falsifiable
in the light of new data, but it has the advantage of encouraging
feedback from others.  --James A. Matisoff


-- 
John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        [email protected]
If you understand, things are just as they are.
if you do not understand, things are just as they are.


>

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