Barry and Peter,

Peter is probably on target with the late Chris Upward being a
spelling reform advocate. (see www.spellingsociety.org) keyword
Upward).

Other than the fact that Prof. Upward evidently disagreed with Peter
on some issues, I can't see any grounds for Peter's other remarks.

Upward believed that modernizing English spelling would accelerate
literacy.

There is some evidence to support such a belief. According to
Laubach (1960), the more phonemic and transparent the writing system,
the quicker it could be taught to illiterates. The simpler the code
the quicker it can be mastered. Laubach claimed that he and his
teachers could teach illiterates to read and write their own language
in 3 months (2 hours per day) unless they happened to speak French or
English. These languages took considerably longer.

Of course the ability to read aloud is not the same as understanding
the words you have pronounced. It just means that you can match up
your sight vocabulary with your ear vocabulary.

You can teach a shallow orthography in about 3 months. (Most schools
in Italy and Spain, for instance, take about 7 months). Code literacy
means that the person can write any word they can pronounce and
pronounce any word they see written and associate it with their
speaking vocabulary.

When there are multiple dialects to be represented by one writing
system, the task is more difficult. One would have to choose a
broadcast dialect to represent. If we achieved a perfect description
of NBC or BBC English, it would not be perfect with respect to other
dialects.

I don't think there are any more dialects of English than there are
dialects of Spanish. So while this is a major problem it does not
mean that a more transparent representation of English speech is
impossible or impractical.

--Steve

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "i18n@..." <i18n@...> wrote:

> That may or may not be true, but we have no evidence of it here.
Rather, without evidence it sounds like a five year old calling
someone names.

> Yet, I am sure that there is something that caused you to come to a
reasoned conclusion instead of actually meaning to deliver a
unsupported insult. Could you elaborate on your thought processes on
the matter that would be likely to leave those of us with less
experience in the specific topic to be able to draw a valid
conclusion? What is the reason we should listen to to draw the same
conclusion as you? It would be more useful to us!