281–290 of 432 posts
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Shame that it only seems to be available in physical form and only from the US. The price is already quite high and with postage to the UK it adds up to be quite expensive.
My friend from the UK bought it and it got sent from somewhere locakly. I am in NZ and mine was sent from AU. So I think you should be covered.
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I use a screen reader and in managed quite well until 1200. That said: phonetic spelling now. We have spent 500 years turning English into something closer to Egyptian hieroglyphs than a language with an alphabet.
phonetic spelling based on whose dialect? should "merry" "marry" and "Mary" be spelled the same? besides, pronunciation continues to evolve, so any phonetic spelling would continue to gradually diverge from the spoken language
There is no such thing as spelling in phonetic writing systems because they render what is said, not some random collection of glyphs that approximated how a word was pronounced 500 years ago, in the best case.
If two people with different accents can speak to each other, they can also write to each other under a phonetic writing system.
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>But most words are spelled as they sound. English has 45 sounds and 26 letter. There are basically no words over three letter long that are written as they are spoken.
Spelling can still be phonetic even if groups of letters have differing sounds from those letters' sounds serially in isolation. The key criterion is that the rules must be universal, applying to every instance of those groupings, rather than having exceptions for their appearances in certain words. ...ok, it occurs to me now that a smart-alec might declare each individual word to be a "grouping of letters with its o…
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Indeed, I remember being in Oxford in the 90s and an older man approached me and spoke to me in English and I couldn’t understand a word he said. My ex-wife, who’s an ESL speaker who speaks fluently and without an accent has trouble with English accents in general. Similarly, in Spanish, I find it’s generally easier for me to understand Spanish speakers than Mexican speakers even though I learned Mexican Spanish in s…
> The Spanish I understand most easily is the heavily accented Spanish of non-native Spanish speakers. Are you sure this is because of their accent? I have the same experience with French (the non-native speakers are easier to understand), but I always thought that was because they use fewer and simpler words.
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Italian here, and it was the same for me, the language feels very different by 1300. Which is interesting cause 1200 italian[0] seems pretty readable by everyone who can read italian (and likely every other romance language), you have to go further back to have a shift. [0] E.g. Saint Francis' Canticle of the Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canticle_of_the_Sun
> it was the same for me, the language feels very different by 1300. The language in section 1300 isn't much different from section 1400. Almost all of it is still good English today if you give the words their modern spelling: Then after much time spoke the Master, and his words were cold as winter is. His voice was as the crying of ravens, sharp and shrill, and all that heard him were adread and durst not speak. "I…
Also, you say spelling but e.g. "speken" feels more a grammatical than orthographic difference.
By comparison, Dante's incipit to the Divine Comedy is 100% the same spelling and grammar as modern Italian (nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/mi ritrovai per una selva oscura/che la diritta via era smarrita)
One of the absolute treasures of our time is The History of English Podcast. 186 episodes in, and he's just gotten past Shakespeare. The first 30 or so episodes might run a little slow for you for lack of written sources, but it really does pick up and has been hours of joy. https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/ For the prurient, Chaucer's Vulgar Tongue is a great place to dip a toe into it: https://historyofenglishpo…
I’m just ahead of you on episode 200! Just getting into the rise of printing in English. I absolutely agree. This has become my comfort podcast when I just want to decompress.
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The Latin alphabet variant modern English uses has uses only ~11 kinds of strokes, where is this 26 coming from?
An alphabet assigns a letter to a sound. No more no less. English no longer has an alphabet because the Latin alphabet, designed for Latin languages, replaced the native Runic alphabet. Serbian has an alphabet, as does Italian. All other European languages I'm aware of don't.
In Christian circles some people are KJV-only, only reading from the 1611 KJV. But articles like this demonstrate that languages change dramatically over time. Thus I regard KJV-onlyism to be a passing fad; for if another 400 years passes, the writing in the 1611 will go from being strange to our eyes, to being unreadable in the future by anyone but trained scholars.
Kinda does a number on the whole "literal word of god" thing doesn't it?