Does anyone think that with the status English currently has as an international language, that it should undergo a spelling reform in order to make the spelling more phonetically consistent, and thus easier for foreigners (and native English-speaking children, for that matter) to learn? Or is the current spelling fine the way it is?

Many other languages in the past have undergone spelling reforms. I believe German underwent one quite recently.

Does it ever seem like speakers of other languages, such as Spanish, German, Dutch, Scandinavian languages, etc., have made more of an effort to make their spelling as phonetic as possible than have English speakers? Do you think this is a problem?

I just want to hear some ideas. I've heard mixed opinions on the topic of a hypothetical English Spelling Reform.

Stefano B:Does anyone think that with the status English currently has as an international language, that it should undergo a spelling reform in order to make the spelling more phonetically consistent, and thus easier for foreigners (and native English-speaking children, for that matter) to learn?

1: In the case of the US specifically, we can't even pull off converting to the metric system. Oh, we tried. The US will be fully metric by... 1975, I think it was. At least, that was the plan. Might have been by 1980 - doesn't really matter. I don't even see any miles/kilometers combo-roadsigns any more like I used to back in the day. Changing the spelling of the whole language will probably be less successful.

2: Phonetic spelling reform is great if you have consistent pronunciation. English doesn't. Southerners pronounce words differently than New Yorkers, who pronounce words differently than Minnesotans, who pronounce words differently than Oregonians, who certainly pronounce words differently than the British/Australians/New Zealanders/Indians (of the Asian variety)/etc. Whose pronunciation do we pick? And assuming we pick one and make that the "standard" that our new spelling reflects, then is it really phonetic to those whose pronunciation is different?

3: Oregon tried to officially reform the spelling of just one English word, back in the 1980's. "Employee". A law was actually passed that all state government literature (legal documents, forms, etc.) would use the spelling "employe". This is entirely true, by the way. For pretty much every Oregonian, it was completely cringeworthy every time we ran into it. The population hated it so much that the law was eventually repealed and we went back to spelling it the way God intended. That's one word. Try doing it to all of them at once. Eek!

According to my dictionary, “atom” is pronounced [ˈætəm] and “atomic” [əˈtɒmɪk].
If English spelling was reformed, these two words (and many others) would have a different spelling and would seem unrelated...
And, as RiotNrrd said, there are many different pronunciations of English, and it would be hard to find a spelling that would satisfy everyone.

Mutusen:According to my dictionary, “atom” is pronounced [ˈætəm] and “atomic” [əˈtɒmɪk].
If English spelling was reformed, these two words (and many others) would have a different spelling and would seem unrelated...
And, as RiotNrrd said, there are many different pronunciations of English, and it would be hard to find a spelling that would satisfy everyone.

That reminds me of 'metric' and 'meter' (as the word is spelled in the non-metric United States, as opposed to 'metre' in the metric Canada)... There are therefore in English examples of words relating to the same underlying word root, but whose spelling of that common root differ.

Sorry for not bringing a single atom to the discussion, but that is all I had to say for now.

yes, english needs a reformed spelling system. unfortunately the anglosphere isn't united enough to ever agree on any much needed changes, and the more people involved (especially in a democratic system) the harder it is to get them to agree. our best bet is a that a small country with a high English population will move ahead and start reforming the spelling of the language themselves, in there own territory. and maybe the rest of the world will (very slowly) adapt the new system. if one country adapted a truly phonetic and consistent way of spelling, it wouldn't be hard for people to learn. and people like me (native speakers who can't spell) would adapt it for their own personal use despite the accepted system in there own country, and very slowly more and more people will adopt the system.

so it seems that a reformed spelling is very unlikely, but this is one scenario that i think it could happen. probably not i my life time though. people seem content with the old ways.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. English is long overdue for an orthographic reform, even apart from the issue of English being an "international language". Many, if not most, native English speakers have a great deal of trouble with the spellings of English words -- obviously it is much worse for international English-learners.

At a minimum, we could make extensive use of diacritical marks to indicate irregular prononciations and stress-accents, but preserving the historical spellings. That way at least it would not be quite so radical a change, and we wouldn't have to throw away all our old books.

Oregon tried to officially reform the spelling of just one English word, back in the 1980's. "Employee".

I had not heard that.

You might be interested to know that our spelling of the word "colonel" is the result of a similarly misguided but partly "successful" effort at reform. A good while back the Powers That Be succeeded in changing the spelling of "coronel" but failed to change its pronounciation. If I recall, they wanted to change it because "coronel" was too French or something so it was changed to resemble Latin more closely. Idiots.

Both of these examples show that any reform needs to be done by people who know what they are doing. Also trying to reform English one word at a time will only make things worse, since it will almost certainly introduce NEW irregular spellings into the language instead of eliminating them.

trojo:You might be interested to know that our spelling of the word "colonel" is the result of a similarly misguided but partly "successful" effort at reform. A good while back the Powers That Be succeeded in changing the spelling of "coronel" but failed to change its pronounciation. If I recall, they wanted to change it because "coronel" was too French or something so it was changed to resemble Latin more closely.

Changing the overly Frenchie-ish "coronel" into the even more Frenchie-ish "colonel" in order to remove its Frenchiness seems to be defeating the purpose of it all, isn't it?

RiotNrrd:

1: In the case of the US specifically, we can't even pull off converting to the metric system. Oh, we tried. The US will be fully metric by... 1975, I think it was. At least, that was the plan. Might have been by 1980 - doesn't really matter. I don't even see any miles/kilometers combo-roadsigns any more like I used to back in the day. Changing the spelling of the whole language will probably be less successful.

The US will eventually adopt the metric system. I don't think we have much of a choice, really. I personally know people who already prefer it.

But you're right, for some awful reason people don't seem to want to switch over.

2: Phonetic spelling reform is great if you have consistent pronunciation. English doesn't. Southerners pronounce words differently than New Yorkers, who pronounce words differently than Minnesotans, who pronounce words differently than Oregonians, who certainly pronounce words differently than the British/Australians/New Zealanders/Indians (of the Asian variety)/etc. Whose pronunciation do we pick? And assuming we pick one and make that the "standard" that our new spelling reflects, then is it really phonetic to those whose pronunciation is different?

I thought about this, too, but actually there have been spelling reforms in many other languages in which the pronunciation varied from region to region. Take German for example. It has had several spelling reforms. And at one time the differences between different German dialects were so great that it would have been difficult for, say, a Bavarian to understand someone from Bremen or Hamburg, but today that is not a huge problem because the same standardized language is taught everywhere.

A "Standardized English" wouldn't be a bad idea, either. Right now English spelling is not very phonetic, and so if there were a new system that was phonetic for most people but not phonetic for everyone, I think it would still be an improvement on what we have now. At least then it would be phonetic for someone

3: Oregon tried to officially reform the spelling of just one English word, back in the 1980's. "Employee". A law was actually passed that all state government literature (legal documents, forms, etc.) would use the spelling "employe". This is entirely true, by the way. For pretty much every Oregonian, it was completely cringeworthy every time we ran into it. The population hated it so much that the law was eventually repealed and we went back to spelling it the way God intended. That's one word. Try doing it to all of them at once. Eek!

Haha, that particular reform doesn't even make sense to me. Why in the world would they want to take off that last E? There couldn't have been any phonetic reason for that.

Mutusen:According to my dictionary, “atom” is pronounced [ˈætəm] and “atomic” [əˈtɒmɪk].
If English spelling was reformed, these two words (and many others) would have a different spelling and would seem unrelated...

I don't think that's a big issue, though. The words "light" and "illuminate" might seem unrelated based on how they look and how they're pronounced, but everyone still knows what they mean. The same goes for star/stellar, which already have different spellings and pronunciations in the current system. And what about year/annual, church/ecclesiastic, moon/lunar, earth/terrestrial? There are already a ton of noun/adjective pairs just like atom/atomic which have not only different pronunciations but entirely different spellings. So I don't think the atom/atomic issue would be a big deal at all.

To me, it seems that the most important thing is that the way a word is spelled is indicative of how it is pronounced.

And, as RiotNrrd said, there are many different pronunciations of English, and it would be hard to find a spelling that would satisfy everyone.

It wouldn't be inconceivable to come up with a universal standard pronunciation, which everyone would have to learn in school. Other languages have done that, and it seems to work. Then theoretically people could switch from their regional pronunciation to the standard pronunciation when they needed to.

I can do a similar thing already. I grew up in the southern region of the US, where the accent is a little different, but I've learned to speak without my native accent, and when I do that people generally can't tell where I'm from. It seems to me that there is already a pretty standard American accent which is what we hear most often on TV, and radio broadcasters, etc. You never turn on the evening news here and hear the news broadcaster speaking with a heavy regional accent. They all sound more or less the same, all over the country.

I think most other English-speaking countries already have a commonly-accepted standard pronunciation as well. The next step would be to try to establish a common pronunciation between all of the English-speaking countries. It doesn't seem inconceivable to me, especially considering that in my area of the country I hear people all the time who have a completely different accent than their parents, because for one reason or another they just learn to talk with a more neutral accent.

Possibly some readers would be interested in the (simplified) spelling society. Here's the website:
http://www.spellingsociety.org/