Thanks for the correction, dukemasuya. I meant to say that within GB and US respectively, it's done the same.

ceigered:ee think thaht wuld wohrk well, dawn't you think saw? Ee mehn, al English spehkers 'naw hu wohrdz ar spelt, saw al thaht wuld nehd t' beh tught* wuld beh ahn older pronunciahshin, with older vuul suundz (vowel sounds) and then weh cahn just lehv mawst ov the consonants az iz (except mybeh "gh"))

I prefer SoundSpel

I think that wud work wel, doen't U think so? I meen, all English speekers noe how werds ar spelt, so all that wud need to be taut wud be an oelder pronunseeaeshun, with oelder vowl sounds and then we can just leev moest of the consonants as is.

Actually, I would prefer the pronunciation to be adapted to the spelling.

Rogir:Actually, I would prefer the pronunciation to be adapted to the spelling.

Ah, yeah, let's all over night start pronouncing our words differently and see how many people still understand us

Seriously, in spoken communication, it's much harder to introduce changes than in written communication. If English gets a spelling reform, the worst thing that could happen is that you have to check your dictionary for every word you encounter. If it gets a different pronunciation, you don't have such a chance. If someone says a word that you don't understand, you usually don't have a chance to check a dictionary or something.

Chinese has a similar issue; the writing is more or less uniform among all of the languages that constitute "Chinese", so writing is mutually intelligible, even if speech is not. It is a great cultural unifying force, to have a common writing.

I watch loads of British TV, and in spite of that, every now and then I encounter a word that is pronounced in a completely surprising way. Usually it has to do with putting the emphasis on an unexpected syllable. Growing up with British family members, I was well used to "STROW'bry" and "RAWZ-bry" (berries), but I was rather surprised to encounter "vaGInal" on a documentary program about women getting surgery done on their bits. I guess some words never really come up in conversations with Grandma and Grandpa!

darkweasel:

Rogir:Actually, I would prefer the pronunciation to be adapted to the spelling.

Ah, yeah, let's all over night start pronouncing our words differently and see how many people still understand us

Actually (those who listened to the sound file I made might of noticed this, and those who like Middle English might have noticed it before as well), English spoken as it is written quite scarily sounds like what seems to be a highly conservative Scottish accent, only without so many rolly R sounds, in fact, I think English spoken as it's written, despite sounding so archaic, is easier to understand for most english speakers than some Scottish accents. It really depends on the speakers location and background though.

And most native speakers can kind of make out what someone's saying provided their pronunciation matches at the very least the spelling.

And Germanic speakers, who seem to be the biggest users of English by population percentage, will probably enjoy hearing a version of English that sounds like the rest of the Germanic languages

Erinja:Growing up with British family members, I was well used to "STROW'bry" and "RAWZ-bry" (berries), but I was rather surprised to encounter "vaGInal"

In pseudo IPA I presume you mean /'strɔ:bri/ and /'rɑ:zbry/?
(Strowbry and Rawzbry looks like /'strəʉbri/ and /rɔ:zbri/ to me)
And how do Americans pronounce vaginal? /'vædʒɪnəl/?

Rogir:Actually, I would prefer the pronunciation to be adapted to the spelling.

En dan we kon nederlandslijk spreken!

ceigered:Actually (those who listened to the sound file I made might of noticed this, and those who like Middle English might have noticed it before as well), English spoken as it is written quite scarily sounds like what seems to be a highly conservative Scottish accent, only without so many rolly R sounds, in fact, I think English spoken as it's written, despite sounding so archaic, is easier to understand for most english speakers than some Scottish accents.

Isolated regions are known to be conservative with their accents. American English is also far more "pronounced as written" than RP English, though not as far as the conservative Scottish accents you mention.

And Germanic speakers, who seem to be the biggest users of English by population percentage, will probably enjoy hearing a version of English that sounds like the rest of the Germanic languages

I love the sound of Old English, which sounds rather like Icelandic to me.

Erinja:Growing up with British family members, I was well used to "STROW'bry" and "RAWZ-bry" (berries), but I was rather surprised to encounter "vaGInal"

In pseudo IPA I presume you mean /'strɔ:bri/ and /'rɑ:zbry/?
(Strowbry and Rawzbry looks like /'strəʉbri/ and /rɔ:zbri/ to me)
And how do Americans pronounce vaginal? /'vædʒɪnəl/?

Yes, you're right on the pseudo-IPA. I was trying to render the sounds with ASCII only, though I knew it was coming out a bit distorted. And you're correct on the US pronunciation of vaginal. The accent shifts in the adjective form of the word, versus the noun.

I just tried this "pronouncing like spelling" with one of the messages in this thread, but stopped at the very basic word "who" ...

Anyway, how do you pronounce "c" when pronouncing like spelling? Like "k" or like "s"? Same issue with "g" ...

English spelling just can't be pronounced as spelled.

NB, if you want to use the IPA in an ASCII environment, you can use SAMPA.

Anyway, how do you pronounce "c" when pronouncing like spelling? Like "k" or like "s"? Same issue with "g" ...

Originally the c in Latin always meant a k, and the g was also always hard. But I don't think my proposal is likely to be accepted.

darkweasel:I just tried this "pronouncing like spelling" with one of the messages in this thread, but stopped at the very basic word "who" ...

Anyway, how do you pronounce "c" when pronouncing like spelling? Like "k" or like "s"? Same issue with "g" ...

English spelling just can't be pronounced as spelled.

Well it can be pronounced as spelling to some extent - as much as Modern German is. However, it has NEVER been spelt like a one-letter-per-sound language like Esperanto.

"Wh" historically = "hw", so "Who" would have been pronounced "Hŭo".
C also can be pronounced like spelling - for example, except in some rare cases (normally celtic worlds, like "celtic" ), C is always "K" before a,o,u, and always "S" before i,e,y.
G is irregular due to the the latin influence. The good thing being that ALL latin words will have g as "ĝ/ĵ" (depending on how official you want to sound) before i and e, where as all germanic words will have a hard G (our soft g got fazed out ages ago and became gh or y).

The problem we have here is that people are no longer taught the origins of the English spelling system or what any of it historically means, and even in universities it can be hard to find proper instruction unless in a decent university or one with specialisation. For instance, "ow" is historically another way to write "ou" which was the long U sound. Gh was a soft german "ch" sound that in some dialects (particularly norse influenced I presume) got turned into a vowel-lengthener.

So, in an approximate sense, English could be pronounced as spelt if speakers were willing to sound archaic and were taught the history of the sound system.
And anyway, the BIGGEST problem with English at the moment are the irregular, highly divergent and diverse vowels. If English was frozen in its medieval form, we'd have far less vowel combinations (almost completely regular), with the result being a orthography in between Dutch and German in ease of learning IMO.