Just because something looks weird to us does not mean it's bad. I can read the last sentence at about 70% speed, and I suspect you can too; that means within the 20-year time frame (facetiously) proposed, we could both easily adapt to this. And that's with bad choices intentionally cherry-picked by Twain to ridicule the idea. If the reductio ad absurditem is not really all that absurdum, that's a point in favor of the idea.
Re:Orthographic Depth
by kelseyfrog on Monday October 16, 2023 @06:50PM
(#37907738)
It should be possible to do orthographic replacement using an LLM-based browser plugin and a trivial prompt to subjectively test the hypothesis.
Re:Orthographic Depth
by Wowfunhappy on Monday October 16, 2023 @08:00PM
(#37908343)
I don't understand why you're replacing "y" with "i"?
I naturally read "iear" as "ear", not "year". And I read "awai" as something similar to "awa-ee" (I'm having trouble translating the exact sound to text).
Other than that, I see no issues with the changes through year 5. It's not that hard to read and I'm sure I would quickly get used to it with practice. I literally can't read anything after that however.
> wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
It technically needs to be a different letter to mark a "short i", like "й" in Russian or Ukrainian. If we use "ï' for it, the "year" will become "ïear", "yellow" will become "ïellow". The "y" that reads as "i" will just switch to "i", and "my" will become "mai".
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For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet.
The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.
Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.