Re: [frogs] Discourse on the Consumption of Dog Food

[Anthony W. Youngman]

In message <address@hidden>, Graham Percival 
<address@hidden> writes
> > Sure, and what about languages with a variety of accents, like English?
> > Which one do you base the spelling on?
>
> The Queen's, of course.  ;)

You mean English, as spoken by a German, of Saxon descent imported to 
kick the Anglish off the throne, and spoken with a French accent? :-)

> But in a well-designed language, the accents would at least be
> consistent -- i.e. if you pronounced "about" as "aboot" (which,
> despite the best efforts of the cartoon South Park", I've never
> heard any Canadians say), you should also pronounce "though" as
> "thoogh", "honour" as "honoor", etc.
>
> The ridiculousness of these examples -- as well as any
> uncertainties about exactly what sounds I mean by those
> combinations of letters -- is further evidence of the difficulties
> of English.

If you DESIGN a language, then maybe (although I've already alluded to 
the problems of Esperanto).

English - well we can't even decide on what English IS. Talking about 
just the home country (the British Isles) I like to say "The Saxons 
speak English, the Anglish speak Scots, and the Scots speak Gaelic".

Now add Strine, that monstrosity the Americans like to call English 
(which is actually more "original" than modern English!), and all the 
other variants :-) Which one is the "real English"? Oh - and if you want 
pedigree it most certainly isn't the Queens English which, as a dialect, 
is only about 150 years old.

To throw the cat amongst the pigeons, I think we should declare "Modern 
Latin" as the official language of the EU. After all, it is spoken by 
more people as a FIRST language than any other language group in the 
Union (and yes, I DID check on Wikipedia - Spain+Portugal+Italy 
outnumber all the other groupings). I can imagine the row as they try to 
define a standard spelling/grammar/pronounciation :-)

Cheers,
Wol
--
Anthony W. Youngman - address@hidden