Is pronunciation reform the key to a fully phonetic alphabet?

[pinball1970]

Americans don't even consider directives from Washington to be authoritative

'Dont EVEN consider Washington?' I have to protest a little bit here. Washington DC was founded in 1790.
English Literature can go back further than that and if we rewrote the rule book I would expect a seat at the table.
The end one.

 

[BWV]

Writing the rules should be based on representation of the speakers, so Washington, New Delhi, Lagos and Manila each get more votes than London

 

[DaveE]

Local dialects are for many people a very important part of their identity.

Yes, exactly this. Humans are fundamentally tribal. We don't actually want to be part of a single big homogenous group; we don't want to agree on everything, look the same, or sound the same. In fact people will go out of their way to invent distinctions and advertise their tribal allegiances. You need look no further than bumper stickers on cars, which are nearly all advertising some allegiance to a social group of some sort.

 

[TeethWhitener]

if we rewrote the rule book I would expect a seat at the table.

You had a seat at the table the last time (the only seat) and look how that turned out

 

[Rive]

Local dialects are for many people a very important part of their identity.

On the other side, 'international English' (in which native speakers of any dialect has just small minority!) has a very important part of the wallet of many.

It'll be .. interesting

 

[Algr]

Those politicians are being quite rude. I'm an American and I got most of what he was saying the first time, and fully understood by the second. If those guys want Scotland to be part of the UK, the least they could do is learn to understand how their own countrymen speak.

 

[f95toli]

If those guys want Scotland to be part of the UK, the least they could do is learn to understand how their own countrymen speak.

The SNP -which is the party currently in power in Scotland- is the Scottish National Party.
They don't want Scotland to be part of the UK...Leaving the union is their main goal and I don't think they care at all if someone from England can understand what they are saying.

 

[Algr]

The SNP -which is the party currently in power in Scotland- is the Scottish National Party.
They don't want Scotland to be part of the UK...Leaving the union is their main goal and I don't think they care at all if someone from England can understand what they are saying.

I was faulting the other politicians for not understanding Scottish as well as an American, and seemingly laughing at this guy's accent. That would promote disunity. If it was just some ordinary Joe, that would be different. But in the halls of government, more responsibility is needed.

 

[Hornbein]

While Prez Teddy Roosevelt issued an executive order that spelling should be phonetic. The order was ignored. Teddy followed this practice but no one else did.