Comment by ben_w
7 days ago
And the "upper case" vs. "lower case" distinction, even though we no longer use a printing press in which each letter is sorted into a different box, or "case", depending on if it's a capital or not.
And we kept the letter "c", even though in English this is always* either pronounced like "k" or like "s", or the "ch" digraph. But sutsh ðings go in sykles, and one day ðe English language will be simplified.
* Saying "always" is a risk on a forum like this, no doubt there's an example I've not thought of.
Tsk, tsk! You're using thorn (ð) for two different 'th' sounds. Old English used 'eth' (þ) to mark both sounds but it'd be more precise to use both letters like in Icelandic, eg for the above: þings, ðe (although the vowel in 'the' is actually more of a schwa [ǝ] usually, or [i] before vowels). Also, you're still sticking to some English spelling pecularities there...
In a fictitious modern, phonology-based spelling system, you could write the above something like:
“Bat sač þings gou in sajkls, änd wan dej ðí Ingliš längwidž wil bí simplifajd.”
;)
Interesting, in my accent the "th" in "the" and the "th" in "things" sound the same.
Accents do make spelling reform difficult. For example, some of the people who grew up 5 miles from me (they were Cosham/Portsmouth, I was south Havant) pronounced both these "th"s as… I don't know the linguistic symbol, but something like a "v" or an "f".
Yeah, accents, dialects, preserving history and mutual intelligibility by retaining old or original forms of spelling or otherwise... Lots of reasons for being conservative here.
What's your accent btw? In "standard" English, 'the' has a voiced consonant, whereas 'thing' is unvoiced.
EDIT: Sorry, I now see you already told about your regional accent.
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TIL upper/lower case. I always thought it was because upper case letters look taller, thus are "up" while lowercase are smaller thus "low" on the typeface line.