erinja:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_alphabet

That's exactly what I did before posting my previous reply Then I checked http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_%C3%A1b%C3%A..., however, and the situation got clearer.

(Coincidentally, a Hungarian friend of mine is online on skype right now. I asked her how often she has seen the letter ë in Hungarian, and she said, "never. it's not in our alphabet." I gave her the same link you gave me and she commented, "I never heard about it used in any variant of Hungarian". Quite possibly she's not aware of those dialects, but still...).

erinja:"ë" is a sound found in some dialects of Hungarian

"ł" is a letter used for a sound found in many dialects of the Venetian family of languages. Nevertheless, no Italian person would use it to transliterate a similar sound for a foreign word, ever.

My only point was that in many cases, a transliterated version of a word will often look mangled. Presumably the previous writer didn't like the many "ee"'s written in the transliteration of "Interlingua", but presumably speakers of languages where "ee" is a common combination would have no problem with it at all.

So, in other words, those who are not used to certain consonantic or vocalic clusters are likely to find them weird when they see them used in familiar words. As I already said, it sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Seriously, I would prefer a "horrible" but regular system any day of the week. The English vowels are far from being regular, as we all know, and I think this is what moved the "previous writer". It's not about having many 'e's, it is - at least to me - a strange sense of disconnection occurring when all you have is a mostly disordered system and you have to communicate a very specific sound. This would make sense to me especially in the presence of a comment about "purity".

erinja:I am personally happy with English spelling as it is. I like how you can see the origin of words by the spelling, and I feel like the soul of the language would be yanked out if you were to completely rework the spelling.

Ie wud liek tuu sae that yuu ah probablee riet. Eneewae it iz kwiet hahd thinking ov beter waez tuu spel werdz.

I would like to say that you are probably right. Anyway it is quite hard thinking of better ways to spell words.

Wun ov the bigest problemz faw Inglish peepl wud bee the Nawthern and Suthern waez tuu riet a werd liek "bath". The Suthernerz sae "baRth". The Nawthernerz sae "bath" with the "a" liek "cat". Sum Amerikanz seem to sae "baHth" - a bit maw in beetween the tuu ekstreemz ov Inglish waes ov saeing it.

Ie wud liek tuu sae that yuu ah probablee riet. Eneewae it iz kwiet hahd thinking ov beter waez tuu spel werdz.

I would like to say that you are probably right. Anyway it is quite hard thinking of better ways to spell words.

Wun ov the bigest problemz faw Inglish peepl wud bee the Nawthern and Suthern waez tuu riet a werd liek "bath". The Suthernerz sae "baRth". The Nawthernerz sae "bath" with the "a" liek "cat". Sum Amerikanz seem to sae "baHth" - a bit maw in beetween the tuu ekstreemz ov Inglish waes ov saeing it.

If we put:
ây for ie, â for ah, ü for uu, ô for o “in problem”, and u “sum”, î for ee and aŭ for aw, then the text will appear as below, which is to my opinion is looking more pleasant.

Ây wud lâyk tü say that yü âr prôbablî râyt. Enîway it iz kowâyt hârd thinking ôv beter weyz tu spel w[o]rdz.
Vôn ôv the biggest prôblemz for Inglish pîpel wud bî the Naŭthern and Saŭternerz tu say a word lâyk “bath”. The Saŭternz say “baRth.” The Naŭthernz say “bath” with “a” lâyk [in] “kat” sôm Amerikanz sîm to say “baHth” – a

akbari:Ie wud liek tuu sae that yuu ah probablee riet. Eneewae it iz kwiet hahd thinking ov beter waez tuu spel werdz.

I would like to say that you are probably right. Anyway it is quite hard thinking of better ways to spell words.

Wun ov the bigest problemz faw Inglish peepl wud bee the Nawthern and Suthern waez tuu riet a werd liek "bath". The Suthernerz sae "baRth". The Nawthernerz sae "bath" with the "a" liek "cat". Sum Amerikanz seem to sae "baHth" - a bit maw in beetween the tuu ekstreemz ov Inglish waes ov saeing it.

If we put:
ây for ie, â for ah, ü for uu, ô for o “in problem”, and u “sum”, î for ee and aŭ for aw, then the text will appear as below, which is to my opinion is looking more pleasant.

Ây wud lâyk tü say that yü âr prôbablî râyt. Enîway it iz kowâyt hârd thinking ôv beter weyz tu spel w[o]rdz.
Vôn ôv the biggest prôblemz for Inglish pîpel wud bî the Naŭthern and Saŭternerz tu say a word lâyk “bath”. The Saŭternz say “baRth.” The Naŭthernz say “bath” with “a” lâyk [in] “kat” sôm Amerikanz sîm to say “baHth” – a

Ouate iou sèd? Aille dompte andeurstande! ize ite inglishe?

Fort mi zi spèlingue ofe inglishe ize note eu problème, aze iou si.

Av koŭrs speling ingliŝ iznt a prabl'm. Aj ken undrstend ju perfektli, jan aleksan.

Hu sez speling ingliŝ iz hard?

erinja:Av koŭrs speling ingliŝ iznt a prabl'm. Aj ken undrstend ju perfektli, jan aleksan.

Hu sez speling ingliŝ iz hard?

Ouate? canne iou ripite? iou rraite zeri stranjeuli!

Ize zeu inglishe spelingue ard? Aille ououd sè zad ite ize aze ard aze ine ozère language, laique frèntshe. Sau az frèntshe, ite ououd nide eu spèlingue réforme.

Note: written english with (bad) french spelling

!Quapla!:how about in stead of writting a word, write what you would say? an australian then would write "mate" diffrent than someone in the states. so when you read, you would read speach, not words.

Reading speech is hard. It requires that you sound out every single word, every single time. When you have a standardized spelling, you read faster, because you see a word and instantly recognize it, rather than having to sound things out. Did you ever read "Huckleberry Finn"? Some of the accents in there really slowed me down and forced me to think about it, otherwise I couldn't have understood.

First of all, for foreigners there's no problem to spell English words cos learning them they're also learning the spelling. It's not a huge problem to remember it, it comes automatically.

Looking at:
'Ây wud lâyk tü say that yü âr prôbablî râyt. Enîway it iz kowâyt hârd thinking ôv beter weyz tu spel w[o]rdz.'
I'm totally shocked. It looks terrible. It doesn't look as beauty as a standard version of English spelling. It doesn't even look beauty.

If you want to think about practicality (and I know for many this is a thought exercise more than anything), you're talking about a language in which almost two thirds of the native speakers live in a country which hasn't even switched to metric yet...

erinja:

!Quapla!:how about in stead of writting a word, write what you would say? an australian then would write "mate" diffrent than someone in the states. so when you read, you would read speach, not words.

Reading speech is hard. It requires that you sound out every single word, every single time. When you have a standardized spelling, you read faster, because you see a word and instantly recognize it, rather than having to sound things out. Did you ever read "Huckleberry Finn"? Some of the accents in there really slowed me down and forced me to think about it, otherwise I couldn't have understood.

This is a real problem in phonetically spelled languages - whose accent do you base the spelling system on? It inevitably becomes based on the pronunciation of the powerful metropolitan elites, which hastens the decline of dialects and the flattening of pronunciation.

In Norway, there are 2 different phonetic spelling systems, so that everyone can choose the one that's closest to their own dialect. And even within each system, there are alternative spellings for many words.

In Scotland, where I'm from originally, there have been (so far pretty unsuccessful) attempts to revive the written Scots language, in order to counteract the steady anglicisation that has been going on the last few hundred years.

In terms of preservation of dialects, the best system is probably the Chinese, where each character represents an idea or a unit of meaning. Thus people in different parts of China can pronounce the characters entirely according to their own dialect, but everyone has a common written language.