Talk:English spellings

It is too arduous to edit my Word list to include only homophones, hence the name change. All the homophones will still be there, locatable by the equals sign. Ro Thorpe = Reaux Zourpe 16:27, 12 March 2008 (CDT)

a strange disaster

I gotta say that I don't understand

• disāsterous at all. I changed it to what seemed to me to be correct, but you've changed it back. I imagine, with a reason. But if I'm baffled by this inexplicable form/word, I imagine that others will be too. What's the scoop on this baby? Hayford Peirce 19:21, 12 March 2008 (CDT)

Yes, that was before I explained the all-important asterisk. Have a look at the first paragraph again: I think it is now *cleer. Ro Thorpe 09:21, 13 March 2008 (CDT)

Ghoti

ghoti pronounced fish is an old joke attributed to George Bernard Shaw; gh as in rough, o as in women and ti as in nation Gareth Leng 12:21, 13 March 2008 (CDT)

then there's the Scots - Menzies is pronounced Mingis because the z here stands for the letter yogh....Gareth Leng 12:24, 13 March 2008 (CDT)

Or 'tough women patients', as I had in my original, written [sighs] many years before we had heard of the Ming... Ro Thorpe 13:21, 13 March 2008 (CDT)

I've put Menzies in my Word list, ready to go in, and, alongside Ming, Robert Menzies, former Australian PM, whose surname had the regular pronunciation *Ménziz.

By the way, if anyone wants to help out with the boring spacing & italics... For the moment I'm just concentrating on putting it all in there. I hadn't realised how huge the list was. Ro Thorpe 11:49, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

TOC

needs sharp right, but I forget how. Ro Thorpe 19:37, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

I had a pipe | instead of a hyp - Ro Thorpe 10:10, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

Hello, question about the accent marks

Hello, this is one of my favorite articles on CZ for its uniqueness and usefulness. However, should there be a little disclaimer sorta warning the reading of accent marks used for pronunciation before they start appearing throughout the article? I'm used to seeing accent marks when I read the pronunciation of a dictionary entry but not used to reading them in prose, unless I'm reading French or Spanish or another language. What do you think? Tom Kelly 22:14, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

I agree entirely on this -- life is hard enough as it is without being even further confessed by accent marks! I don't mind them being there -- I just want them explained FIRST IN CAPITAL LETTERS IF NEED BE! Hayford Peirce 22:37, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

:) H.P., Caps may be a bit much ;0 Tom Kelly 00:46, 24 March 2008 (CDT)

I'm glad you like the article, Tom, and that you are prepared to tolerate the accents, Hayford... I invented them in a pub garden one sunny afternoon in Guimarães around 1995. I'd finished the Guardian Weekly crossword, the dog was calm, there were no table football players to drive us nuts, & I started doodling accents on the headlines: what would accents be like if we had them in English? It was when I came up with the 'third sound' (fàther, vèin, machìne, mòther, pùt), a motley selection & not a category I'd come across in linguistic literature, that I decided it could be useful, so I started writing all this stuff & using, very sparingly, the accents when teaching, e.g. for board drills: hêar, hêre, thére. Well, it seems my link to English phonemes doesn't do the trick, so I reckon the best thing would be to put a table in here. It's quite large, but then so is the article... Ro Thorpe 09:30, 24 March 2008 (CDT)

Catalog

Shouldn't the misspelled words be in catalogues? --Robert W King 13:53, 24 March 2008 (CDT)

looking good. long term idea - audio

long term idea would be to add audio to the words. Wikipedia has something along the lines of audio pronunciation of certain words and also entire articles that are read outloud. Tom Kelly 00:30, 25 March 2008 (CDT)

Formatting - help!

I'll be 58 in April & I want to live to see this article done! If you've got a few seconds when your watchlist is inactive...Obrigadissimo - Ro Thorpe 20:05, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

accents on Hawaiian words

For a while now, some sources, such as the National Geographic, are using some accents on Hawaiian words, such as the famous Nā Pali cliffs in Kauai. Does this count? Hayford Peirce 11:16, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

I didn't know that. I think it merits a footnote. That reminds me of the row over the okina we had at Wikipedia. There I was, innocently accusing it of being an apostrophe... Ro Thorpe 11:26, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

You might check this out -- it ought to be a fairly definitive source:http://www.hawaii.edu/offices/eaur/styleguide.html Hayford Peirce 11:36, 28 March 2008 (CDT)