Languages

Notes

Phonetic vs Phonemic Spelling - Jun 2025

spelling reform to meaningfully move in a phonetic direction

A phonetic respelling would destroy the languages, because there are too many dialects without matching pronunciations. Though rendering historical texts illegible, a phonemic approach would work. But that would still mean most speakers have 2-3 ways of spelling various vowels. You could predict pronunciation from spelling, but not spelling from pronunciation.