Improving our alphabet

As discussed in previous posts, the Roman alphabet (ABC's) that we use to represent the English language does a poor job of matching sounds to letters.  That is why spelling is so difficult in English.  When was the last time you had to think about the spelling of a word?  Did you know that problem is not not an issue in languages which have an effective phonetic alphabet (i.e. an alphabet where the letters match the sounds)?

Because we try to represent the 12 vowel sounds with only 5-6 vowel letters, it is clearly that we are using an alphabet that was designed for another purpose.  Here is a list of benefits of swapping up our ABC's for a more appropriate script.

• Children spend more time on maths and science and less time memorizing strings of letters to learn spelling
• English would be easier for learners making it a more competitive language
• Spelling would be easier for everyone
• Standardise/standardize spelling

So why don't we change it?  Why don't we just start using the phonemic alphabet in place of the Roman one?  Well, it is just not that easy.  It is clear that there are long-term benefits that would seriously benefit our children and help to promote the English language as an international language.  But these are long-term benefits and to get there we have to go through a difficult and costly short term.  And if we fail, then the costly and difficult short term was for naught.

Here are the challenges:

• The transition period would be difficult (especially for the elderly and children/learners)
• Change management on such a large scale would be difficult as people tend to resist change
• People speak differently so the change would not only standardise spelling but pronunciation as well
• Lost investment if it does not catch on

I guess that the biggest obstacle would be that you would effectively need to get the world to decide on one way to spell and say words and you can imagine the political battles that would create.  Take a word like regular for instance.  How do you say it?

/rɛgjələr/
or
/rɛgjʊlə/?

And more importantly, would you mind changing the way that you say it if the world decided that we were going with the alternative pronunciation.  Could you change the way you have been words since you a kid for that matter?  It would probably be a change that would would take a couple of generations to really take hold but possible if we devoted to it.

And what if we couldn't decide on one pronunciation or people couldn't change the habits ingrained in their version of the language?  Do we go with two different spellings and have the dictionary looking a whole lot fuller with thousands of extra polysemes?

My personal opinion on this is that it is doable but only if done well.  It is possible that some change to our language in the future may make this change necessary or popular and that is the ticket;  if you could somehow motivate the majority of the English speakers on the planet to make the change by making the new version of English desirable (e.g. it's spoken in universities or on TV or through any other popular medium), then you could motivate the people to change it.  

Just something to think about :)