naturalplastic wrote:
Fnord wrote:
The letter "Q" is unnecessary and should be removed from the English alphabet.
Absolutely.
Similarly, the letter 'c' should be replaced by either 'k', or by 's', in the spellings of virtually all English language words in which the letter now appears.
But the letter itself can be saved, and repurposed, to stand for the sound 'ch' (as they already do in Italian).
The Italian language is a mess.
Very complicated to talk about.
If I ask you how the Ch should be used, you literally go crazy.
Ch'io, ch'he, ch'altri: the elision of which
Which can be elided in front of a word beginning with the vowels e, i; and in this case it always becomes ch': ch'he, ch'io: the h is necessary to preserve the hard, guttural pronunciation of the consonant c. But the same elision can also be made in front of words that begin with a, o, u: ch'altri, ch'ode, ch'urla. There are those who, to economize an h, write c'altri, c'ode, c'urla, using as an excuse that the guttural pronunciation of the c is given naturally by its encounter with the vowels a, o, u. Economics inadvisable because the elision only concerns the final vowel of the word, i.e. the e.
Another case: that in front of the verbal forms ho, hai, ha, they have. The elided forms will be: ch'ho, ch'hai, ch'ha, ch'hanno. Here too, for the reason mentioned above, the forms c'ho, c'hai, c'ha, c'hanno are not recommended. Those who prefer accented verb forms without the h (see initial h: a surviving letter), will write ch'ò, ch'ài, ch'à, ch'ànno. Absolutely do not use the forms c'ò, c'ài etc.
The same rules also apply to the elision of certain conjunctions such as also, why, until, although, for the indefinite adjective some etc.: too, too, even today, though I, because I, until had, some other. But except for also, all these eliminations smell old: reserved for those who love antiques.
And I thought that both English and French were messed up. Words in French are spelled in ways in a different universe from how theyre pronounced. English is of a spelling disaster.
Spanish spelling is quite simple and straightward once you remember that H is silent, and the J is H, and that that 'tilda' symbol over some Ns means to put a 'ya' sound into it. Manana, always manana.