> Standard-setting was only partly in the hands of the people setting the type. Even more so, it was down to a growing reading public. The more texts there were, the more reading there was, and the greater the sensibility about what looks right. Once that sense develops, it can be a very powerful enforcer of norms. These norms in the literacy of English speakers today are so well entrenched that simple adjustments are very jarring. If ai trai tu repreezent mai akshuel pronownseeayshun in raiteeng, yu kan reed it, but its difikelt and disterbeeng tu du soh. It just looks wrong, and that feeling of wrongness interrupts the flow of reading. The fluency of reading depends on the speed with which you visually identify the words, and the speed of identification increases with exposure. The more we see a word, the more quickly we recognise it, even if its spelling doesn’t match the sound.
That's kind of interesting: one of the reasons English is stuck with such difficult spelling is that sight reading is so much more important nowadays than reading aloud.
If you just stop trying to interpret the words and just read them as pronunciations (which I understand how much reading used to be done), that phonetic sentence is actually not too hard to read.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 14.8 ms ] threadThat's kind of interesting: one of the reasons English is stuck with such difficult spelling is that sight reading is so much more important nowadays than reading aloud.
If you just stop trying to interpret the words and just read them as pronunciations (which I understand how much reading used to be done), that phonetic sentence is actually not too hard to read.