Good-bye Again

Unfortunately I find that my pet blogging site, in its smartening and updating, seems to have deprived me of the facility for editing or adding to my older blogs.  Very probably it is due to my own misunderstanding of the new system.

So I have had to create this new blog to extend my recent one titled Good-Bye !

It all arose from a consideration of George Bernard Shaw's wish to modernise English spelling to match pronunciation .  Can't be done, George.  Our pronunciations vary so much, whether from regional differences within the British Isles or throughout the world; or just through the kind of sloppiness in pronunciation to which we all contribute whenever we say 'Wensdy' for 'Wednesday', or 'unforch'n'tly' for 'unfortunately' or 'gradgel' for gradual or 'Feb'ry' for 'February' or 's'prise' for 'surprise' or 'Crismus' for 'Christmas'.  Who would want to revert to 'cannot' for 'can't' or 'will not' for 'won't' ?

Actually (atcherly), the reasons for most of these changes are muscular. We say (and even write) 'improve' rather than 'inprove', or 'imbalance' rather than 'inbalance' just because it is much harder in each case to say the latter rather than the former.  When we say 'in-' the lips remain open, but to start the syllables 'prove' or 'bal' they have to be closed. So we use an 'm' rather than an 'n' before a 'p' or a 'b'. Test it.

Good-bye Again