• pooberbee (they/she)
    link
    fedilink
    204 days ago

    I disagree. X is a useless letter in English; it’s always copying other letters or combinations of letters. Meanwhile, there’s a special rule where putting an ‘s’ and an ‘h’ together makes a different sound. Why not have a single letter for that?

    • @Gladaed@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      -64 days ago

      Because a diphthong is fine. Taking a already used character and assigning a new sound to it is going to make things hard.

      Also I need you to argue not just from the English point of view, but all Latin alphabet using languages, in particular those with strict rules of pronunciation like German.

      • jutty
        link
        64 days ago

        I think you really miss the point. It’s as if your suggestion that romanization methods have imperfections dismisses the actual reasons why people will refuse to make the effort to learn how to pronounce a name from a language other than their own, which go far beyond whether or not the spelling “makes sense”.

        The comic gives a very concrete example of that. It wouldn’t matter if the letters exactly mapped to a perfect pronunciation, the mere fact it does not roll of the tongue, i.e. “sounds foreign”, coupled with the underlying xenophobia+racism combo is what’s at work there.

      • @belastend@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        24 days ago

        strict pronounciation rules german

        Nah, this aint it. Finnish has strict pronounciation rules but German is pretty loose.