Would English be easier if...
... we didn't strip all of the diacritical marks from the letters?
diacritical mark, n.: a mark added to a letter to indicate a special pronunciation.
Definition's up above, so we're on the same page. It's the marks that make one letter sound different. As example, the popular popper pepper is called a jalapeño, not a jalapeno. The ñ has the 'ny' sound. The delicious rice noodle dish from Vietnam is Phở, and is pronounced with a rising tone.
This thought crossed my mind as I was reading on my tablet from Securus Technologies' poorly maintained, never updated library of 24,229 titles.
You see, there was a word in the book I was reading that reminded me of another word in that it looks one way, but is pronounced extremely different.
Your word to follow along with for this thought is...
Willamette
It's the name of a river.
Now, when I first moved to Oregon, I pronounced this word as
Wil-luh-met
It was the pronunciation I encountered on the Eastern Seaboard.
I got curious stares in Oregon, however (enter self-conscious me mode...), but one person at least thought to ask, "You're from the East Coast, aren't you?"
Well, yes, I am...
They were gentle with their guidance, explaining the indigenous origins of the name, and helped me with their local pronunciation of the
Whil-am-ut
river.
I believe this mistake could have been avoided today by liberal application and use of diacritical marks to shape the pronunciation of letters, and appropriate education on each pronunciation variation. Incidentally, I feel that rendering accent marks could guide learners on their journey into another language! People coming to Americanized English from, say, the many regional flavours of Français or Español would be afforded hints on how something may be pronounced. People learning other languages after learning our potential updated, accent-mark laden English would understand the pronunciations, as well.
For some, it may make this language harder, as now you have to probably scribe a macron over the second o in a name like Potōmac, but it'll get rid of those 'poto-mac' pronunciations. :)
After all, typesetting with accents is much easier now than it was a hundred years ago, I am quite certain; there isn't a reasonable reason for us to drop the umlauts, cedillas, macrons, circumflexes, and the many other diacriticals available to us these days. Printing text can be done with a piece of hardware small enough to sit on a coffee table next to your coffee cup. In the 600-such years since the invention of the Gutenberg Press, we've had the time to innovate and make printing easier for more people.
Let's consider the impact of truly spelling out things as we intend them to be pronounced.
Or maybe everything should be written in the IPA, no exceptions. >:3