• huf [he/him]
    ·
    13 days ago

    standard spellings will always privilege one dialect over the others. usually the dialect of the ruling elite.

    the only way out of this is to not reform the spelling. letting it rot will eventually get you to something like english spelling, which is often so far from the pronunciation that it's just equally bad for everyone. and STILL standard english spelling privileges the prestige dialects, just not as much as a more recent, more phonetic orthography.

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
      ·
      edit-2
      12 days ago

      There is one other way out of it, which is to just have multiple standards, but there is a balance that needs to be struck when doing this such that it isn't too cumbersome for users of one standard to read the other, and there aren't too many different standards.

      • huf [he/him]
        ·
        12 days ago

        ahhh, https://xkcd.com/927/

        but yeah, norway seems to be functioning with two different standard orthographies