PHONOLOGICAL PATTERNS VERSUS LINGUISTIC REFORM

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Spelling reform is common in all languages, throughout their written history. Ironically, attempts to take language back to its roots (take the Latinisation of French, for example only serves to confuse things. Academicians in France decided to standardize some plurals in -x, but not others. Bijou and caillou take an -x, where trou takes an -s. Why? Because the symbolic abbreviation of Classical Latin's -US was widely misread! The French are very good at getting things completely wrong and over-complicating the issue; what, for example, was the preceding direct object rule introduced for? But that's enough French for now. Let's look at some linguistic patterns which actually make sense: there is an unwritten rule which states that a C in Latin becomes h in Germanic languages, where Latin d becomes t in English and z in German. Let's put this one to the test, taking a stroll around the rest of modern Europe and environs along the way:

Eng          Latin        Greek       Dutch       Danish     Norw        Icel.         Swed        Fren         Span        Cat           Provç      

heart        COR(DIS) kardía      hart          hjerte       hjerte       hjarta       hjärta       coeur        corazón    cor           cor

M. Gk       Romansch                German

kardia       cour         Herz

Seems OK. Catalan shows its roots alongside the now extinct Provençale, and the Scandinavian languages are as disturbingly similar as usual. The Latin d is retained in both Ancient and Modern Greek where English gets a t and German gets its z, and the Germanic group certainly does prefer h to Classical Latin's C.