Ask Lemmy

I agree with the regional accent issue, but I don't like the choice of example. Body on its own is clearly an o, but anybody is much more commonly a u sound. That's less a regional thing and more just language evolving over time.

I'm far more interested in the changing of c and x to being actually useful letters, as opposed just replacements for other letters that we can easily change from reading to speaking. The y thing isn't entirely necessary, but we used to use it as a th, as in ye olde inn, and TH is a weird combo of you think about it.

G and J should get their shit together too.

While I'm not liking your phrase "bad regional accents" I do think you have a point. There are many, many different English accents and to attempt to capture that in the orthography is too much hassle and detail. The "dictionary pronunciation" is really more of a proto pronunciation than actual dialect-ized speech. It is a generalization and standardization and to an extent "the correct" way to say something Which is prescriptive, ugly and discriminatory and quite likely also racist. But there really is a need to simplify and standardize instead of capturing every tiny nuance of all dialects.

In my mind the best way to do this is just pick what you believe to be the most standard English accent and use that. Acknowledge that there are countless dialects. But this is the standard.