Merry Andrew wrote:Dear Goldmund:
"Loch" could just as easily be spelled "lokh." In fact, phonetically that would be closer to the pronunciation. And for any words that have the soft 'ch' sounds, words such as cheeze or cheers, how come English doesn't have any diacrticial marks? There should be a special letter for the 'ch' sound. And I totally agree with Setanta that the abandonment of the thorn in English useage was one of the high crimes and/or misdemeanors in English useage. Why use the awkward combination of 'th' when a representative chracter for that sound already exists?
Too many here are looking at this in the wrong fashion. Spelling, for English, isn't phonetic. If it were then children would be able to read it from the get go. That they can't tells us that spelling isn't meant to mimic the sounds of language, it's meant to represent the underlying
aspects of our grammar, and as such, it's only a representation.
Listen to children learning to read. They can "read thru" words they don't know because their grammar, which they do know, helps them fill in the blanks.
This illustrates just how artificial this aspect of 'language' really is. These are but mere symblols on the page which, again, mertely reflect the underlying aspects of our grammar. English has no need for any markings because we all know, long before we begin to read, the sounds that are contained in our own dialect of English.
The pronunciation of 'loch' is that which is used by a given dialect. How the Scots dialect pronounces it is of no concern whatsoever to other dialects of English.
