alt Hacker NewsYou need to retain Latin and Greek spellings for interoperability with other languages.
The problem with English is that it messed up its vowels and started changing the pronunciations.
It's very helpful to newcomers to English that a word like psychology is written in a way that is similar to theirs. But, yiles, the butchered pronunciations, /saɪˈkɑːlədʒi/, is unrecognizeable.
Other languages don't have problems with old spellings. In Czech, psychologie is pronounced the way it is written, pretty much letter for letter: /psɪxologiɛ/
We really don't need to retain interoperability, but if that is truly more important than English literacy, then perhaps we should be consistent.
If we're going to argue that centre is the correct spelling because for some reason r needs to go after a consonant instead of the vowel due to etymology, then surely we should extend this:
- Filter should become filtre (Latin: filtrum)
- Trimester should be trimestre (French: trimestre, Latin: trimestris)
- Perimeter should be perimetre (Latin: perimetros)
- Diameter should be diametre (Old French: diametre, Latin: diametros)
- Chronometer, manometer and a hundred other words that end in -meter should largely be changed to -metre like chronometre, manometre, etc.
- Copper should become coppre (Latin: coprium)
- Tiger should become tigre (Anglo-Norman: tigre, Latin: tigris)
- Cylinder should be cylindre (Middle French: cylindre, Latin: cylindrus, Ancient Greek: kulindros)
- Coriander should be coriandre (Anglo-norman: coriandre, Latin: coriandrum)
- Monster should be monstre (Old French: monstre, Latin: monstrum)
- Member should be membre (Old French: membre, Latin: membrum) - along with, of course, dismembre, castmembre, membreship, etc)
I could go on and on.
In the future, we could be entring (Old French: entrer, Latin: intro) pubs while sobre (Old French: sobre, Latin: sobrius) eagre (Old French: aigre, Latin: agrus) to drink cidre (Old French: cisdre / sidre) and get plastred (Latin: plastrum from emplastrum).
We shouldn't have to alter the spelling of more than a few thousand words to proprely (Old French: propre, Latin: proprius) retain Latin and Greek spellings (or rather, a Latin transliteration of Greek given the different alphabet).