> A phonetic respelling would destroy the languages, because there are too many dialects without matching pronunciations.
Not only that, but since pronunciation tends to diverge over time, it will create a never-ending spelling-pronunciation drift where the same words won't be pronounced the same in, e.g. 100-200 years, which will result in future generations effectively losing easy access to the prior knowledge.
> since pronunciation tends to diverge over time, it will create a never-ending spelling-pronunciation drift
Once you switch to a phonetic respelling this is no longer a frequent problem. It does not happen, or at least happens very rarely with existing phonetic languages such as Turkish.
In the rare event that the pronunciation of a sound changes in time, the spelling doesn't have to change. You just pronounce the same letter differently.
If it's more than one sound, well, then you have a problem. But it happens in today's non-phonetic English as well (such as "gost" -> "ghost", or more recently "popped corn" -> "popcorn").
> Once you switch to a phonetic respelling this is no longer a frequent problem
Oh, but it does. It's just the standard is held as the official form of the language and dialects are killed off through standardized education etc. To do this in English would e.g. force all Australians, Englishmen etc. to speak like an American (when in the UK different cities and social classes have quite divergent usage!) This clearly would not work and would cause the system to break apart. English exhibits very minor diaglossia, as if all Turkic peoples used the same archaic spelling but pronounced it their own ways, e.g. tāg, kök, quruq, yultur etc. which Turks would pronounce as dāg, gök, yıldız etc. but other Turks today say gurt for kurt, isderik, giderim okula... You just say they're "wrong" because the government chose a standard and (Turkic people's outside of Turkey weren't forced to use it.)
As a native English speaker, I'm not even sure how to pronounce "either" (how it should be done in my dialect) and seemingly randomly reduce sounds. We'd have to change a lot of things before being able to agree on a single right version and slowly making everyone speak like that.
> dialects are killed off through standardized education etc.
Sorry, I didn't mean that it would be a smooth transition. It might even be impossible. What I wrote above is (paraphrasing myself) "Once you switch to a phonetic respelling [...] pronunciation [will not] tend to diverge over time [that much]". "Once you switch" is the key.
> To do this in English would e.g. force all Australians, Englishmen etc. to speak like an American
Why? There is nothing that prevents Australians from spelling some words differently (as we currently do, e.g. colour vs color, or tyre vs tire).
There's no particular reason why e.g. Australian English should have the same phonemic orthography as American English.
Nor is it some kind of insurmountable barrier to communication. For example, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are all idiolects of the same language with some differences in phonemes (like i/e/ije) and the corresponding differences in standard orthographies, but it doesn't preclude speakers from understanding each other's written language anymore so than it precludes them from understanding each other's spoken language.
> Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian
are based on the exact same Štokavian dialect, ignoring Kajkavian, Čajkavian, Čakavian and Torlakian dialects. There is _no_ difference in standard orthography, because yat reflexes have nothing to do with national boundaries. Plenty of Serbs speak Ijekavian, for example. Here is a dialect map: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fc...
Your example is literally arguing that Australian English should have the same _phonetic_ orthography, even. But Australian English must have the same orthography or else Australia will no longer speak English in 2-3 generations. The difference between Australian and American English is far larger than between modern varieties of naš jezik. Australians code switches talking to foreigners while Serbs and Croats do not.
> There is _no_ difference in standard orthography, because yat reflexes have nothing to do with national boundaries
But there is, though, e.g. "dolijevati" vs "dolivati". And sure, standard Serbian/Montenegrin allows the former as well, but the latter is not valid in standard Croatian orthography AFAIK. That this doesn't map neatly to national borders is irrelevant.
If Australian English is so drastically different that Australians "won't speak English in 2-3 generations" if their orthography is changed to reflect how they speak, that would indicate that their current orthography is highly divergent from the actual spoken language, which is a problem in its own right. But I don't believe that this is correct - Australian English content (even for domestic consumption, thus no code switching) is still very much accessible to British and American English speakers, so any orthography that would reflect the phonological differences would be just as accessible.
By tautology, if you split the language, you split the language. Different groups will exhibit divergent evolution.
> current orthography is highly divergent from the actual spoken language, which is a problem in its own right
The orthography is no more divergent to an Australians speech as to an American's speech, let alone a Londoner or Oxfordian. But why would it be a problem?
The need for regular re-spelling and problems it introduces are precisely my point.
Consider three English words that have survived over the multiple centuries and their respective pronunciation in Old English (OE), Middle English around the vowel shift (MidE) and modern English, using the IPA: «knight», «through» and «daughter»:
«knight»: [knixt] or [kniçt] (OE) ↝ kniçt] or [knixt] (MidE) ↝ [naɪt] (E)
«through»: [θurx] (OE) ↝ [θruːx] or [θruɣ] (MidE) ↝ [θruː] (E)
«daughter»: [ˈdoxtor] (OE) ↝ [ˈdɔuxtər] or [ˈdauxtər] (MidE) ↝ [ˈdɔːtə] (E)
Regular re-spelling results in a loss of the linguistic continuity, and particularly so over a span of a few or more centuries.
Interesting, just how much the Old English words sound like modern German: Knecht, durch and Tochter. Even after 1000 years have elapsed.
Modern German didn't undergo the Norman Conquest, a mass influx of West African slaves, or an Empire on which the Sun never set, so it is much more conservative. The incredible thing about the Norman Conquest, linguistically speaking, is that English survived at all.
The great vowel shift happened in the 16th century and is responsible for most of these changes. The original grammatical simplification (loss of cases etc.) between 10-1300 is difficult to ascribe, as similar happened in continental Scandinavian languages (and the Swedes had their own vowel dance!) But the shift in words themselves came much after (and before empire).