> I don't know about England, but I think in Germany it's more common that children represent the pronunciation accurately, but are "corrected" by adults who want to enforce the standard orthography.
Represent the pronunciation accurately, or the children's pronunciation accurately?
It's a bit more interesting in English because a common mistake in English is to pronounce a word as it's spelt. For example, the T in often is supposed to be silent ... OK, that's me being prescriptive, but well-educated older speakers hear younger people pronounce the T in often and they disapprove.
I suppose parents and teachers have different incentives here: parents want their children to resemble them, make a good impression, and sound educated; teachers want the children in their care to get good marks in written tests and exams.
Knowing how to spell diarrhoea is less important nowadays in real life, because of computers. If you don't want to look stupid you still have to know it's guerrilla marketing rather than gorilla marketing, though. Computer will tell you how many Rs in guerrilla.
> Well-educated older speakers hear younger people pronounce the T in often and they disapprove.
If you are going to teach the hoi polloi to write, and make an issue over spelling, this sort of thing seems predictable, though two centuries seems a long time for it to become noticable.
I love the term "the hoi polloi." Yes, technically the English word the is redundant (because the Greek word hoi is also "the"). But the redundancy makes the term more-quickly understandable. From a UI/UX perspective — with the correct primary goal being not slavish brevity but service to the reader — here the redundancy is a good thing.
For example, the T in often is supposed to be silent
That's funny... I always considered (and pronounced) the t in often as a (or something close to a) thorn. To me, the sound is in between official and oven.
Represent the pronunciation accurately, or the children's pronunciation accurately?
It's a bit more interesting in English because a common mistake in English is to pronounce a word as it's spelt. For example, the T in often is supposed to be silent ... OK, that's me being prescriptive, but well-educated older speakers hear younger people pronounce the T in often and they disapprove.
I suppose parents and teachers have different incentives here: parents want their children to resemble them, make a good impression, and sound educated; teachers want the children in their care to get good marks in written tests and exams.
Knowing how to spell diarrhoea is less important nowadays in real life, because of computers. If you don't want to look stupid you still have to know it's guerrilla marketing rather than gorilla marketing, though. Computer will tell you how many Rs in guerrilla.