Spelling is ruining the English language
[S]pelling is just a bunch of memorization. -- Evan O'Dorney, winner 2007 spelling bee
Most of us who can read and write English have had to endure a seemingly endless series of lessons consisting of little more than the rote memorization of the spellings of lists of words. Some of these words are so obscure that they are unlikely to be used more than a dozen times in the student's lifetime. Often the meaning of these obscure words isn't even taught to the students, as if the meaning wasn't important, but woe betide the unfortunate child who can't spell them!
Do we really need to subject our children to this monotony? No wonder so many students hate English classes.
The inability to memorize spelling is a source of humiliation for many. Some quite intelligent people cannot spell. It is hardly surprising when one day they learn that "rabbit" is spelt with two b's, and the next they must learn that "habit" is spelt with only one. The reason for the difference is never explained, the unfortunate child is simply expected to remember the spellings of individual words. With inconsistencies like these, is it no wonder that many cannot master spelling?
These otherwise intelligent people are denied many employment opportunities because they don't remember to spell "résumé" with accents on both e's, and spelling is used by lazy employers as a measure of educational standard and competence. To the lazy employer, it doesn't matter if the candidate has impressive qualifications and experience that the employer can check with a little effort; if there's a spelling mistake, the candidate is not considered. And some employers can't spell perfectly either, so the spelling mistake the disqualifies the candidate could well be the employer's.
The inability of some students to learn spelling is considered by many to be a problem, and we then waste huge amounts of money on solutions. We have phonics, whole-word memorization, and other efforts to teach our children to read and write. Yet we consistently ignore the elephant in the room: English spelling is badly in need of reform.
Many people would be appalled and shocked by that idea. "But you can't change the spelling!" they say. "It's the language of Milton, Shakespeare and Keats", they say. This isn't relevant, as modern editions of the works of Shakespeare and other authors are not published in the spellings that those authors themselves used.
Anyone who mentions the name of Shakespeare as a holy incantation against the cause of spelling reform is evidently unaware that on Shakespeare's grave his epitaph uses the spelling "frend" instead of "friend". If the spelling "frend" was good enough for Shakespeare to have it engraved on his tomb in stone, why is it not good enough for us?
Some people oppose the idea of spelling reform because they worry that they would have to learn spelling all over again. This is a more legitimate reason to be wary of spelling reform, but the concern is unfounded. Spelling reforms in other languages take place all the time, generally at intervals of fifty years or so. The old spellings are generally not considered wrong after reform, in that people can still use them if they wish, but they do become deprecated so they can fall out of use. It is usual for spelling reforms to introduce new spellings that are now considered correct. People are free to use whatever spellings they wish. The only material change is that students would be taught the new spellings instead of the old.
Other people do not see any problem with English spelling. Anyone who finds no problem with English spelling has no skills in critical thinking. Here is a short list that shows just a few of the problems of English spelling:[LIST]
[*] Why are "habit", "lizard" and "salad" spelt with a single letter after the stressed vowel but "rabbit", "blizzard" and "ballad" spelt with a doubled letter after the stressed vowel?
[*] Why don't "bomb", "comb" and "tomb" rime?
[*] Why are the words "island", "doubt", "debt" and "ptarmigan" spelt with silent letters that are not justified by the etymology of those words?
[*] Why must English have words with multiple pronunciations like "estimate", "house", "lead", "mouth", "read", "use", "wind" and "wound"? Other languages that have regular spelling reforms have no words like these because the reforms systematically eliminate these, but English has accumulate the clutter of over 500 heterophonic homographs.
[*] Why does "receipt" have a silent "p"? It is related to the word "reception". However, why aren't the words "deceit" and "conceit" spelt with a silent "p" as well? After all, they are linked to "deception" and "conception". For that matter, why does "receipt" have a silent "p" to link it to "reception" when "reception" does not in turn have a silent "i" to link it to "receipt"?[/LIST]
I have asserted that spelling is ruining the English language. It's true. The time wasted in learning all these thousands of obscure spellings is time that is not spent teaching grammar and punctuation. Many kids leave school without knowing that sentences start with capital letters and end in full stops, and some students leave school without even a firm grasp on grammar. Some students leave school without ever studying English literature. English education seems not to care about those things so long as the students can spell.
Requiring students to learn spelling is a false god to which all other learning in English is sacrificed.
To make room for hundreds of hours of spelling classes, we must dumb down the teaching of grammar, punctuation and literature. Thus, spelling reform is not the dumbing down of spelling, as some incorrectly claim, but instead it would be an opportunity to smarten up grammar, punctuation and literature. If spelling could be mastered in three years instead of eight, a lot of additional time would be available in the classroom for the teaching of English Literature from Seuss to Shakespeare. A comprehensive reform of spelling in English could be the best thing for English Literature since the birth of Shakespeare.
Spelling reform of the English language would give students of the future a more balanced education in English that is demonstrably superior to the education we give our children today.
To make room for hundreds of hours of spelling classes, we must dumb down the teaching of grammar, punctuation and literature.
If you don't care about spelling why care about grammar?
I'll use "very unique" if I damn well please and you ain't gonna convince me you won't know what I'm saying. :p
If you don't care about spelling why care about grammar?
I'll use "very unique" if I damn well please and you ain't gonna convince me you won't know what I'm saying. :p
You can use qualifiers with "unique" if you want. I won't stop you. Just don't try it with "pregnant". :headshake
If you don't care about spelling why care about grammar?
That's fine if your sentence is "me kill tiger" or "me drink gin."
How do you convey the fact that you drank the gin yesterday? Once you're forming tenses, you're doing grammar. You can argue that "I drinked" is logical and conveys the meaning to another English speaker--but you're still dealing with accepted rules of English. You can't unilaterally decide to form the past tense by adding "xx" to the end of each verb--that is, you can't do so and expect other people to understand you. If you can convince everybody you speak with to accept that convention, more power to you. But in that case you've arguably changed the grammar, not discarded the whole concept of grammar.
For that matter, in "me kill tiger," how do you know which is the subject and which is the object? "The subject comes first" may not be the correct answer for every language.
"Grammar" is not just a bunch of musty rules beaten into you by your 4th grade English teacher. It's a common understanding among your group speaking the same language/dialect about how language is structured.
I rather like the idiosyncrasies of English spelling; they inform and honor our language's complex history.
You can use qualifiers with "unique" if you want.
No, "unique" is one of the
absolutes that aren't allow a modifier/qualifier.
It's a common understanding among your group speaking the same language/dialect about how language is structured.
So is spelling a common understanding, and even very bad grammer can be understood most of the time, that's why we can communicate with people that have little command of English. So why spend more time on Grammar and less on spelling?
What about "not unique"? Doesn't "not" modify "unique" in that phrase?
I rather like the idiosyncrasies of English spelling; they inform and honor our language's complex history.
Not if the spelling of the word tells lies about its origins.
DEBT: This word came into the English language from Norman French, where it was spelt "dette" with not a B anywhere in it. Later on, the hypercorrectionists got a hold of this innocent word, and forced into it a silent b, on the false belief that the word was borrowed directly from the Latin, not French. Although the word does ultimately come from the Latin, it does so by way of French, and thus the spelling should reflect the French origins of the word and not the Latin.
ISLAND: Another word that was mangled by the hypercorrectionists based on a false etymology. In this case, they mangled the word on the false belief that it was related to the Latin word "insula". The word island is actually a Germanic word of long pedigree, with cognates spelt "Eiland" in Dutch and German.
PTARMIGAN: This word is not from Greek roots, and thus has no business whatever having a silent P in front of it. It is of Gaelic derivation where the original word was spelt as "tarmachan". This word has no p at the beginning.
There are other words of this kind that tell lies about their origins. Anyone who advocates the etymological spellings of these and other such words must be made aware that false etymologies do exist.
What about "not unique"? Doesn't "not" modify "unique" in that phrase?
It's a yes/no absolute and that's OK. One is or isn't unique.
Now if you used a quantifier like "slightly" or "rather", it makes no sense. Something cannot be slightly unique or slightly optimum in much the same way a woman cannot be slightly pregnant.
What about "not unique"? Doesn't "not" modify "unique" in that phrase?
Don't ask me, I hated English... except in 7th grade when Mr Brown told us about fighting a fire on the roof of a London hospital during the blitz, while his wife was giving birth downstairs, and traveling on a convoy carrying war materials to Murmansk, though U-boat infested waters with ships getting torpedoed right and left, or about writing his book, Folke Wulf. Now that was a good class. :)
I wish I had a copy of that book.
For fuck sake, read some Bill Bryson books, read some poetry, and take a chill pill. Or campaign for Esperanto, at least either approach shows a modicum of appreciation for the beauty of language.
Do we really need to subject our children to this monotony? No wonder so many students hate English classes.
What monotony? Not all students hate English classes. Some of us loved English. Some of us enjoyed learning to spell words and the fact that the rules seemed slightly arcane and esoterical at times made it all the more interesting. I loved it. My youngest niece, who is a lot like me, loves it. It was precisely those early lessons in words that gave me my most abiding passion in life: language, words, their usage, their origins.
You point out the word 'debt' and the fact that the 'b' is a cuckoo in the nest. True enough. But that just makes it more interesting. That is history right there. We carry our history in the words that survive and migrate and change, or that vanish into the distance to be found only in ancient texts.
It's a little like, to my mind, setting aside odd herbs and spices, eschewing the little details like breadcrumbs or nutmeg, and holding up as better, purer, more wholesome, a plain dish of rice and peas. I like herbs and spices, I like the scorched top on a flambed dessert, I like the detail.
Back to children learning their lessons. Unless you have some figures to show that the curent method is resulting in more illiterate than literate children, then I will consider you have a valid point. But since most children do learn and it is a minority who struggle; and since so many children learn from this a love of the English language and books (as can be evidenced partly by the immense popularity of English Literature or Language degrees in universities across the English speaking world), then what you are suggesting is replacing one lot of disillusioned kids who hated English classes, with another. The ones who enjoy the variety and spice of English would hate the classes where they now like them, and those who currently hate classes, might find them fun.
[eta]
There are other words of this kind that tell lies about their origins. Anyone who advocates the etymological spellings of these and other such words must be made aware that false etymologies do exist.
Well...I don't know about your schooling. But by the time I got to o-level (15/16) those were the sorts of things we were being taught. Those are precisely the kinds of things that our teachers picked up on to catch our interest. In terms of the current education system: a basic understanding of word origins and oddities is tagged to (if I recall aright) either Entry3 or Level1 literacy. That's an equivalent to about an age 10/11 reading age.
What monotony? Not all students hate English classes. Some of us loved English. Some of us enjoyed learning to spell words and the fact that the rules seemed slightly arcane and esoterical at times made it all the more interesting.
What to add, what to add? Oh, nothing!
Also, from now on, I would like the number 5 to replace the number 3. I've never understood the social conventions that numbers are one thing only and should be used correctly. I have developed my own numbers system, some numbers are converted to letters if the previous numbers follow rules that I make up as I go along. There really is no rhyme nor reason to this system, but I expect you to understand what I am saying when I tell you that my new shoes cost 27T41B.
Love English, hate grammar.
BUT - love history of English language.
HATE linguistics and all those fricatives and voiceless stops and all that rot. For speech therapists if you're asking me. Did that dangle?
but even those "hypercorrectionists" are part of the history of the language.
I guess I just never had too much trouble with spelling, although I know people who do. I think it's a right/left brain kind of thing. I even loved grammar! Sentence diagrams . . . (waxes nostalgic)
This issue seems to consume you
a little more than most people, eh Kingswood?
I guess that means he's one of those people that can't spell.
To be fair, we Dwellars are an unusually literate bunch, and we seem to get pretty passionate about these language topics.
but even those "hypercorrectionists" are part of the history of the language.
I guess I just never had too much trouble with spelling, although I know people who do. I think it's a right/left brain kind of thing. I even loved grammar! Sentence diagrams . . . (waxes nostalgic)
Three things I loved doing in school: diagramming sentences, geometry proofs, and Punnett squares.
Those things were all like doing puzzles to me. Mr G would give us a difficult extra credit proof in geometry and I couldn't wait to work on it!
This issue seems to consume you a little more than most people, eh Kingswood?
Heh...I thought it seemed familiar.
snip~There really is no rhyme nor reason to this system, but I expect you to understand what I am saying when I tell you that my new shoes cost 27T41B.
Hey, it works for the expiration dates on groceries. :haha:
Don't ask me, I hated English... except in 7th grade when Mr Brown told us about fighting a fire on the roof of a London hospital during the blitz, while his wife was giving birth downstairs, and traveling on a convoy carrying war materials to Murmansk, though U-boat infested waters with ships getting torpedoed right and left, or about writing his book, Folke Wulf. Now that was a good class. :)
I wish I had a copy of that book.
**reviewed by** (not authored by) David Brown
Is this your guy?
Or...
**Foreword by E. M. "Winkle" Brown**
Him?
He has an extensive
Wikipedia entry and has
written several books, and many articles. Perhaps one referenced here is just the ticket.
:)
I re-read the old thread--some good stuff there.
So English has crappy spelling. I can't find too much outrage in my heart over it. On the contrary, in my town where everything is printed out in English and Spanish, I have come to admire English for its compactness, its brevity, its pithiness.
Is this your guy?
:)
Nope, Jim Brown. He wrote it right after the war, not a technical book really, more about the Folke Wulf company than a particular model. It was in my school library but probably out of print even then('56).
If you're going to suggest we should 'dumb down' english classes in school just because some kids find it difficult and boring, then should we do the same for all the other subjects because other kids find them boring or difficult. Let's look at math as an example. What rules should we start ignoring just because they're difficult or boring? How is that going to help our future engineers produce a structure that isn't going to crumble?
Different kids have different skills, and they have to work harder at some subjects than others. It's just the way it is.
Why bastardise a language that's already been put through the wringer several times already?
Language evolves. Languages evolve. It is the natural course of events, but it's important for kids to learn the rules before they start breaking them otherwise there's nothing but anarchy.
If you really want to know more about why English has such inconsistent spelling, you should read:
The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way by Bill Bryson. Though it sounds dry reading, it's actually quite fun to read.
The short version is that "English is the result of Norman soldiers attempting to pick up Anglo-Saxon barmaids, and is no more legitimate than any of the other results."
— H. Beam Piper
A plan for the improvement of spelling in the English language:
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x"— bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez —tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev alojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Sure English, especially American English, is rife with idiosyncrasies and odd constructions which must be memorized rather than following set rules. This is an unavoidable result of the natural growth of language; words and phrases are added naturally and without design rather than being formally inserted into the lexicon.
If we wanted a language to be internally consistent then we would need to design one from the ground up. Not only would this new language be off to a poor start since nobody would be proficient in it, but if they finally did then it would be corrupted the first time a new idea or concept arose. A new word or phrase would become recognized among the population and it would not necessarily follow the rules of the language, but it would need to first become popular in order to warrant formal and proper entrance into the language. It is a Catch 22, in order to drive home the point with the point itself. The only way to prevent this issue would be to completely block the entrance of unplanned concepts or ideas, something which is both undesirable and wildly impractical.
I hate rote memorization just as much as the next person, but I have to admit that it is a huge part of what goes on in our daily lives. Luckily I had the opportunity to avoid learning grammar and sentence structure by paying attention in class... I simply read lots of books and "learned through experience."
Love English, hate grammar.
BUT - love history of English language.
HATE linguistics and all those fricatives and voiceless stops and all that rot.
Actually I like linguistics. I have studied the spelling systems of other languages as well as that of English. Other languages also have rich histories that will reward the interested student who chooses to study them.
Modern Greek is interesting because it has behind it the rich literary legacy of Ancient Greek, yet its rules for pronouncing words from the spellings can fit onto a single page of a dictionary.
If you're going to suggest we should 'dumb down' english classes in school just because some kids find it difficult and boring, then should we do the same for all the other subjects because other kids find them boring or difficult. Let's look at math as an example. What rules should we start ignoring just because they're difficult or boring? How is that going to help our future engineers produce a structure that isn't going to crumble?
A rather big helping of hyperbole and emotive language, but nobody's going to buy it. Why do you think that the world is going to go to hell just because someone suggests that we choose to fix something that's demonstrably in need of repair? In France they recently chose to cut the surplus I from
oignon (onion) in a spelling reform (among other changes), and these changes didn't cause the Eiffel Tower to crash to the ground nor cause buildings in Paris to crumble.
Different kids have different skills, and they have to work harder at some subjects than others. It's just the way it is.
Some kids only struggle with spelling because people believe that spellings are immutable and must be learnt no matter how haphazard they are. Yet that is not so for other languages. There is hardly a major language in the world that does not systematically revise its spellings from time to time.
Would you want to end up with a language like Tibetan, where the written language has not been revised for 2000 years and about one-third of the letters in every word are silent or phonologically incorrect?
As for kids having difficulties with reading and spelling, did you know that they need special tests with brain scanners to identify dyslexics among Italian speakers? Italian orthography is regular, and dyslexia is not a disability when the orthography is regular.
Why bastardise a language that's already been put through the wringer several times already?
More emotive language, and this "wringer" argument would be the better for some elaboration.
Incidentally, Americans spell "bastardise" differently, with a -ize suffix. That came about because Noah Webster, founder of the Webster dictionary, was a spelling reformer who sought to establish American language standards after the American Revolution. Much of the difference between British and American spellings came about due to spelling reforms in America that were not adopted in Britain.
Language evolves. Languages evolve. It is the natural course of events, but it's important for kids to learn the rules before they start breaking them otherwise there's nothing but anarchy.
Your assertion that languages evolve is inconsistent with your view that spellings should not be changed. Spellings evolve, too.
As for anarchy, English
already has that.
I guess that means he's one of those people that can't spell.
You guessed incorrectly, sorry. It's more that I like linguistics and the more I look at the spelling systems for other languages, the more I feel that we, the custodians of English, could be doing better than we are.
We as English speakers would be better off even if all we did was to allow American spellings in all English-speaking countries. Is it really that wrong to be willing to accept American spellings like "flavor", "sulfur" and "plow" without living in North America?
I absolutely believe that spelling needs to be kept up, because with all the texting going on among our kids, they will grow up illiterate if we don't.
A rather big helping of hyperbole and emotive language, but nobody's going to buy it. Why do you think that the world is going to go to hell just because someone suggests that we choose to fix something that's demonstrably in need of repair? In France they recently chose to cut the surplus I from oignon (onion) in a spelling reform (among other changes), and these changes didn't cause the Eiffel Tower to crash to the ground nor cause buildings in Paris to crumble.
I don't think the world will go to hell if people decide to change the english language to suit themselves. Obviously either it's already gone to hell, or changing it to suit ourselves doesn't have that effect.
France chooses to blow things up left, right and centre. Should the rest of the world do that too?
Some kids only struggle with spelling because people believe that spellings are immutable and must be learnt no matter how haphazard they are. Yet that is not so for other languages. There is hardly a major language in the world that does not systematically revise its spellings from time to time.
I guess you should send the queen a note about doing a revision of the english language. My guess is she wont be favourable, but I guess you never know.
Would you want to end up with a language like Tibetan, where the written language has not been revised for 2000 years and about one-third of the letters in every word are silent or phonologically incorrect?
I guess we'll just have to wait another 1500 years or so and see what happens to the english language. My guess is there'll be no vowels left at all if the teenagers have anything to do with it.
As for kids having difficulties with reading and spelling, did you know that they need special tests with brain scanners to identify dyslexics among Italian speakers? Italian orthography is regular, and dyslexia is not a disability when the orthography is regular.
Aren't we talking about english?
More emotive language, and this "wringer" argument would be the better for some elaboration.
Incidentally, Americans spell "bastardise" differently, with a -ize suffix. That came about because Noah Webster, founder of the Webster dictionary, was a spelling reformer who sought to establish American language standards after the American Revolution. Much of the difference between British and American spellings came about due to spelling reforms in America that were not adopted in Britain.
Your assertion that languages evolve is inconsistent with your view that spellings should not be changed. Spellings evolve, too.
As for anarchy, English already has that.
My assertion that languages evolve is not related to my view that spellings should not be changed. One is a fact and the other is my opinion. Whether I like it or not, the english language has changed and will continue to change. I simply believe that the fact that some kids have trouble with the rules of language or find it boring is not a good enough reason to go and change things just to make it easier for them.
We as English speakers would be better off even if all we did was to allow American spellings in all English-speaking countries. Is it really that wrong to be willing to accept American spellings like "flavor", "sulfur" and "plow" without living in North America?
But that is happening. Naturally and slowly we are starting to go towards parity in spelling rules. Right now that adds to the confusion, as in most schools (in the UK) both English and American spelling is accepted in students' work; though the English spelling is taught first.
Quite naturally this happening. Look at the word 'gaol'. When I was growing up that was how it was spelt, at school, in newspaper reports, in novels. Gradually, across my childhood that word vanished, to be replaced by 'jail'. There wasn't a big spelling reform , it just happened. For a while both were in usage, then one ceased to be useful and therefore was dropped in all but the most rare cases.
linguistics is, as I studied it, NOT the history of the language but the nature and structure of human speech. "Structure." "Engineering."
Darling, I am not interested in what my tongue is doing unless it involves
someone else's mouth or cock.
Etymology is the study of word origins and evolution, while linguistics covers language evolution. There's a lot of crossover.
English has historically been one of the most flexible and rapidly-evolving languages. It absorbs, adapts, and shifts rapidly to meet the needs of the population which speaks it, and it does so in a remarkably elastic, chameleon manner. It's one of the reasons I love it.
I don't think the world will go to hell if people decide to change the english language to suit themselves. Obviously either it's already gone to hell, or changing it to suit ourselves doesn't have that effect.
France chooses to blow things up left, right and centre. Should the rest of the world do that too?
This last paragraph is a non-sequitur. What does that have to do with spelling reform?
I guess you should send the queen a note about doing a revision of the english language. My guess is she wont be favourable, but I guess you never know.
I don't know about the Queen, but Prince Charles is a supporter of spelling reform.
As for kids having difficulties with reading and spelling, did you know that they need special tests with brain scanners to identify dyslexics among Italian speakers? Italian orthography is regular, and dyslexia is not a disability when the orthography is regular.
Aren't we talking about english?
You completely missed the point. Dyslexia is a disability only if the orthography is irregular.
When you have similar-looking words like tough, though, through and thorough, with up to four ways of pronouncing the ending depending on one's accent, even though it is not the ending that is changing in these words, is it any wonder that English-speaking dyslexics struggle?
My assertion that languages evolve is not related to my view that spellings should not be changed. One is a fact and the other is my opinion. Whether I like it or not, the english language has changed and will continue to change. I simply believe that the fact that some kids have trouble with the rules of language or find it boring is not a good enough reason to go and change things just to make it easier for them.
Isn't it a good enough reason to make some changes if by doing so we help people with disabilities? Since you are opposed to any revision to spelling, would you care to tell a dyslexic or the parents of a dyslexic child: "I would love to help you manage your disability, but I oppose the measures that would be needed."
In that case Kingswood, maybe we should publish all books with a selection of multicoloured film screens to place over the print.
There are other ways to diagnose dyslexia beyond reading problems. Dyslexia is a much more complex condition than 'word blindness' as it's often referred to. Dyslexia doesn't just cause problems for the reader because of fixing spelling rules in memory. In fact, that's not really one of the biggest problems to a dyslexic reader at all. It isn't just about the way the brain processes information, at the level of word building. It's also about how the brain processes and organises visual stimuli. Creating a greater degree of uniformity will not in any way help that. Spelling pattenrs cause problems in and of themselves, regardless of complexity, because patterns cause problems.
The dyslexic brain functions slightly differently in some regards to the non-dyslexic brain. What you are suggesting is that, in order to make it easier for people with dyslexia to learn to read, we should change the way we spell. The entire system. Revamped, and made simpler in order that we 'help people with disabilities?'
Maybe we should also outlaw staircases. In fact...perhaps we should cease printing books in their current form altogether and move to a universal braille system. Noone left behind right?
I'm dyslexic. I fail to see how having more regular spelling rules would help stop my brain from insisting on rearranging letter, number, and word orders.
This last paragraph is a non-sequitur. What does that have to do with spelling reform?
Again, my point was that we're talking about english not any other language.
You completely missed the point. Dyslexia is a disability only if the orthography is irregular.
When you have similar-looking words like tough, though, through and thorough, with up to four ways of pronouncing the ending depending on one's accent, even though it is not the ending that is changing in these words, is it any wonder that English-speaking dyslexics struggle?
Isn't it a good enough reason to make some changes if by doing so we help people with disabilities? Since you are opposed to any revision to spelling, would you care to tell a dyslexic or the parents of a dyslexic child: "I would love to help you manage your disability, but I oppose the measures that would be needed."
I think Dana and Tiki covered the reply I would have made to these comments.
In a nutshell, yes it's not fair that some people have reading disabilities for whatever reason, but that's not a reason to change the system for everyone else (who happen to be the vast majority). I was going to suggest that by your reasoning we should modify the way we make cars because then people with dwarfism could drive.
I rely rely dislik pepol hu multe-kwot bak at ya. Pisy pupers.
I don't know about the Queen, but Prince Charles is a supporter of spelling reform.
Maybe that's why he's a prince instead of king.
Quite naturally this happening. Look at the word 'gaol'. When I was growing up that was how it was spelt, at school, in newspaper reports, in novels. Gradually, across my childhood that word vanished, to be replaced by 'jail'. There wasn't a big spelling reform , it just happened. For a while both were in usage, then one ceased to be useful and therefore was dropped in all but the most rare cases.
This too is occuring in Australia - words like gaol, socialise ect. are becoming incorrect (at least, questioned).
I had a conversation with some people recently in regard to textual analysis, and a few of the above issues were discussed. We even hypothesised on the possibility of one day a number system will replace all words of colours. Will the colour dark red be called 19191 internationally one day - and differentiate for all hues. Just how far can we go to simplify language and make it accessable to all people, of all cultures.
I refuse to ever be called "Mom" though. Urgh. Its "Mum's" the word over here!
There are things about English that bother me but spelling isn't one of them.
Stupid spelling rules bother me. Like "i before e except after c." I think I have found more exceptions to this rule than applications of it.
It bothers me that there is no second-person plural pronoun. It bothers me that there is no gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. These are words we need but do not have.
It also bothers me that in English, unlike French for example, the modifier precedes the word instead of following it. We have gotten used to saying things this way but going from general to specific makes infinitely more sense. For example: "While touring the museum, I saw an old, heavy, dusty, broken, German, watch." In order to understand that sentence, I have to hold five adjectives in my head until I get to the end of the sentence to find out that the object is a watch then, one by one, apply the adjectives to form an image of the watch. If the word watch comes first followed by the modifiers, I apply them as they are presented and do not have to move backward through the sentence at the same time I'm moving forward. There are many instances in English where the language structure forces one to present information out of logical order. Why do I need to wait until the end of the sentence to know whether its declarative or inquisitive or exclamatory? Not all questions start with why or how. I run across this a lot reading to my kids. I'm halfway through a sentence before picking up the end punctuation only to realize I read it with the wrong inflection and have to start over.
English has a lot of limitations and using English properly involves, for me at least, making some sacrifices in the efficiency and the accuracy of the thoughts I am trying to convey. However, these are structural deficiencies.
Spelling idiosyncracies, however annoying, do not compromise the effectiveness of the language at all. Hence, I have to disagree with the initial premise of the thread.
And the idea of spelling reform will just make it worse. First of all, what rules do you propose to use to decide how to respell a word? I suspect you are taking for granted the idea that there will not be any controversy in deciding on a uniform and all-encompassing set of rules to apply and that the application of these rules will not create a new set of inefficiencies for the descendants of English to struggle with. And what do you propose we do with the body of written work that exists in what will become "the olde spelling?" A respelling effort will just create more separation between today's English and yesterday's English.
Ironic since it is exactly that separation which is at the root of the problem you are proposing to solve.
If you really want to know more about why English has such inconsistent spelling, you should read: The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way by Bill Bryson. Though it sounds dry reading, it's actually quite fun to read.
The short version is that "English is the result of Norman soldiers attempting to pick up Anglo-Saxon barmaids, and is no more legitimate than any of the other results."
— H. Beam Piper
Thanks for the book recommendation. I will try to find a copy. How much coverage does the book give to the late Middle English period, especially the Great Vowel Shift and the Chancery Standard?
...How much coverage does the book give to...the Great Vowel Shift and the Chancery Standard?
Well, this tears it.
I crown you :king: of the Geeks. Wear it loud, wear it proud, you nerd.
There are things about English that bother me but spelling isn't one of them.
Stupid spelling rules bother me. Like "i before e except after c." I think I have found more exceptions to this rule than applications of it.
Yes, this is a silly rule that is a waste of time. The number of words where the sequence -cei- occurs with these letters sounding like "see" aren't that many.
Here's an interesting puzzle - how many words of this kind can we find? My list has 23 such words, derived from these five root words: ceiling, conceit (including conceive etc), deceit (including deceive etc), perceive, receipt (including receive etc). (Hmm. Looking over this list, it seems odd that "perceit" isn't a word.)
So don't waste your time with i before e except after c. You're better off just remembering these five words and their derivatives, then moving on to other spellings.
There are things about English that bother me but spelling isn't one of them.
Best post of the thread. (Not gonna quote the whole thing.)
And the idea of spelling reform will just make it worse. First of all, what rules do you propose to use to decide how to respell a word? I suspect you are taking for granted the idea that there will not be any controversy in deciding on a uniform and all-encompassing set of rules to apply and that the application of these rules will not create a new set of inefficiencies for the descendants of English to struggle with. And what do you propose we do with the body of written work that exists in what will become "the olde spelling?" A respelling effort will just create more separation between today's English and yesterday's English.
Ironic since it is exactly that separation which is at the root of the problem you are proposing to solve.
I do not support large changes to spelling. I am well aware that large changes to spelling would not be acceptable to the general public. This is amply shown by the indignation shown by some posters above, some of whom would rather make personal attacks than refute my more difficult points.
I do not have a particular set of rules in mind because that is something that is a work in progress.
You are incorrect when you believe I feel there won't be any controversy about the best way to decide on the changes. There are many views as to the best approach to spelling reform. These views go all the way from introducing small changes (which I advocate) to extremes such as introducing
new alphabets. And some people just like to create new ways of writing English with the same spirit of fun that kids have when making up secret codes.
Your fears about being unable to read older literature are an important concern, but these fears are unfounded. With a modest reform, the familiar shapes of words won't change that much, and the changes would be relatively few. I expect that students would be taught to read the old spellings alongside the new. This is a plausible approach because it takes less time to learn a word with an irregular spelling well enough to read it than it takes to reproduce its spelling faithfully.
Seriously, for fuck's sake, just read a fucking book on the origins of English, STFU, and learn Spanish if it bothers you that badly.
Really, READ A FUCKING BOOK cures 99% of the world's ills. The rest of them are cured by GO THE FUCK OUTSIDE AND TAKE A FUCKING WALK.
Originally Posted by Kingswood
I don't know about the Queen, but Prince Charles is a supporter of spelling reform.
Maybe that's why he's a prince instead of king.
Nah, that's all to do with his Mum still breathing...
Here's an interesting puzzle - how many words of this kind can we find? My list has 23 such words, derived from these five root words: ceiling, conceit (including conceive etc), deceit (including deceive etc), perceive, receipt (including receive etc).
Ancient.
Sufficient.
There are several more that I'll remember later.
Really, READ A FUCKING BOOK cures 99% of the world's ills. The rest of them are cured by GO THE FUCK OUTSIDE AND TAKE A FUCKING WALK.
Ah. Someone is pissed. I hope it gets better, TikiSwiti. :)
Here: :flower:
It bothers me that there is no second-person plural pronoun.
Down here in the South, we have corrected this problem. Y'all should get with the program, already.
We just use 'youse' amongst my lot.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I will try to find a copy. How much coverage does the book give to the late Middle English period, especially the Great Vowel Shift and the Chancery Standard?
It's written for the layperson, so probably not a lot. It's been years since I read it in its entirety. Hence the "probably".
Ah. Someone is pissed. I hope it gets better, TikiSwiti. :)
Here: :flower:
Actually, yesterday was great. Thanks though!
Thanks for the book recommendation. I will try to find a copy. How much coverage does the book give to the late Middle English period, especially the Great Vowel Shift and the Chancery Standard?
Ok, I just checked. Middle English as a whole gets about 45 pages. It does cover the great vowel shift which gets four pages. I don't see "Chancery Standard" in the index. But as I said this is book for general consumption, so it may just not be mentioned by name.
Ancient.
Sufficient.
There are several more that I'll remember later.
The "I before E except after C" rule is only intended to cover those words where the vowel sound is the same as in BEE. The number of words with this vowel sound are not much more than the five I listed plus derivatives, 23 in all.
The sequence -cie- occurs in about twice as many words. I'll save you time, as I have a word list that I can check quickly. Again, I will list root words only.
ancient, concierge, conscience, deficient, efficient, fancier, financier, glacier, hacienda, intricacies, omniscient, sufficient, prescient, proficient, science, scientist, society, species.
That list includes a variety of vowel sounds. Also in that list are several words where a weak vowel has been assimilated by the preceding consonant and changed the pronunciation of the consonant (ancient, efficient etc).
Middle English as a whole gets about 45 pages. It does cover the great vowel shift which gets four pages. I don't see "Chancery Standard" in the index. But as I said this is book for general consumption, so it may just not be mentioned by name.
The Chancery Standard was a language reform that was introduced during the reign of King Henry V in the early 15th century to provide a standardized language for use across all of England by the bureaucracy (called the chancery). When it was introduced, English had several dialect forms and it was sometimes difficult for someone who spoke one dialect to read something written in another. The Chancery Standard was mainly based on the London and East Midland dialects but sometimes used other dialect forms.
One of the most noticeable features of the Chancery Standard that still persists today are the third person pronouns
they,
them and
their. Before the Chancery Standard, the usual form of these pronouns in London English was
he,
hem and
hir. As these could be confused with singular pronouns, the dialect forms from the North of England (where the dialect was heavily influence by Norse immigrants) were selected for the Chancery Standard to clarify written communication.
Ghoti
Or in
Klingon:
ghotI'I always did well in English and in spelling -- any topic, really, where the primary means of instruction was reading written material. I have excellent spellchecking wetware.
I owe it all to phonics courses in second and third grade. Yes, there's memory involved, but it's better directed than trying aimlessly to memorize wordlists. What a phonics course does is rehearse the various ways English writes its forty-odd sounds with but twenty-six letters, some of them used redundantly. C and QU come immediately to mind, don't they? Where memory comes in is phonics sets out to teach you
which words use which ways. This really unlocks the mysteries of English spelling and makes sense of the whole unofficially arranged (if that's the word) schemozzle. English has no equivalent of the Académie Française, which has regularized French spelling and vocabulary into something fairly systematic. We Englishers allow no such authority.
What Kingswood is crying out for is to have been trained in phonics -- clearly he never got it and he knows this is a misfortune. He's right to think so.
****
Until early modern English, we did have singular and plural forms of "you," with all its cases. AFAIK we didn't have a separate form for familiar-plural-you such as the Castilian Spanish
vosotros forms, but:
Sing.: thou, (to/with/from/obj of verb or preposition) thee. Thy, thine (used after the fashion of a, an; also with thine as a terminal use)
Plu.: you (all cases),
sometimes ye (remained plural long after the
thou forms fell out of use)
To expand on Dr. Seuss a little: The tough coughs as he ploughs through the dough.:cool:
I before E is better gotten if you have the whole rule.
I before E except after C, and when sounded like A, as in "neighbor" and "weigh." Of course, you still have to seize onto the weird to grapple with those exceptions.
A coda, and the sort of thing you find in
Strunk & White but too commonly misunderstood, is "Possessive nouns, common and proper, always take an apostrophe before their S; possessive pronouns never do." Thus the somewhat curious formation of "its." In most contexts, this is possessive. This rule eliminates ambiguity in written English between the possessive pronouns and their soundalike contractions, condensing conjugations of "to be" into suffixes of pronouns.
Wiki on Strunk & WhiteI don't think spelling belongs in English class. Similarly, most of what is taught in math class doesn't belong there either.
I am looking at two scholarship applications. Both are well written as to content, the students are worthy candidates due to GPA, service, and well-roundedness. One student, however, has a couple misspellings. Who is going to get the scholarship? The one who took the time to check their i's and t's. Spellcheck? Probably, but it shows an effort that is important to academia.
Having to learn to spell correctly is just as important, to me, as learning to not say "I seen you yesterday." Boohoo if it gives some people pause. They will still probably be OK in the world, but it smacks of laziness and bad attitude to me: I don't like it so I won't learn it.
Also, what is the "memorizing word lists" thing? I don't remember thinking I was memorizing anything. Each word has a context somewhere, and once I know it in that context the spelling is as clear to me as if it were in neon lights in front of me. Being an avid reader helps.
Holy shit, man, you should try Danish sometime. The letter 'd' can sound like a "hard" 'd', a "soft" 'th' or be silent. Different vowels even sound the same as each other with no apparent rhyme (there's a good word!) or reason.
Jeg elsker dig.
Does the first word rhyme with the last? If you said no, you were wrong.
Pronunciation: Yie (as in pie) elsker die.
(FTR, that means, 'I love you', though clearly I am not referring to you, personally.)
My Danish husband says, "He has no idea how good he has it. Tell him that from the guy who was forced to learn German."
. . . hacienda. . .
Dude, that's not even an English word. :p
hacienda
Dude, that's not even an English word. :p
not yet... :eyebrow:
What Kingswood is crying out for is to have been trained in phonics -- clearly he never got it and he knows this is a misfortune. He's right to think so.
What is it with Cellarites and personal remarks, especially false ones? Can't you make your point without making personal remarks?
I learnt to read before I started school. Phonics was the method that was taught when I went to school, and I agree it is a good method. But it has its limits because it doesn't help when words have redundant silent letters.
Here is a word for you to consider.
violist
It can mean two things. When pronounced vee-OL-ist, it means someone who plays a viola. When pronounced VIE-ol-ist, it means someone who plays a viol.
In spoken conversation, it is possible to know what instrument the person plays just by hearing the word. In a written transcript of that conversation, this isn't possible unless the instrument is mentioned explicitly. If the instrument s not mentioned, one must either add some clarifying text or be compelled to lose something in the transcription.
English has 500 or so words with different pronunciations and meanings represented by the same spelling. While the majority of these words can generally be disambiguated by context, such words that are in the same part of speech (usually nouns) cannot be disambiguated easily.
Seriously? I mean really. When was the last time you read a book or an article where a violist was mentioned and a) there was no context, or b) the story was compromised by the omission of same?
What do you propose calling one who plays the viola that would be different from the word used to describe one who plays the viol? A change that involves spelling one differently from the other, not a whole separate, new word.
Just going along with your complaint here, let's try the words 'read' and 'read'. Let's distinguish them by spelling the first one 'reed' and the second one 'red'. Oops, those are already other words with completely different meanings. Ok, how about 'rede' and 'rehd'. Hmmm, now there are unnecessary silent letters that I'm pretty sure you'd be complaining about. And again, one of them is already a word with a different meaning.
Seems like you're going to have to create a whole new language if you want it to be spelled the way you think it should, based on how it sounds.
Having to learn to spell correctly is just as important . . . Also, what is the "memorizing word lists" thing? I don't remember thinking I was memorizing anything. . . Being an avid reader helps.
I was trying to point out that spelling can be and often is as poorly taught as American history. I got phonics, my three-years-younger brothers didn't, and they had an awful time trying to get spelling right, where I can if necessary just visualize my word as if on a projection screen on the inside of my forehead -- memory is definitely visual here -- and am something close to a spellchecker on legs in consequence. My brothers are also nowhere near the readers that I am.
Yes, it does, though nowadays you have to make some effort to read material that has been competently edited, and the general standard of editing in American writing has visibly declined. A shame.
What is it with Cellarites and personal remarks, especially false ones? Can't you make your point without making personal remarks?
I learnt to read before I started school. Phonics was the method that was taught when I went to school, and I agree it is a good method. But it has its limits because it doesn't help when words have redundant silent letters.
Hmm -- that never limited me, though introduction to silent letters, begging any question of their redundancy, was all through my early reading learning. A silent E modifying a preceding vowel sound was easy enough to master, even such variations as the long-vowel/single phoneme/silent-E as in
ache. In my experience, it had no limits at all.
I'm sorry to have offended, but not getting phonics courses is so very much the usual root of spelling troubles as to be the way to bet, and that was the way I did. What do you see around you, should you inquire into this?
The two most phonetically written languages I have any experience of are Turkish, whose Roman alphabet was designed a mere century ago with regularity in mind -- and was a lot easier to learn and use for Turkish than Arabic script had been -- and Russian, which is almost purely phonetic. Spanish is right up there with them, even unto diacriticals to cue the reader if the stress on a word is for some reason in a funny place -- as well as keeping "the" separate from "he." French's system is looser, with so many silent letters around you have to really stay alert. Welsh spelling, rather like French, is described as less phonetic than phonemic -- you get a small number of variations in writing a sound down, viz., /f/ gets written Ff or Ph, depending.
Seriously? I mean really. When was the last time you read a book or an article where a violist was mentioned and a) there was no context, or b) the story was compromised by the omission of same?
What do you propose calling one who plays the viola that would be different from the word used to describe one who plays the viol? A change that involves spelling one differently from the other, not a whole separate, new word.
The word "viola" (the musical instrument) has two consecutive vowels, ee and oh (long E and long O). In some other words the same sequence of sounds is spelt with eo: Leo, geode, geopolitics, etc. If we spelt to this pattern, the musical instrument would be spelt "veola". There is nothing wrong with this spelling except for tradition dictating that it must be spelt as "viola" exactly as it was spelt in Italian, even though this spelling causes confusion with another English word "viola" (the plant) with different roots (pardon the unintended pun).
If viola (the instrument) was respelt as veola, a player of this instrument could then be a veolist. Of course that would probably be unsatisfactory to those who favor traditional spelling.
Just going along with your complaint here, let's try the words 'read' and 'read'. Let's distinguish them by spelling the first one 'reed' and the second one 'red'. Oops, those are already other words with completely different meanings. Ok, how about 'rede' and 'rehd'. Hmmm, now there are unnecessary silent letters that I'm pretty sure you'd be complaining about. And again, one of them is already a word with a different meaning.
The read-read example you cited above is an interesting example that is discussed from time to time among those who favour spelling reform. Despite your assertion to the contrary that this word must be spelt differently from the colour red, spelling the past tense as "red" will not cause issues. The words occupy different part of speech, so context is quite sufficient to convey meaning.
This is nothing new in English. The dictionary has many words with identical spellings and pronunciations but different meanings, derivations and etymologies. These words do not cause problems because they are classified in different parts of speech and cannot be confused. Examples of such words: cuff, list, might, pink, pound, soil, stalk. We also have such words that do occupy the same part of speech but again we can work out the meaning. Examples: graze, light, hard, sole. These words do not cause problems either. Thus, a respelling of the past tense and past participle of the verb "to read" as "red" should not cause comprehension problems and a separate spelling is not necessary to convey meaning.
Dude, [hacienda]'s not even an English word. :p
My copy of the
Concise Oxford Dictionary, tenth edition, includes that word. Is it in your dictionary?
Hmm -- that never limited me, though introduction to silent letters, begging any question of their redundancy, was all through my early reading learning. A silent E modifying a preceding vowel sound was easy enough to master, even such variations as the long-vowel/single phoneme/silent-E as in ache. In my experience, it had no limits at all.
I'm sorry to have offended, but not getting phonics courses is so very much the usual root of spelling troubles as to be the way to bet, and that was the way I did. What do you see around you, should you inquire into this?
On phonics, the Australian Government recently announced that phonics would be re-introduced into Australian schools. I think this is a good thing, as phonics does work for many of the words that children will encounter in the first year or two of education.
The magic-E spellings (eg: bale, cane) are sound. The only problem I see with these spellings is in those occasional words that have a magic-E spelling but not a magic-E pronunciation. Examples: are[COLOR="Red"]*[/COLOR] (the verb), give, have, live (as a verb). In these words the silent e is redundant.
Indeed, the e is redundant in many of the words that end in -ve (words like
active,
passive,
captive,
native where the vowel before the v is short, but not in
cave,
behave,
concave where the e is a regular marker of a preceding long vowel). This spelling convention is an old one, dating from before the introduction of u and v as separate letters. Before this split, u (the miniscule of V) did double duty as vowel and consonant. If it preceded a vowel, it was a consonant, and vice versa. So in those words that ended in a /v/ sound, the letter had to be written as -ue to mark it as a consonant. The convention is still with us today, but now the only apparent use the final -e has in these words ending in a short vowel followed by -ve is to stop the v from falling over. :)
[COLOR="Red"]*[/COLOR] The
are (pronounced like "air") is also a metric unit of measurement equal to 100 square metres.
We didn't have phonics in my early schooling. We had charts with the alphabet on and letter cards and letter combination cards...and books.
The trouble is that for some children, the non-phonics method is confusing and prevents them learning; likewise, for some children the phonics system is confusing and prevents them learning. All we're doing is swapping about between the two.
why is phonics spelled p h o n i c s and not fonix?
and 'onanism' doesn't mean what you think it means, either.
All my life I've spelt viola with a io. Now I have to learn a new way?
What's harder, learning or re-learning? And that's one problem with this modest proposal; having learned English during the period when the brain is in its formative years, re-learning will be harder for everyone.
And the re-learning won't stop either. Wanna bet there was a time when viola was pronounced vy-oh-law? The language changes, finds new words, finds new pronunciations, and that's a pretty powerful force of humanity.
Uranus was pronounced differently when I was a kid.
Kingswood, if this is your hobby, perhaps you need a new one.
My copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, tenth edition, includes that word. Is it in your dictionary?
For someone so pedantic about the English language, its origins and its spelling constructs and "broken" rules, you really, seriously put up 'hacienda' as an
English word that doesn't follow the "'i' before 'e' rule, just because your dictionary has it in there? That's like a bunch of Danes debating the ridiculous letter 'd' rule and someone trotting out the word 'sandwich' as an example of something, because it's in the Danish dictionary.
Hacienda is not an English word any more than Sandwich is a Danish word. The fact that each language has taken words from other languages and used them without change, and therefore added them to their dictionaries because they've fallen into common use, does not qualify them as
those languages' words. Most especially when whining about how they don't follow the rules of the language they've been adopted into.
Wouldn't it just be simpler to keep the current spellings as the offical and accept any spelling which is logical?
Aside from place names, would that really be a problem?
I agree that spelling was visited upon the world by some evil entity. I have 3 Bachelor's degrees. I just recently realized that the word THEIR isn't spelled THIER. I was floored. Spellcheck had been righting my wrongs for so long that I didn't realize it until a friend pointed my mistake out to me when I had written a note by hand a work. I still haven't recovered from the shock and shame.
I am also one of those lucky folks who learned to read before starting school. My mom always said that I was taught by Sesame Street. :)
When I did start school, I didn't pay much attention during reading lessons. Usually the teachers just let me huddle in the corner with a book while everyone else worked. I remember something about this phonics thing, but I figured I didn't need it so who cares?
I learned the whole-language method and I guess I read so much that all the spelling rules became intuitive. Seemed like I just had to see the word once and I had it in my data bank. Oddly enough this didn't help me in spelling bees, I think because I didn't study for them. I remember that in a 4th grade spelling bee I was done in by the word "tassel." I spelled it with an "le." Boy did I feel stupid.
Teaching phonics/whole language methods should be chosen on an individual basis. Some kids learn one better, some the other. My kids are also whole-language and learned to read pretty easily, but the school insisted on teaching phonics and I think that really screwed them up as far as spelling.
Another gripe I have with the school is this--when kids are very young and just starting to write, we are prohibited from correcting their spelling. They write phonetically, and we're just supposed to be so happy that they're writing anything that we fear correcting might stifle their little authorial voices. Therefore it takes at least 4 years of actual spelling grades to break them of this habit of just writing anything and never bothering to check its spelling or even think for a few seconds first. I remember when my daughter was absolutely astonished in 4th grade when the teacher took off points on a paper she'd written for spelling errors. It had never happened before.
It is my personal opinion that schools today place way too much emphasis on developing kids' self esteem and way too little on doing things properly from the very beginning. Whatever happened to penmanship, for example? I remember getting graded on how closely my writing resembled the "ideal." Now all they care about is if it's readable. Which is OK, I guess, but "readable" is rather subjective, isn't it?
All my life I've spelt viola with a io. Now I have to learn a new way?
What's harder, learning or re-learning? And that's one problem with this modest proposal; having learned English during the period when the brain is in its formative years, re-learning will be harder for everyone.
You raise a good point here. Once one gets to be a certain age, the ability to learn diminishes. For this reason, it is usual for spelling reforms in other languages to be optional for those who have mastered the current orthography. In some languages that have regular maintenance of their spellings, one can guess the approximate age of a writer by the spellings they use in certain words.
The ability to read any new spellings is not likely to be compromised much. Anyone who reads much fiction will encounter intentional nonstandard spellings in works by contemporary authors from time to time, whether it is eye dialect to convey the exact manner of speech of a particular character, or Terry Pratchett's use of nonstandard spellings in the Discworld series in a medieval or semi-educated style. In Discworld, we have such spellings as Granny Weatherwax's instructions on a bottle of medicine: "Onne Spoon Onlie and that Smalle", or the "cagèd whale" in
Guards! Guards!. Authors would not use such spellings if they received too many complaints, their editors told them to revise the spellings, or the books didn't sell.
Wouldn't it just be simpler to keep the current spellings as the offical and accept any spelling which is logical?
Aside from place names, would that really be a problem?
Welcome to the Cellar. I especially recommend the
Image of the Day.
As for the point you raise, for spelling reforms in English it is an approach that can work quite well.
It would make the most sense for those words where a particular misspelling of a word is already in widespread usage, with some of these particular misspellings being almost as common as the standard spelling itself.
Minuscule is the standard spelling, but
miniscule is seen so commonly that it is often found in edited text and a few dictionaries even include it as a variant. If a reform was introduced that gave the
miniscule spelling the status of an acceptable variant spelling, it would find ready acceptance because many people already use this spelling.
Well hello Teapot. That's an interesting monika :)
Welcome to the Cellar.
It would make the most sense for those words where a particular misspelling of a word is already in widespread usage, with some of these particular misspellings being almost as common as the standard spelling itself. Minuscule is the standard spelling, but miniscule is seen so commonly that it is often found in edited text and a few dictionaries even include it as a variant. If a reform was introduced that gave the miniscule spelling the status of an acceptable variant spelling, it would find ready acceptance because many people already use this spelling.
I kind of agree with this. Except, I don't see it as a matter of spelling reform per se...more that certain spellings shift across time and eventually the mispell becomes the standard. This does happen anyway. It happens all the time. Words fall in and out of use, spellings become outdated. The use of hyphens for example in many words have fallen out of favour and are no longer included in the dictionary listings of those words. I'm quietly confident in the people who compose and monitor the dictionaries. I think they do a fairly good job of maintaining relevance to the living language.
[eta] this process seems to be speeding up in the age of the internet with its online dictionaries.
What's harder, learning or re-learning? And that's one problem with this modest proposal; having learned English during the period when the brain is in its formative years, re-learning will be harder for everyone.
We can't even seem to manage switching to the metric system in the US - for the reasons UT mentions above. I don't foresee any wholesale spelling changes.
Welcome to the Cellar. I especially recommend the Image of the Day.
As for the point you raise, for spelling reforms in English it is an approach that can work quite well.
It would make the most sense for those words where a particular misspelling of a word is already in widespread usage, with some of these particular misspellings being almost as common as the standard spelling itself. Minuscule is the standard spelling, but miniscule is seen so commonly that it is often found in edited text and a few dictionaries even include it as a variant. If a reform was introduced that gave the miniscule spelling the status of an acceptable variant spelling, it would find ready acceptance because many people already use this spelling.
I don't know how you pronounce "Minuscule", but the way I pronounce it would make "Miniscule" phonetically incorrect, compounding the problem you're complaining about.
How do you propose to phoneticize the spellings of words that are pronounced differently in different parts of the country? Will you go by majority rule, and add an "R" to "Wash"? How will you spell "Warm"; "Warm", "Werm", or "Wuorm"?
The other day, on my board, I mentioned that I was building a pullet brooder, and my friend from Michigan asked me what a pullet is, and whether it rhymes with "Mullet" or "Bullet".
As far as I know, pullet, mullet, and bullet all rhyme. But in her region, apparently they don't.
How do you spell to solve for regional variations, if you're spelling phonetically?
why is phonics spelled p h o n i c s and not fonix?
:3eye: Good one. Why do we spell
anything phonemically? Well, the sober answer is etymological reasons, and etymology itself is at least as fascinating a hobby as entomology. :cool: :eek:<--"Eek! A big bug!"
And 'onanism' doesn't mean what you think it means, either.
Inasmuch as usually when we do it we're not spooging on the ground after coitus interruptus, no. Nobody knows why, but it seems Onan really didn't like his sister-in-law. Well, soon enough, she didn't have to deal with him.
There are two accepted pronunciations of Uranus -- and you can make a shitty or a pissy pun with either. Unhappy planet! (Probably not as depressed as downwardly mobile Pluto, though.)
Dude, that's [hacienda] not even an English word.
It was probably some English professor whose name is unfortunately lost to history who woke up a freshman-English class with, "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them on the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."
Memorable if not fully descriptive; we've been cross-pollinating other languages for decades if not centuries. For about a millennium English was half French; now French borrows Englishisms right and left. Russian had been tentatively sipping at English words -- often for Communist Party doings, of all things -- and with Communism's fall the floodgates are open --
kompakt disk isn't even Russified with prefixes and suffixes in a manner hitherto quite typical. A foreign root-word might be accepted into general Russian use after being buffered, bracketed fore and aft, with a Russian prefix and a suffix. The suffix is at least understandable as a linguistic adapter to fit an alien word into Russian grammar easily; the frequent use of a prefix is less easily explained. A vivid example: Russian has the word
park as a city park, right enough. Russian émigrés in America, getting around to owning cars after leaving Soviet privation, coined
zaPARKovat' as the verb for to park their car. Verb prefix
za (which can mean a bunch of things depending entirely on the verb -- long story) plus the foreign root-word, plus the addition of one of the less usual verb endings and its associated conjugation! What's more, I think that's the imperfective aspect of the verb. :rolleyes:
Oy. Gev. Alt. Because I'm not sure of the perfective form.
Zaparkat'? Some
other verb prefix?! Mustn't tear my hear... not that much left.
It was probably some English professor whose name is unfortunately lost to history who woke up a freshman-English class with, "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them on the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."
I love that. That's brilliant.
And dreadfully characteristic of a language that doesn't much esteem some abstract ideal of linguistic order. ;)
I don't know how you pronounce "Minuscule", but the way I pronounce it would make "Miniscule" phonetically incorrect, compounding the problem you're complaining about.
How do you propose to phoneticize the spellings of words that are pronounced differently in different parts of the country? Will you go by majority rule, and add an "R" to "Wash"? How will you spell "Warm"; "Warm", "Werm", or "Wuorm"?
The other day, on my board, I mentioned that I was building a pullet brooder, and my friend from Michigan asked me what a pullet is, and whether it rhymes with "Mullet" or "Bullet".
As far as I know, pullet, mullet, and bullet all rhyme. But in her region, apparently they don't.
How do you spell to solve for regional variations, if you're spelling phonetically?
Phonetic spelling runs into trouble with regional variations, as you correctly point out. It is easy to find spellings that would be one word for a particular regional accent and a different word for another.
Some examples:
* The British English pronunciation of "heart" is very close to the American English pronunciation of "hot".
* The Scottish English pronunciation of "stir" sounds like the American English pronunciation of "steer" (if it wasn't for the rolled Scottish R, the pronunciations would be very similar).
There are many regional variations, and England has even more regional variation than the USA. In some parts of England, words like
toe and
tow are pronounced differently, and in other parts of England
bail and
bale are pronounced differently.
A reasonable approach is not to worry about how individual groups pronounce a word, but instead look to the body of speakers as a whole and identify where the consensus among the different accents shows a spelling to be flawed. Everyone would agree that from an orthographical point of view the
i in
friend is redundant. (Whether they would choose to do something about it is another matter.) On the other hand,
hoarse must remain distinctly spelt from
horse because some people pronounce these differently.
It was probably some English professor whose name is unfortunately lost to history who woke up a freshman-English class with, "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them on the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."
Is this the quotation you're after?
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
James Nicoll, 1990
Brilliant! I'm gonna remember that one.
It was probably some English professor whose name is unfortunately lost to history who woke up a freshman-English class with, "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them on the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."
Memorable if not fully descriptive; we've been cross-pollinating other languages for decades if not centuries. For about a millennium English was half French; now French borrows Englishisms right and left. Russian had been tentatively sipping at English words -- often for Communist Party doings, of all things -- and with Communism's fall the floodgates are open -- kompakt disk isn't even Russified with prefixes and suffixes in a manner hitherto quite typical. A foreign root-word might be accepted into general Russian use after being buffered, bracketed fore and aft, with a Russian prefix and a suffix. The suffix is at least understandable as a linguistic adapter to fit an alien word into Russian grammar easily; the frequent use of a prefix is less easily explained. A vivid example: Russian has the word park as a city park, right enough. Russian émigrés in America, getting around to owning cars after leaving Soviet privation, coined zaPARKovat' as the verb for to park their car. Verb prefix za (which can mean a bunch of things depending entirely on the verb -- long story) plus the foreign root-word, plus the addition of one of the less usual verb endings and its associated conjugation! What's more, I think that's the imperfective aspect of the verb. :rolleyes: Oy. Gev. Alt. Because I'm not sure of the perfective form. Zaparkat'? Some other verb prefix?! Mustn't tear my hear... not that much left.
Make no mistake -- the origin of the word is itself, or the fact that it was borrowed or stolen, is of no general concern to me. I was just pointing out the ridiculousness of using a wholly
foreign word as evidence of how annoying the spelling rules are in the
English language.
English did not create the construct of the 'cie' in the word 'hacienda'. It's therefore absurd to complain that it doesn't follow English spelling rules!
I personally find one of the most pleasing aspect of English the way it evolves so rapidly, both as spoken and as written. It is an exceedingly flexible language.
I personally find one of the most pleasing aspect of English the way it evolves so rapidly, both as spoken and as written. It is an exceedingly flexible language.
All natural language evolves similarly. It's quite beautiful.
Spelling and grammar prescriptivism are efforts to propagate what is most widely understood. It's a good idea to master the rules for those that want their ideas to be understood by the largest possible number of people.
If you want your children to have the most possible power over their destiny they should be taught these things to a high level of mastery.
The most beautiful thing about language is that efforts to codify the mainstream do not much hamper the natural evolution of the language. I'd say those efforts might even encourage it. Constraints fuel artfulness.
All natural language evolves similarly. It's quite beautiful.
Except French. They have a Language Purity Committee to keep those awful cross-overs from destroying their language.
Why they need to say more than "Je me rends," I have no idea.
All natural language evolves similarly. It's quite beautiful.
Spoken language does evolve. However, in English the spellings are not allowed to evolve to keep pace with changes to the spoken word. The result is a gradual divergence of spelling from pronunciation which in the case of the English language has diverged to the point where it is considered perfectly normal to consult a dictionary to find out how some words are pronounced.
Make no mistake -- the origin of the word is itself, or the fact that it was borrowed or stolen, is of no general concern to me. I was just pointing out the ridiculousness of using a wholly foreign word as evidence of how annoying the spelling rules are in the English language.
English did not create the construct of the 'cie' in the word 'hacienda'. It's therefore absurd to complain that it doesn't follow English spelling rules!
The only difference between a foreign word and a perfectly acceptable English word is about a century of use and its inclusion in a few editions of the major dictionaries. I could post some examples, but the quotations that Urbane Guerrilla and I posted about the purity of the English language should be enough to make my point.
Furthermore, your beef about the particular word "hacienda" being used as a counterexample does not in any way prove that the I before E except after C rule is actually useful enough to remember. Five root words, plus a couple of dozen words derived from these. That's all the rule is good for. FFS, it takes less time to remember these five root words than it takes to remember the full wording of I before E except after C rule.
[all natural languages evolve] Except French. They have a Language Purity Committee to keep those awful cross-overs from destroying their language.
Why they need to say more than "Je me rends," I have no idea.
The French are quite parochial about their language and culture. It is not just their need to defend their language against invasion by foreign words. In France, all radio stations that play music are required by law to play a high percentage of songs by French artists.
Geez, it's up to 103 posts just because Kingswood refuses to learn how to spell. :haha:
Geez, it's up to 103 posts just because Kingswood refuses to learn how to spell. :haha:
Why the
ad hominem attack? :eyebrow: The thread has a lot of posts because other people have posted in it too.
It's not wrong to question tradition. If a tradition is truly sound, it will stand up to scrutiny. However, the tradition of English spelling may not be one of these, and the pedants who believe that spellings are immutable don't like being told that.
I don't know how you pronounce "Minuscule", but the way I pronounce it would make "Miniscule" phonetically incorrect, compounding the problem you're complaining about.
I would like to revisit this point because Tiki has made a good point that I would like to expand upon.
Some people do pronounce "minuscule" as if it was spelt "miniscule". For such people, a "miniscule" spelling makes more sense which is why that spelling is seen so often. We have a similar situation already with the two spellings
aluminium and
aluminum: the two spellings correspond to different pronunciations. What generally happens with this word is that one would assign one's own pronunciation to both spellings. The extra or missing
i doesn't cause trouble.
Tiki's point about "compounding the problem" may be reasonable or in error, depending on the exact approach to spelling reform that would be chosen. Tiki appears to have made an implicit assumption that words with really bizarre spellings would not be remedied, such as
colonel (the
l is pronounced like "r") and
lieutenant (with the British pronunciation of "leftenant" where the "u" is pronounced "f"). If such words were not remedied, the problem is indeed increased. However, it is possible that such words would be scrutinized and new alternative spellings proposed. This would be more likely to lead to a net reduction of words with spellings that do not correspond to a plausible pronunciation of the word.
The two words
colonel and
lieutenant have an interesting history which explains their unusual pronunciation in relation to their spellings.
Colonel is a 16th-century borrowing of an obsolete French word
coronel (note the spelling). This in turn was borrowed from an Italian word
colonnello (note the spelling) meaning a column of soldiers. If the word was spelt as it was borrowed from the French, it would be spelt
coronel: it would still be a little tricky to spell the vowels but at least the consonants would all be correct. The word appears to have been hypercorrected to have an
l rather than an
r to correspond to the Italian origins. While this is where the word does come from, it is not from the Italian that the word was borrowed but from the French, where the pronunciation of the word appears to have changed between the borrowing from Italian and the reborrowing into English. I feel that if the spelling of a word is to reflect its origins, it should reflect the spelling in the language from where the word was borrowed, and not attempt to trace the word all the way back as far as we can because such efforts to trace a word are sometimes speculative and subject to error.
So far as I can tell,
lieutenant intentionally had its pronunciation changed by the English so as to put some distance between the word and its French origins. While the word has been in the English language, the English have fought a few wars with the French and my understanding is that it is during one of these wars (possibly the Napoleonic wars) that the pronunciation was changed. Before the 17th century,
u did double duty as vowel and consonant, so the word was pronounced as if spelt "levtenant" (with the
i being silent). The following voiceless consonant
t appears to have devoiced the
v, giving the "leftenant" pronunciation that the British use today. I do not know the origins of the more logical American pronunciation, but it appears that the Americans have retained the older pronunciation (if the word did change during the Napoleonic war). The pronunciation of this word in Australian English is altogether more bizarre: the pronunciation follows British English or American English depending on which branch of the armed forces that the officer is serving in.
Seriously? I mean really. When was the last time you read a book or an article where a violist was mentioned and a) there was no context, or b) the story was compromised by the omission of same?
Are
you serious? Do you really expect to be spoon-fed context every time something is written down just because some words have ambiguous pronunciations?
Suppose you read the following in a book:
"Your friend is putting on
The page happens to end here. Quick, before you turn the page, tell us how "putting" is pronounced?
Did you assume the verb is "put"? Wrong. This person is playing golf:
the first green".
Sure, there's usually context. However, sometimes the context hasn't come up yet, is not sufficient, is missing altogether, or page breaks happen to be placed in inconvenient locations. Context is not the best method of conveying meaning. If the needed context is two lines down, or five pages later, or not supplied at all, what then?
Why is it better to rely on context rather than having words stand on their own?
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
James Nicoll, 1990
Thanks, Kingswood -- looks like what I'd seen, unattributed, was one of those "improved" versions that epigrammatic quotes are so vulnerable to. [ending a sentence a preposition with] Let me see if I can find an old favorite from history:
"All is lost, save honor.". . . I don't see it as a matter of spelling reform per se...more that certain spellings shift across time and eventually the mispell becomes the standard.
Let us hope this one doesn't, even if it is one of the ones that can sneak up and snap you on the ass with a rubber band. Mis + Spell...
This does happen anyway. It happens all the time. Words fall in and out of use, spellings become outdated. The use of hyphens for example in many words have fallen out of favour and are no longer included in the dictionary listings of those words. I'm quietly confident in the people who compose and monitor the dictionaries. I think they do a fairly good job of maintaining relevance to the living language.
Brings up the question of whether hyphens should be considered part of spelling. I've always thought of them as purely punctuation, even in assembling words at the right edge of a page, back in '63 when dinosaurs ruled before word-wrap evolved. And may be evolving into wordwrap as we speak.
Something you can particularly tell us, Dana: is not "favour" is said rather like "fave-oor" in some parts of the UK? The American is distinctly short-o "fave-or," or indistinctly a schwa -- "fav'r."
Hee hee hoo hoo ho --
this is entertaining. Seems James D. Nicoll is quite the raconteur.
I can hardly wait for the story of James D. And The Giant Peach. Should be lots of :3eye:.
Don't know really UG. Different parts of the country say it differently. Mostly I think the last syllable is shortened and pronounced with the schwa. What vowel sounds lives inside that shwa is very different town to town. *smiles* For me it's more of an uh sound Fav-uh (which is how it's said in Bolton) but if I was a full on Manc, I might say it as more of an short 'o' sound. Fav-o'. The 'r' is not pronounced. In Liverpool, it ends with more of an 'eh' sound (quite slight). Fav'eh. Again, the 'r' isn't pronounced.
Sure, there's usually context. However, sometimes the context hasn't come up yet, is not sufficient, is missing altogether, or page breaks happen to be placed in inconvenient locations. Context is not the best method of conveying meaning. If the needed context is two lines down, or five pages later, or not supplied at all, what then?
OH NO!!! I might have to TURN A PAGE before I get the context in a book? Whatever will I do? Good grief, man, you are really reaching here.
Why is it better to rely on context rather than having words stand on their own?
Again, I have to know if you're serious. Have you
seen a dictionary? Ever?
Tell me something; does the word 'run' "stand on its own"? Do you know what I mean when I yell the following sentence?
"RUN!"
No, you say? How can that be? It's an entire sentence. It's a single word, "standing on its own." It's a pretty straight-forward spelling.
What words would you suggest for the 200+ meanings of 'run', so that they're entirely different, not reliant on different spellings (how many fucking ways could there be to spell 'run' anyway?), without needing
context?
OH NO!!! I might have to TURN A PAGE before I get the context in a book? Whatever will I do?
This is what you would do if you were reading it out loud: you would sound a bit stupid if you had to correct your pronunciation.
Answer this: Why do the authorities that look after the other major languages of Europe all choose to avoid heterophonic homographs in their orthographies?
And answer this: If you think context is not a problem, can you state the context rules for disambiguating the 500 or so heterophonic homographs in English in such a way that one can use these rules to program a computer to read text out loud flawlessly? If you think this isn't important, ask any blind person about the inadequacies of screen reader software. Good screen readers do get it right most of the time, but some words always cause problems.
Good grief, man, you are really reaching here. Again, I have to know if you're serious. Have you seen a dictionary? Ever?
Tell me something; does the word 'run' "stand on its own"? Do you know what I mean when I yell the following sentence?
"RUN!"
No, you say? How can that be? It's an entire sentence. It's a single word, "standing on its own." It's a pretty straight-forward spelling.
What words would you suggest for the 200+ meanings of 'run', so that they're entirely different, not reliant on different spellings (how many fucking ways could there be to spell 'run' anyway?), without needing context?
Now look who's reaching. You're making personal attacks (the fallacy of
argumentum ad hominem), and the straw man fallacy.
Why do you make up this shit about my suggesting that the word "run" must have 200 plus different spellings to go with 200 plus different meanings when every one of those meanings has essentially
the same pronunciation? I have not said that we need different spellings in this case; in fact I have explicitly said the opposite in an
earlier post in this thread.
You have chosen not to answer any of my other questions regarding spellings. I'm not surprised: some of the spellings we must put up with due to the forces of tradition and social conformity are truly indefensible when scrutinized objectively.
Ultimately, the spellings we have in English are nothing more than a tradition. Some traditions don't always stand up to scrutiny. If we always stuck with bad traditions, in the USA only men with land would have the vote.
And answer this: If you think context is not a problem, can you state the context rules for disambiguating the 500 or so heterophonic homographs in English in such a way that one can use these rules to program a computer to read text out loud flawlessly? If you think this isn't important, ask any blind person about the inadequacies of screen reader software. Good screen readers do get it right most of the time, but some words always cause problems.
That is the first point you've made which has given me pause on this issue. There has been technological development which has provided a context and potential need for a less problematic spelling system.
I still don't advocate top-down spelling reform; however, I can well see that technological shift driving a bottom-up change.
My guess is that the tech shift will lead to a 'computer english' being developed. A reformed spelling system into which standard texts are translated prior to being accessed through synthesised speech. That may or may not then feed into the language proper.
Right now, though, for all the people you'd help by simplifying spelling, there are a bunch of people who'd be disadvantaged by that change. The ideosyncracies of English spelling helped me to learn how to read. I don't know if I'd have loved it so much without them.
Spoken language does evolve. However, in English the spellings are not allowed to evolve to keep pace with changes to the spoken word. The result is a gradual divergence of spelling from pronunciation which in the case of the English language has diverged to the point where it is considered perfectly normal to consult a dictionary to find out how some words are pronounced.
This is actually true of any language that accepts its dictionaries as authoritative -- which I think is all of them that actually have them. Writing preserves the transcription of older pronunciations.
Should we call for a new character for, say, the southern English exhalatory pronunciation of the letter
R? This seems to have developed since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while the American dialect retains the harder R of earlier times.
Shall we call for a set of vowels to represent A E I O U as spoken by Australians in full yowly-vowel Strine?
A phonetic forty-character system systematically representing today's English really only delays the pronunciation problem for a few centuries, which rather seems to make the exercise bootless.
Right now, though, for all the people you'd help by simplifying spelling, there are a bunch of people who'd be disadvantaged by that change.
Please expand on this point. You claim that people would be disadvantaged by changes to spelling. Who would be disadvantaged and how?
This is actually true of any language that accepts its dictionaries as authoritative -- which I think is all of them that actually have them. Writing preserves the transcription of older pronunciations.
Should we call for a new character for, say, the southern English exhalatory pronunciation of the letter R? This seems to have developed since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while the American dialect retains the harder R of earlier times.
Shall we call for a set of vowels to represent A E I O U as spoken by Australians in full yowly-vowel Strine?
A phonetic forty-character system systematically representing today's English really only delays the pronunciation problem for a few centuries, which rather seems to make the exercise bootless.
The different accents differ in the realization of individual phonemes, but this is done systematically. The vowel assignments of Australian English are almost the same as British English; the pronunciations vary somewhat but when one groups words by pronunciations of the vowels the two accents would by and large group the words the same. There is absolutely no need to use different letters for these accents. American English differs quite a bit from British and Australian English but again no separate treatment is required for the most part.
We do not need 40 letters for the 40 or so phonemes. We make do with digraphs instead, some of which arose out of pronunciation changes to which you alluded to in your first paragraph quoted above. It is unlikely in the extreme that the whole orthography is to be thrown out and a whole new alphabet introduced. If any repair of English orthography was to be done, the only approach that has any hope of succeeding would use the existing rules but simply apply them more consistently.
Your point about the older pronunciations being preserved in orthography is most accurate for those languages that have complex orthographies. Finnish has a pure phonemic orthography, and to a lesser extent so does Italian. The orthographies for these languages do not preserve the older pronunciations if they have changed. Modern Greek has an orthography that evolved from Ancient Greek and hence it is somewhat complex but they manage just fine. French used to have a silent s in words like
hôpital and
être (which used to be spelt
hospital and
estre) before an 18th-century spelling reform elided the s and marked where it used to be with a circumflex. German uses
sch for the consonant in the word shoe. Old English used to use
sc for the same consonant because it was once an allophone of the consonant cluster "sc" (pronounced as in "disc"). The name of the English Language in c.1000 was "Englisc", pronounced as spelt (but not as you think: E-N-G-L-I-S-C; all letters were pronounced separately and the consonant we now represent by "ng" in
sing did not yet exist). Finally, a lot of the irregularity in older words in English orthography derive from words that changed their pronunciations in different ways: food, good and blood once all had the same vowel, as did break, meat and leather.
how do you feel about the spelling of "one-trick pony"?
It seems K's point is that correct spelling is prohibitive to communication.
Have you tried reading K's posts? I can't understand a freaking word. :lol:
We're not worthy, obviously.
But at least I can spell!
Please expand on this point. You claim that people would be disadvantaged by changes to spelling. Who would be disadvantaged and how?
I expanded on it in my post, but here it is again: People
like me who found the ideosyncracies of spelling rules intriguing and helpful when it came to remembering how a word was spelt. Greater uniformity in spelling makes for less variety, for me that would have made it harder to learn, not easier. I remembered how to spell 'see' precisely because it was different to 'sea'. As a kid I would read voraciously and often come across words for the first time. Sometimes I'd read it wrong, and have an incorrect pronuniation in my head for that word. Months or years might go by without me hearing that word, but nonetheless encountering it in print. Or I would hear someone say the word, but because they pronounced it differently I would think them two different words *chuckles* 'recipe' was one. For a long time when I was a kid I thought that was pronounced re-cype. I'd see it and that's how it would sound in my head. Then I'd get that moment of discovery when I'd find out how it should sound. I used to
love that. It was like I'd found something really cool.
Still happens. oh so rarely these days, but nice when it does. When I was little there were a lot of words like that. Usually they were words that I wouldnt really need to use, but would find in books that were a little too old for me. Guarantee those are the words I will never forget how to spell.
I like the shape of the words. On the page. It's more than just symbols, they have a shape and a visual flow and rhythm. I would miss that.
English is a an amalgamation of words from all around the world. I would love a standardize spelling but I doubt it will happen.
So for now English is a lot like traditional Chinese writing you just have to know.
It seems K's point is that correct spelling is prohibitive to communication.
Not true for the most part. We can muddle along most of the time. However, in some cases it is easy to demonstrate that the current standard spellings are not optimum and we would be better off with some revision to standard spellings.
I remember a story a little while ago about a Canadian newsreader working for a US television network who pronounced "lieutenant" the British way (as if it was spelt "leftenant"). However, his employers wanted him to pronounce it according to the American pronunciation (he was working for a US network). To do that, they had to eschew the correct spelling on the autocues and instead use the spelling "lootenant".
This need to depart from correct spelling in this way wouldn't be necessary if the two pronunciations had two spellings to go with them. There are precedents for this in English orthography, see: aluminium/aluminum.
For some words, it is possible for them to be spoken but not transcribed without loss of meaning. Example: If one mentioned "axes" in face to face conversation, the listener would know immediately whether "axes" was the plural of "ax" or "axis", but the reader won't know unless context was supplied. Maybe 30 words cannot be disambiguated readily because both meanings are nouns or both verbs.
Have you tried reading K's posts? I can't understand a freaking word. :lol:
That's not
my problem.
For some words, it is possible for them to be spoken but not transcribed without loss of meaning. Example: If one mentioned "axes" in face to face conversation, the listener would know immediately whether "axes" was the plural of "ax" or "axis", but the reader won't know unless context was supplied. Maybe 30 words cannot be disambiguated readily because both meanings are nouns or both verbs.
If you're reading a single word, with no context whatsoever, it's irrelevant whether it's the plural of, using your example, ax or axis. Unless you're at Home Depot and can't remember if the word on the paper is to remind you to pick up a couple axes, in which case there is context.
That's not my problem.
It's not really mine either. (Oh wait, did I mean mine as in "belongs to me" or "someplace to get coal and stuff"?) ;)
If you're reading a single word, with no context whatsoever, it's irrelevant whether it's the plural of, using your example, ax or axis. Unless you're at Home Depot and can't remember if the word on the paper is to remind you to pick up a couple axes, in which case there is context.
How would you know that it is always irrelevant? How do you know that context is always available?
If the context is missing then it is the fault of the speaker/writer, not the listener/reader.
I expanded on it in my post, but here it is again: People like me who found the ideosyncracies of spelling rules intriguing and helpful when it came to remembering how a word was spelt. Greater uniformity in spelling makes for less variety, for me that would have made it harder to learn, not easier. I remembered how to spell 'see' precisely because it was different to 'sea'. As a kid I would read voraciously and often come across words for the first time. Sometimes I'd read it wrong, and have an incorrect pronuniation in my head for that word. Months or years might go by without me hearing that word, but nonetheless encountering it in print. Or I would hear someone say the word, but because they pronounced it differently I would think them two different words *chuckles* 'recipe' was one. For a long time when I was a kid I thought that was pronounced re-cype. I'd see it and that's how it would sound in my head. Then I'd get that moment of discovery when I'd find out how it should sound. I used to love that. It was like I'd found something really cool.
Still happens. oh so rarely these days, but nice when it does. When I was little there were a lot of words like that. Usually they were words that I wouldnt really need to use, but would find in books that were a little too old for me. Guarantee those are the words I will never forget how to spell.
I like the shape of the words. On the page. It's more than just symbols, they have a shape and a visual flow and rhythm. I would miss that.
It is really odd how you find it acceptable to go for
years before getting a simple word with an irregular spelling right. What's worse is how you think that's more acceptable than any effort to remove the deadwood from English spelling so as to reduce the learning time for others.
You fear the making of any change because you feel that would make it harder to read for those who have mastered the traditional spellings. There are different approaches to reforming English orthography, and not all of them make large changes.
Consider
SR1 (Staged Reform 1). This was a simple rule for reform: wherever a vowel was pronounced the same as the "e" in "bet", it was always spelt with "e". No other rules. This would have the effect of altering the spelling of relatively few words in running text, but every now and again one would read words like "fether" where a surplus letter had been quietly cut. While traditionalist pedants would recoil in horror at that spelling ("You can't do that! It's spelt wrong!"), there is no reason why the "feather" spelling is considered the correct one, other than force of tradition.
But in reality, it is unlikely that anyone would have difficulty recognising the word "feather" with its surplus silent letter cut. At least, not more than once.
Here's a test for you. How well can you read Hamlet's soliloquy, from the First Folio? I won't put in the long esses but this is otherwise much as it was published in 1623.
To be, or not to be, that is the Question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer
The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune,
Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to dye, to sleepe
No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end
The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes
That Flesh is heyre too? 'Tis a consummation
Deuoutly to be wish'd. To dye to sleepe,
To sleepe, perchance to Dreame; I, there's the rub,
For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come,
When we haue shuffel'd off this mortall coile,
Must giue vs pawse. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time,
The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd Loue, the Lawes delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes
That patient merit of the vnworthy takes,
When he himselfe might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardles beare
To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne
No Traueller returnes, Puzels the will,
And makes vs rather beare those illes we haue,
Then flye to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of vs all,
And thus the Natiue hew of Resolution
Is sicklied o're, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,
With this regard their Currants turne away,
And loose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The faire Ophelia? Nimph, in thy Orizons
Be all my sinnes remembred.
How much trouble do you have reading that? Some, I'm sure: the usage of the letters u and v is not the same as we use them now. However, you should be able to read the odd spellings. Probably not with the same speed, but you won't have too much trouble recognising the words that are still in use.
If you can read that, you should have little trouble reading texts in modest reforms that only make small changes.
Honestly? I have absolutely no problems whatsoever reading that soliloquoy in it's original. I similarly have very little difficulty reading Chaucer in the original middle-english.
Also, I wasn't saying that I 'fear' any changes. Nor was I saying that I 'fear' them because I : 'feel that would make it harder to read for those who have mastered the traditional spellings.' As it stands, I wouldn't have any problems reading under the new spelling system. I have learned to read and decode language in a variety of forms. I may, however, have found it harder to master when I was learning to read.
I was making a comment about learning styles. It's something I recognise in my own way of learning: ideosyncracies make it easier for me to spot patterns. I was also drawing on my experience of teaching functionally illiterate adults to read.
For some of those adults, the inconsistencies in spelling made for profound difficulties in learning. For some others it made it easier. My point is this: whatever system you come up with, whatever changes are wrought in our spelling, or indeed in the way we teach, it will advantage some and it will correspondingly disadvantage others. For some of the people I taught, your system would have made all the difference. For others, and this counts for both my students and myself, it would have placed an additional stumbling block in their place.
It's not about what people already know (although, that does suggest that several millions of people would suddenly find their own understanding of their language made arbitrarily obsolete), it's about how people learn.
You are positing this as the solution to people's difficulties in learning to spell (amongst other things). I am saying to you, that in my experience, that is unlikely to be the case. It will help some and hinder some. And then you'll be left with a bunch of people who find it difficult to learn to read and recognise words for whom the old system would have been a breeze...and some people who'd have had difficulty before would find it somewhat easier.
Essentially, you are suggesting we replace one flawed and problematic system with another equally flawed and problematic system. We would simply be swapping one set of problems for another.
How would you know that it is always irrelevant? How do you know that context is always available?
These questions make no sense. OK, I'll play. Show me an example, one word on a piece of paper, with no context whatsover, where you would be completely confused as to the meaning of that word and that knowing the meaning of that word is essential for any purpose. I contend that if no context exists (and this is your argument, I think there is always context) then the meaning of the word is irrelevant. It is, then, only an arrangement of letters.
If I'm wrong, I'll eat a smilie.
oh oh oh - can I play too?
Here is your word....
practice
Yeah...and what do you need to know about that word?
Show me an example, one word on a piece of paper, with no context whatsoever, where you would be completely confused as to the meaning of that word and that knowing the meaning of that word is essential for any purpose.
practice
Just trying to play along ... sorry if this was strictly a 2 player game.
Either way - I 'm out.
Does Kingswood rhyme with Kings Food? if not why did the OP choose this as a username?
:lol: He really meant "Kingswould."
Just trying to play along ... sorry if this was strictly a 2 player game.
Either way - I 'm out.
What do you mean you're out? You were well on the way to helping me make my point. Could you not answer the question?
:headshake
Uh - I don't have any idea. I can't even make a guess. I thought YOU were going to answer some question. I only offered a word that was PFA. :neutral:
Oh my.
Well, anyway, what is PFA?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=PFA
See number 5, but air is the PC term. Try a bit lower and behind you.
See number 5, but air is the PC term.
Ok, I get it now.
Tray a bit lower and behind you.
But wait...what?
Pulled from ASS. no not a donkey - Geez, get your context right no not the opposite of left, the other right as in correct.... oh nevermind.
C-man, what the hell are you smokin'? I can't understand anything you just said, aside from PFA can mean either Pulled From Air or Pulled From Ass.
I'm still working on "tray a bit and..."
:confused:
I corrected that silly woman! There was a misspelling in the post - no not a post for a fence, the internet kinda post.
Ohhhhhhh...maybe it's me. ;)
I think you're both swaying pretty high in the breeze actually. lol
I got yer breeze right here
These questions make no sense. OK, I'll play. Show me an example, one word on a piece of paper, with no context whatsover, where you would be completely confused as to the meaning of that word and that knowing the meaning of that word is essential for any purpose. I contend that if no context exists (and this is your argument, I think there is always context) then the meaning of the word is irrelevant. It is, then, only an arrangement of letters.
If I'm wrong, I'll eat a smilie.
I encountered an article on Wikipedia on the weekend about the upcoming Magic:the Gathering expansion
Zendikar. It reads in part: "Zendikar (codenamed Live) is a Magic: The Gathering expansion set, set to be released on October 2, 2009." Can you tell from that context alone whether the codeword "live" is the adjective or the verb? You can't.
Fortunately for you, I don't have to force-feed you a smilie right now, as context is provided in an infobox elsewhere in the article. The code names for this block of three expansions are given there, as
live,
long and
prosper. However, the context that is needed to disambiguate this also requires knowledge of Star Trek and the thematic naming conventions employed in MtG expansions.
Now, why must we endure that kind of rigmarole? Why must we keep resorting to context in this manner just because some stuffy old pedants won't allow any needed changes to be introduced? If we cut the totally useless silent e from
live (the verb; the silent e in
live the adjective is OK because it marks the long vowel), then we wouldn't
need any context to identify the shade of meaning of the word when given in isolation, as it is in the article.
Except then it would read Liv...which is a woman's nick name.
So, Kingswood, tell me, wuold you also have a page of disambiguation to assure us that the Liv in question didn't refer to a female character in that game?
Honestly? I have absolutely no problems whatsoever reading that soliloquoy in it's original. I similarly have very little difficulty reading Chaucer in the original middle-english.
Also, I wasn't saying that I 'fear' any changes. Nor was I saying that I 'fear' them because I : 'feel that would make it harder to read for those who have mastered the traditional spellings.' As it stands, I wouldn't have any problems reading under the new spelling system. I have learned to read and decode language in a variety of forms. I may, however, have found it harder to master when I was learning to read.
I was making a comment about learning styles. It's something I recognise in my own way of learning: ideosyncracies make it easier for me to spot patterns. I was also drawing on my experience of teaching functionally illiterate adults to read.
For some of those adults, the inconsistencies in spelling made for profound difficulties in learning. For some others it made it easier. My point is this: whatever system you come up with, whatever changes are wrought in our spelling, or indeed in the way we teach, it will advantage some and it will correspondingly disadvantage others. For some of the people I taught, your system would have made all the difference. For others, and this counts for both my students and myself, it would have placed an additional stumbling block in their place.
It's not about what people already know (although, that does suggest that several millions of people would suddenly find their own understanding of their language made arbitrarily obsolete), it's about how people learn.
You are positing this as the solution to people's difficulties in learning to spell (amongst other things). I am saying to you, that in my experience, that is unlikely to be the case. It will help some and hinder some. And then you'll be left with a bunch of people who find it difficult to learn to read and recognise words for whom the old system would have been a breeze...and some people who'd have had difficulty before would find it somewhat easier.
Essentially, you are suggesting we replace one flawed and problematic system with another equally flawed and problematic system. We would simply be swapping one set of problems for another.
Thank you for your post. It is this kind of well-thought out post that I was seeking when I chose to post this thread.
I also did not give you sufficient credit at the time in your previous post, as I had the distraction of a heavy and nasty cold at the time. Only later, as the combination of the cold symptoms and side effects of medication prevented my sleeping did I give further consideration to your little remark about "word shapes". That is important. The French Academy introduced accents to the French language in the 18th century for that exact reason - to reform the orthography without changing the word shapes too much.
Let's suppose that spellings were reformed in a reasonable manner. Many of the changes would involve single-letter alterations (deletions, substitutions and additions). Deleting a letter from
hearken,
leather would give
harken,
lether (harken is already an established variant spelling); inserting a missing letter into
shadow would give
shaddow; substituting a letter in
meadow would give
meddow. While these spellings won't be liked by the fans of current spellings, these are all plausible spellings that would have resulted had English spelling been updated systematically sometime in the last 250 years. The shape of the word does not change much, but irregularity is removed.
The shape of words would change more if words containing the notorious tetragraph
ough had that combination removed. I venture that the word shapes of the
ough words is not actually that useful for word recognition, as in some words one must look carefully at the
other letters in the word just to work out which of ten different pronunciations to use for the
ough. Which is easier to read:
tough,
though,
through,
trough,
thorough, or
tuff,
tho,
thru,
troff or
thurro?
Your point about some people being worse off is important. However, if changes were done with care, the number of people made worse off would be substantially fewer than those who would benefit.
Except then it would read Liv...which is a woman's nick name.
So, Kingswood, tell me, wuold you also have a page of disambiguation to assure us that the Liv in question didn't refer to a female character in that game?
Stretchiiiiiiiiiiiiiii *snap*. Sorry, you stretched too much and it broke. You are
seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one.
Come back when you know how proper nouns are spelt.
The name 'Liv' is in common currency. In a title like the one you just mentioned, 'Live' is spelt with a capital letter. In the title you suggest the article would read:
"Zendikar (codenamed Liv) is a Magic: The Gathering expansion set, set to be released on October 2, 2009."
Tell me again, why 'Liv' in that context couldn't refer to a female character called 'Liv'?
In what way have I demonstrated that I don't know how to spell proper nouns? Because I used a nick-name? They are commonly used in fiction, so why not gaming? You offered an example of how spelling reform might disambiguate but in fact it offers alternative areas of confusion. It's no more a stretch than your original example.
For all I know the character's in-game name might be Liv Tyler. *smiles* unlikely yes. But there's no reason why a character wouldn't be called Liv. Any more than there's a reason there wouldn't be a 'Liz' or a 'Bob' or a 'Chuck'.
I venture that the word shapes of the ough words is not actually that useful for word recognition, as in some words one must look carefully at the other letters in the word just to work out which of ten different pronunciations to use for the ough. Which is easier to read: tough, though, through, trough, thorough, or tuff, tho, thru, troff or thurro?
Well...except I don't pronounce 'thorough' as 'thorr
o'. I am from the North of England; I pronounce it 'thor
uh'. And in some accents 'trough' is not tr
off, it's tr
uff.
Which 'accent' and indeed which 'version' of English are we going to privelege in our spelling reforms? There is very little parity of pronunciation. Between countries it varies enormously. Between the regions (and indeed between towns and villages within those regions) of my tiny little island there is huge variance in pronunciation. Even the rhythms and stresses of speech are different region to region. And indeed, class to class (we have the famed North South Divide. This stuff matters).
What about 'schedule'? It has two pronunciations: skedule and shhedule. Which do we privelege? 'Almond' is pronounced 'allmond' and 'ahhmond' depending where in the UK you live. Indeed it can also be pronounced allm
und or allm
ond.
Who decides which accent is 'correct' ?
Your point about some people being worse off is important. However, if changes were done with care, the number of people made worse off would be substantially fewer than those who would benefit.
How do you know this? What figures do you have that you can point to that in any way back up your assertion that
substantially fewer people would be disadvantaged? How can you possibly know this?
I encountered an article on Wikipedia on the weekend about the upcoming Magic:the Gathering expansion Zendikar. It reads in part: "Zendikar (codenamed Live) is a Magic: The Gathering expansion set, set to be released on October 2, 2009." Can you tell from that context alone whether the codeword "live" is the adjective or the verb? You can't.
Fortunately for you, I don't have to force-feed you a smilie right now, as context is provided in an infobox elsewhere in the article. The code names for this block of three expansions are given there, as live, long and prosper. However, the context that is needed to disambiguate this also requires knowledge of Star Trek and the thematic naming conventions employed in MtG expansions.
Now, why must we endure that kind of rigmarole? Why must we keep resorting to context in this manner just because some stuffy old pedants won't allow any needed changes to be introduced? If we cut the totally useless silent e from live (the verb; the silent e in live the adjective is OK because it marks the long vowel), then we wouldn't need any context to identify the shade of meaning of the word when given in isolation, as it is in the article.
Oh well hell, certainly a game and a stupid show and movie have shown me the errors of my ways.
No, it has context. You pointed out the context yourself. If you are buying the game, you know the reference. No one is going to think it means Lie-ve long and prosper. Even if you don't know Star Trek you won't think it's lie-ve, because that doesn't make sense.
No, I won't be eating a smilie today. You have not proven anything. Again, show me an example, one word on a piece of paper with no context, where not knowing the meaning of that word makes any difference whatsoever.
Also...since when was reading an 'infobox elsewhere in the article' considered 'rigmarole'?
How bout people employ a little patience and make the assumption (which will usually be borne out in fact) that if they read the article the context will become clear.
Plus, just a minor point, but you'd also rob journalists and social commentators of what is a commonly used rhetorical device: word confusion *
(*wusion? :P)
Well...except I don't pronounce 'thorough' as 'thorro'. I am from the North of England; I pronounce it 'thoruh'. And in some accents 'trough' is not troff, it's truff.
These spellings were just examples so there's no need to get worked up about them. But for the record, I pronounce "thorough" the same as you, but prefer a spelling based on the American pronunciation because its kinda hard to put a short "u" at the end of a word because it doesn't naturally occur there. The spelling I demonstrated is easier to derive from the traditional spelling: cut off the last 3 letters; whereas your suggestion of "uh" involves a bit of slicing, dicing and splicing.
In both cases, the spellings I selected as examples for these words were closer to the traditional spellings than the ones you mentioned as alternatives. More on that below.
You also ducked the question about which you found easier to read. Obviously it was easier for you to nitpick some obvious examples than for you to admit the validity of my demonstration. (Which was all the more telling considering that the traditional spellings have been in your books for centuries whereas at least two of the spellings I had selected you may have
never seen before.)
Which 'accent' and indeed which 'version' of English are we going to privelege in our spelling reforms? There is very little parity of pronunciation. Between countries it varies enormously. Between the regions (and indeed between towns and villages within those regions) of my tiny little island there is huge variance in pronunciation. Even the rhythms and stresses of speech are different region to region. And indeed, class to class (we have the famed North South Divide. This stuff matters).
What accent is "thorough" spelt in? What about "trough", "though"? Do you know anyone that says "trough" as "tr -ou- *phlegm*" anymore? What about "heather", or "one", what accents are these? How about "ptarmigan"? Who says the "p" in that word? How about "colonel"? Who says both els and both oes in that word? What accent says the "b" in "debt" and "doubt"?
It's better to base the spelling standard (and it's a SPELLING standard we're discussing here, not a PRONUNCIATION standard) on someone's living speech rather than on the speech of people that have been corpses for centuries, or farcical etymological errors that have never been pronounced by anyone, ever.
Some spellings are still based on living speech, such as the difference between "tow" and "toe" or "see" and "sea". These should be kept.
What about 'schedule'? It has two pronunciations: skedule and shhedule. Which do we privelege?
Whose pronunciation did we "privelege" when choosing a spelling for aluminium? Sorry, aluminum? Would you look at that, it has
two spellings! Perhaps a few words may end up with two spellings, to join the 2000 existing words that already have multiple correct spellings. Variant spellings for variant pronunciations should not be overdone, but in the specific case of "schedule" variants can be accommodated if this particular word is to be respelt.
'Almond' is pronounced 'allmond' and 'ahhmond' depending where in the UK you live. Indeed it can also be pronounced allmund or allmond.
Your accent question does come up a lot even among spelling reformers. One approach that I believe can work is to use the traditional spellings as a guide, and if there's a conflict to select a new spelling that closest to the traditional spelling. Sometimes this would cause a spelling to remain unchanged. This reduces the number of changes to spelling in a systematic manner.
We can get too carried away with that approach, however. Most people do not pronounce "blood" the way it is spelt any more. Maybe a few pronounce "blood" with the same vowel as "food", but I know of no accent anywhere that still does this. Some do pronounce it with the same vowel as "good", but this is mostly found among people who also pronounce "budding" and "pudding" with the same vowel. For most of us, the two words "blood" and "flood" would make more sense if the spelling was allowed to evolve to keep up with the evolution in the pronunciation; in other words, replacing the "oo" with a "u". For people that pronounce "budding" and "pudding" with the same vowel, "blud" and "flud" fit right in alongside these words, and this doesn't do any harm to them at all. For the rest of us, we would spell "blud" and "flud" with the same vowel as we now use in "hum" and "cut", which makes more sense than the current spelling does.
Who decides which accent is 'correct' ?
Who decides what is "correct" now? You tell me that, and maybe you'll have an answer to your own question.
How do you know this? What figures do you have that you can point to that in any way back up your assertion that substantially fewer people would be disadvantaged? How can you possibly know this?
How can you possibly know that disadvantage would be great enough to make it greater than the potential advantages? How can you, without seeing any detail, form the opinion that spelling reform must create disadvantage no matter what the changes may be? How can you claim to speak for everyone when you are only going by your own experiences, and the experiences of a few people you know? That is an awfully small sample in comparison to the hundreds of millions that speak English as native speakers.
How can you possibly know that disadvantage would be great enough to make it greater than the potential advantages? How can you, without seeing any detail, form the opinion that spelling reform must create disadvantage no matter what the changes may be? How can you claim to speak for everyone when you are only going by your own experiences, and the experiences of a few people you know? That is an awfully small sample in comparison to the hundreds of millions that speak English as native speakers.
I can't. And neither can you. But the system we have is the system we have. We have no way to know that intorducing a new system wouldn't cause greater harm. And I can only really judge my own experience and those of a small group of people. But the hundreds of millions of English speakers are not an amorphous mass; they are made of of lots of small groups each with their own experience of the language and no more reducible to a formula for change than they are to a formula for stasis.
As to which of the spellings I find easier to read: the ones with the 'ough'. Because that's what I am comfortable with. The second set of words jar for me and were I to find them in a piece of writing they would startle me from the text.
'Who decides what is correct now' Well, currently it appears to be a combination of 'official' dictionaries, netwide calls for updated information on spelling trends (conducted by the OED amongst others) and the rather more democratic sweep of natural change over time. All conducted on an uneven and unequal playing field arrived at after many generations of evolution, control, downright dishonesty, political and ideological movements and the arbitrary timing of the codifying of spelling through the printing press.
What you are suggesting is as artificial and 'top down' as the drive to latinize our spellings and grammar ever was. It will also irritate as many people as it will please, and appears to take no account of the profoundly political and nationalist elements of 'spelling'.
The English language is ruining spelling.
kthxbai
I can't. And neither can you. But the system we have is the system we have. We have no way to know that intorducing a new system wouldn't cause greater harm. And I can only really judge my own experience and those of a small group of people. But the hundreds of millions of English speakers are not an amorphous mass; they are made of of lots of small groups each with their own experience of the language and no more reducible to a formula for change than they are to a formula for stasis.
As to which of the spellings I find easier to read: the ones with the 'ough'. Because that's what I am comfortable with. The second set of words jar for me and were I to find them in a piece of writing they would startle me from the text.
I hope you don't use a "DRIVE THRU" very often, as you would be so startled by that spelling that you would probably rear-end the car in front. :rolleyes:
The "tho" and "thru" spellings are both found in dictionaries, both listed as "informal". The "thru" spelling has a long pedigree; it was in widespread use before 1750 but was not preferred by Johnson when he published his Dictionary.
'Who decides what is correct now' Well, currently it appears to be a combination of 'official' dictionaries, netwide calls for updated information on spelling trends (conducted by the OED amongst others) and the rather more democratic sweep of natural change over time. All conducted on an uneven and unequal playing field arrived at after many generations of evolution, control, downright dishonesty, political and ideological movements and the arbitrary timing of the codifying of spelling through the printing press.
What you are suggesting is as artificial and 'top down' as the drive to latinize our spellings and grammar ever was. It will also irritate as many people as it will please, and appears to take no account of the profoundly political and nationalist elements of 'spelling'.
A top-down approach is used - and does work - for French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and most other major languages. There is no such standards body for the English language. It is the dictionary publishers that regulate the spelling in English, and they do a decent job but are not able to promulgate any needed changes.
There is one aspect of spelling reforms that you do not appreciate. They are not generally done in the same manner as metrication, where something new is introduced by fiat and the public are expected to change. Instead, they tend to be more democratic - new spellings are introduced by a government and the public is free to either use them or ignore them. Spellings like "program" and "catalog" were both introduced in this way in America about 100 years ago and gained sufficient acceptance to supplant the older spellings that are still current in British English. Other similar spellings introduced at the same time, like "leag", did not. However, the public were allowed to choose by usage.
Allowing spellings to change will cause some resentment, if your indignation at the mere idea of
discussing the topic is anything to go by. However, current spellings also cause resentment, as many whose spelling is not as strong as they would like can tell you.
Some spellings are also indefensible - irregularity is allowed to accumulate for no good reason; spellings are not allowed to evolve to keep up with changes to the spoken language; and some words break so many rules that only a warped mind can find justification in their retention. If the spellings of some individual words that I have discussed were actually defensible, someone would have defended them by now.
*shakes head*
I'm not 'indignant' at the mere idea of discussing it. I've been discussing it with you. I simply hold a different viewpoint. I am positing potential problems with your schema. I see more problems in it than I see solutions; primarily because I do not share your interpretation of what is or is not problematic in the English language.
As to the use of 'thru'. It's entirely contextual. If I see that online or in a phone text message it reads perfectly fine, and indeed, I use it on occasion myself. But it would jar if I saw it in a newspaper article or a novel. It would seem inappropriate.
I don't like the top-down approach to language reform. By which I mean, I don't like governments getting involved in what is or is not correct in language. Any more than I would appreciate a government agency telling me what i can and can't call my child. The European governments who impose language change also, on the whole, have rather more input into what I personally consider deeply private matters, than the British government does.
I have more trust in the people who compile dictionaries, frankly, than in the State, to decide what may or may not be a useful spelling change.
[eta] which government would decide on English changes btw? Or would there be some kind of joint decision-making, in which case, should disagreement arise, who would have the casting vote? There is already a slow burning resentment in the UK at the 'loss of our culture' and the 'Americanisation' of our language (including spelling). Should Britain try to impose her standard? Not really, given that American English is more widely spoken in the world. What about Australia? New Zealand? Canada? It's hard enough trying to reach agreement within a nation, let alone bringing together multiple nations united by a language they each feel ownership of.
Now, why must we endure that kind of rigmarole? Why must we keep resorting to context in this manner just because some stuffy old pedants won't allow any needed changes to be introduced? If we cut the totally useless silent e from live (the verb; the silent e in live the adjective is OK because it marks the long vowel), then we wouldn't need any context to identify the shade of meaning of the word when given in isolation, as it is in the article.
I have to ask...
Aside from your wanting it to be so, what's to stop 'liv' from being pronounced with a drawn 'i', similar to the word 'leave'? The standard issue vowel 'i' has the potential for three sounds. This allows for your commuted 'live' to have three forms: 'liv' as in 'I live in the US.', 'leeve' as in "We leave in 10 minutes." and 'live' as in "Saturday Night Live". Does your rule bank on the fact that we currently use the 'ea' to create the 'ee' sound in 'leave' to remove that sound from the list of possibilities? Do you have a rule in your New Spelling Order transform 'leave' into 'leev' to fix that problem?
I hope you don't use a "DRIVE THRU" very often, as you would be so startled by that spelling that you would probably rear-end the car in front. :rolleyes:
In addition to Dani's very sensible response, I would like to add that DRIVE THRU is used in the UK seldom to never.
The "tho" and "thru" spellings are both found in dictionaries, both listed as "informal". The "thru" spelling has a long pedigree; it was in widespread use before 1750 but was not preferred by Johnson when he published his Dictionary.
Yay for antiquated spelling! Look, it didn't catch on then, so why should it now.
A top-down approach is used - and does work - for French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and most other major languages.
How many of those languages do Dwellars spell in? Through trade routes, imperialism and the doggedness of American culture, English is the most widespread of all these languages despite its faults.
I am interested in your argument. I like to see different sides to issues, even if I didn't even know they were issues to start with. But this is a non-starter. English - as has been eloqently explained - is an adaptive language. And it will continue to adapt.
What accent is "thorough" spelt in? What about "trough", "though"? Do you know anyone that says "trough" as "tr -ou- *phlegm*" anymore? What about "heather", or "one", what accents are these? How about "ptarmigan"? Who says the "p" in that word? How about "colonel"? Who says both els and both oes in that word? What accent says the "b" in "debt" and "doubt"?
It's better to base the spelling standard (and it's a SPELLING standard we're discussing here, not a PRONUNCIATION standard) on someone's living speech rather than on the speech of people that have been corpses for centuries, or farcical etymological errors that have never been pronounced by anyone, ever..
say we agree. your point is that words that rhyme should have similar spellings, no?
And yet words which rhyme for Americans don't for Brits and/or Aussies (and all possible permutations of that concept). For example, some Brits would agree that thorough rhymes with colour/color. I'm pretty sure few americans would. So how should be "improve" those spellings?
The problem is people see two extreams.
Either you have a stagnent, strict, conservative language, in which you preserve the meanings and thus protect yourself from the 'slippery slope' of communicative collapce.
On the other hand you have the everything goes aproach, in which you avoid the counter productive and pointless dogma of literacy, but can lead to some serious comunication problems.
Anyone who read Lord of the Rings at twelve can tell you that you can only read 'thou' so many times before the desire to scratch out your own eyes begins to overpower.
However, as I see it language evolves and there is nothing you can do about it. You can have in place structures to slow the mutation of words, but eventualy you're going to have a language in writing that doesn't make any sence in comparison to the verbal one.
I think the fear that its all going to become uninteligable is silly, because if people don't understand, it isn't going to pass on its message, which puts a natural cap on how much language can change.
Lets not worry too much about being 'right'.
say we agree. your point is that words that rhyme should have similar spellings, no?
And yet words which rhyme for Americans don't for Brits and/or Aussies (and all possible permutations of that concept). For example, some Brits would agree that thorough rhymes with colour/color. I'm pretty sure few americans would. So how should be "improve" those spellings?
That depends on whether the spelling of the word is dysfunctional for everyone.
The number of words where the pronunciation differs in a non-systematic manner between British English and American English is not large, on the order of one percent or so. Many of these words already have reasonable spellings in one or the other of these accents, so for such words we can justify leaving them as they are.
Where change is demonstrably needed is in those words where the spelling matches nobody's pronunciation.
There is a reasonable point about a possible dilemma regarding the choice of pronunciation for these words, but I have already made a suggestion that can work: choose the pronunciation that is closest to the spelling. This approach will permit words to remain unaltered if their spellings are plausible in someone's national or regional pronunciation. DanaC discussed the word "almond", and how some people actually pronounce it as spelt in some parts of England. By the rule I outlined, no change is needed here.
Some words may need to have different spellings to go with the different pronunciations, but that is best done if there is a demonstrable difference in meaning. I have discussed "lieutenant" and how we would be better off if the British Navy pronunciation of that word had a separate spelling. I will take the opportunity here to correct an error I made earlier: it seems the army-navy distinction is a lot older than I guessed. There are 14th-century spellings like "leeftenaunt" known for this word. Americans may only use the old Army pronunciation of this word, but given what the Americans thought of the British Navy around the time of the American Revolution, this is not really that surprising.
I have to ask...
Aside from your wanting it to be so
Don't misrepresent what I say.
, what's to stop 'liv' from being pronounced with a drawn 'i', similar to the word 'leave'?
It would be spelt on a similar pattern to words like sit, him, dish? Do you have trouble with these words?
The standard issue vowel 'i' has the potential for three sounds. This allows for your commuted 'live' to have three forms: 'liv' as in 'I live in the US.', 'leeve' as in "We leave in 10 minutes." and 'live' as in "Saturday Night Live".
Again, you are misrepresenting what I have said.
Does your rule bank on the fact that we currently use the 'ea' to create the 'ee' sound in 'leave' to remove that sound from the list of possibilities? Do you have a rule in your New Spelling Order transform 'leave' into 'leev' to fix that problem?
The redundant silent e in "leave" is only there so that you know it's not a u.
As for the ea digraph, I count it as a regular spelling. I have already said that.
The name 'Liv' is in common currency. In a title like the one you just mentioned, 'Live' is spelt with a capital letter. In the title you suggest the article would read:
"Zendikar (codenamed Liv) is a Magic: The Gathering expansion set, set to be released on October 2, 2009."
Tell me again, why 'Liv' in that context couldn't refer to a female character called 'Liv'?
If the available context was good enough for Shawnee123 to avoid "eating a smilie", it is good enough for you.
In what way have I demonstrated that I don't know how to spell proper nouns? Because I used a nick-name? They are commonly used in fiction, so why not gaming? You offered an example of how spelling reform might disambiguate but in fact it offers alternative areas of confusion. It's no more a stretch than your original example.
Proper nouns always begin with capital letters, and can be easily disambiguated from similarly-spelt words by that alone. How can you tell the difference between bob and Bob? Do you confuse bob and Bob?
This name "Liv" is not as common as you suppose, and it is certainly less common than either pronunciation of the word "live". It would reduce confusion; and how much confusion can there be with two words pronounced the same? There would be no more confusion with liv and Liv than there currently is with bob and Bob, or rob and Rob: one is a verb, the other is a shortened version of a name. The rules for disambiguation would therefore be very similar as well.
Why do you consider it OK for two common words with
different pronunciations to have the same spelling, but if we respell them and there's a slight chance one of the respellings can be confused with a relatively rare proper noun that always begins with a capital letter and that (presumably) shares the
same pronunciation, somehow that's worse?
The number of words where the pronunciation differs in a non-systematic manner between British English and American English is not large, on the order of one percent or so. .
you must mean words overall, (i.e. including "and", "the"...) not just words that might need changing?
Because otherwise I'd love to see where you got the 1% from. having lived a significant time in the US and in two different accent areas of England, I find that figure hard to believe. Or in other words, I call BS on your stats.
First off: yes I know that generally speaking, the context would show that Liv is a proper noun and liv a verb; however, you showed as your example to Shawnee a sentence in which the verb 'Live' is capitalized. Unless you are suggesting we also change the rules on capitalization in titles, then the example you found (and I think you probably had to reach quite hard to find one) would not give the context through capitalization. It is Live in your example; therefore, it would be Liv in my counter example.
In most contexts, even without the clue of capitalization, it would be obvious that Liv and liv are not the same thing; however, again, I must point out, that you chose as your example a game title. Games contain characters, and stories and in that context a subtitle of 'Liv' is just as likely to be a character name as a verb.
Liv is in common currency in the UK. Olivia was the most popular girls name in 2007 and is often shortened. This is about to get even more confusing of course, since the actress Liv Tyler has gone some way to popularising the shortened form Liv as a full name.
Kingswood. You managed to find a very shaky example of a single time that Shawnee's point didn't stand. I pointed out that this very example has room for confusion even if you change the spelling. Your response is to cast aspersions on my ability to spell or to correctly use the English language. Go away and find a less shaky example to support your claims and make our Shawnee eat a smilie.
[eta] oh and to pick up on Monnie's Bullshit call: there's variance between towns and regions of the UK in pronunciation of far more than 1% of the language. That's just region to region in our little island, let alone between British English and American English, and Australian English.
Anyone who read Lord of the Rings at twelve can tell you that you can only read 'thou' so many times before the desire to scratch out your own eyes begins to overpower.
Doesn't happen a lot in LOTR, though. I think the boss Nazgûl says it, just once. A better example might be the Book of Mormon. I finished LOTR the first time at fifteen, and only regret that I did not first read it at twenty-one, when I enjoyed and appreciated its literary depth so much more. A twelve-year-old might get twitchy with LOTR's slow start, but the trilogy amply repays the mature reader.
uninteligable
You've just managed to make that word unintelligible to the ear. :yelsick: You're forcing it to rhyme with "gable" or perhaps the Monty Python "un-sing-ABLE." A G followed by an A will be hard, the improbably-spelt "gaol" being the only exception I can think of. Also a spelling I almost never use.
Lets not worry too much about being 'right'.
Clearly you don't -- but I recommend that you worry a little harder. The absence of the tadpole in the contraction
Let's is bothering me, and really, it's no effort to get contractions right, nor spelling either.
Let's not worry too hard about Kingswood being stubborn about this, either. I can think of worse hobbyhorses to ride, and if this is his, it's still a reasonably amusing couple of laps around the carousel.
Let's not worry too hard about Kingswood being stubborn about this, either. I can think of worse hobbyhorses to ride, and if this is his, it's still a reasonably amusing couple of laps around the carousel.
The only stubbornness in this thread are those people who get too precious when their views on the immutability of spelling are challenged, and who resort to puerile name-calling and other gutter tactics when they cannot refute a point any other way.
I could have done the same quite easily. However, I did not. It's clear where the moral high ground lies, and it is
not with those who chose to demonize rather than refute.
Is it wrong to point out that some words in the English language have spellings that are demonstrably flawed? No. It's a shame that some people here simply cannot handle having this pointed out to them.
Is it wrong to question authority or challenge orthodoxy? No. If we never did this, women would not have the vote in any country and citizens of the USA would still be British subjects, being taxed without representation.
you must mean words overall, (i.e. including "and", "the"...) not just words that might need changing?
Because otherwise I'd love to see where you got the 1% from. having lived a significant time in the US and in two different accent areas of England, I find that figure hard to believe. Or in other words, I call BS on your stats.
Did you miss the bit about systematic variation?
Speakers with the General American (GA) accent do not round the lips when they say words like "pot" and "bomb". The result is pronounced differently. So too does the Received Pronunciation (RP) accent not pronounce the letter R before a consonant. Americans pronounce words like "past" using a conservative pronunciation, but the British accent uses a broad vowel. These and other similar variations are entirely systematic, and the pronunciations of these words can be predicted just from knowledge of the general properties of the accents in question without hearing the individual words in advance.
It is only a minority of words that vary non-systematically, and hence in an unpredictable way between the RP and GA accents. Aluminium (which has a separate spelling "aluminum" in American English), vase, thorough.
Kingswood. You managed to find a very shaky example of a single time that Shawnee's point didn't stand. I pointed out that this very example has room for confusion even if you change the spelling. Your response is to cast aspersions on my ability to spell or to correctly use the English language.
Oh you poor baby!! You didn't have any problem when several posters did the same to me: they made personal remarks directed at me, my ability to spell, my intelligence and a few other libellious remarks about me. Now I allegedly did the same to you suddenly it's a bad thing?
Go away and find a less shaky example to support your claims and make our Shawnee eat a smilie.
Why don't you go away and answer several of my questions?
I can make up a few short sentences that illustrate the point quite nicely. Every one of those sentences would be gramatically complete. Every one would have a clearly obvious meaning when spoken (such that you can correctly answer a question about the sentence) but are ambiguous when written (such that you cannot answer the same question when written).
No doubt you or some other poster will say something about it being good enough. Really, it's not that hard to break English orthography in this way. If it's possible to write several complete sentences that can be understood clearly when spoken but not when written, that is proof enough that English orthography is flawed and cannot represent the spoken word with 100% accuracy.
I notice you don't pick up on any of my actual points.
Kingswood. This is pointless. I am officially out of this conversation. I have engaged with you, as best I can. I give up.
I can make up a few short sentences that illustrate the point quite nicely.
Bullshit. Then do it. You can't even do it with a single word, I would love to see you write a sentence in which no context exists.
Bullshit. Then do it. You can't even do it with a single word, I would love to see you write a sentence in which no context exists.
*applauds* Lovely.
Don't misrepresent what I say.
It would seem, just from reading through this thread, that you'd like to see a change in how English is presented for those who would read, write and speak it. I gather this from how vigorously you defend, explain and elaborate on your position on the subject. This is what you present to the forum, even if this isn't what you intended. Given this, how am I misrepresenting you when I say 'your wanting it to be so'? Isn't a change what you want? Or is all this just a mental exercise for you? It might help to clarify.
Now, back on topic...
It would be spelt on a similar pattern to words like sit, him, dish? Do you have trouble with these words?
I don't. But I can see where people could have problems with that. That rule wouldn't clear anything up. It would just shift the problem to a different set of people.
The redundant silent e in "leave" is only there so that you know it's not a u.
Where exactly does this 'u' come in here? The word and pronunciations involved here don't have a 'u' or any sounds associated with the vowel. Or do you mean 'u' in the sense that it's how we know it's not any other letter?
I suspect he may be referring to a convention applied, when u and v looked very similar in print.
These questions make no sense. OK, I'll play. Show me an example, one word on a piece of paper, with no context whatsover, where you would be completely confused as to the meaning of that word and that knowing the meaning of that word is essential for any purpose. I contend that if no context exists (and this is your argument, I think there is always context) then the meaning of the word is irrelevant. It is, then, only an arrangement of letters.
If I'm wrong, I'll eat a smilie.
Time for you to eat a smilie, Shawnee123. (Please don't eat this one: :greenface it looks like it's spoilt and might make you ill.)
Here are ten words, each put into grammatically-complete sentences (so an adequate amount of syntactic context is present). Each word is either a noun or a verb with two meanings and each meaning has a different pronunciation. The sentences do not have any semantic context supplied. Each sentence has a short question associated with it. If the sentences were spoken to you, you would be able to answer all the questions correctly. However, the sentences are written, not spoken. This makes the meaning ambiguous; you cannot answer the questions because as written both answers are plausible.
He is putting on the first.[LIST]
[*]Is he playing golf or doing something else?[/LIST]
She showed her mother a tear.[LIST]
[*]Did she show her mother a rip or some liquid from someone's eye?[/LIST]
He has been promoted to lieutenant.[LIST]
[*]Does he serve in the British Navy or the US Army?[/LIST]
They read the newspaper every day.[LIST]
[*]Present or past tense?[/LIST]
He resigned yesterday.[LIST]
[*]Did he terminate his contract or extend it?[/LIST]
When they entered the hall, the musicians were bowing.[LIST]
[*]Were they still performing or acknowledging the applause afterward?[/LIST]
She placed the lead on the table.[LIST]
[*]Did she place on the table a cable or a lump of dense metal?[/LIST]
She bought a rare viola.[LIST]
[*]Did she buy a plant or a musical instrument?[/LIST]
Bob hit a skier.[LIST]
[*]Did Bob hit a ball into the air or did he hit someone on skis?[/LIST]
Our teacher drew some axes on the whiteboard.[LIST]
[*]Does the teacher teach mathematics or woodworking?[/LIST]
To gain some insight into how the ambiguity can cause difficulty, it is instructive to experiment with text-to-speech engines. Text-to-speech engines can use syntactic context to disambiguate, but they cannot make use of semantic context because it is very difficult - if not impossible - to program computers to understand semantic context with 100% accuracy, and certainly not possible with the current state-of-the-art in desktop operating systems.
If you have Windows XP or Windows Vista, you can access the built-in text-to-speech engine in this way: Control Panel, then Speech. There is a prompt there that says:
"Use the following text to preview the voice." If you paste the sentences into this prompt, and then click the button that says:
"Preview Voice", it will read it out.
However, the sentences I provided do demonstrate the limitations of the technology. For example, the first sentence I gave reads as follows: "He is putting on the first." The text-to-speech engine assumes that the verb is "put", not "putt". Even if you add the word "green" to the end of the sentence (which provides some semantic context for golf that you can disambiguate as a human), the text-to-speech engine
still says it as if the verb was "put". This shows that computers (or, to be more precise, Microsoft's text-to-speech engine) cannot understand semantic context very well.
Syntactic context is different. Computers understand this relatively easily. If you have it read the text: "We estimate to make an estimate." (a little contrived but it demonstrates the point adequately), the text-to-speech engine reads both occurrences of the word "estimate" correctly even though the two instances are pronounced differently (the last syllable of the verb has a clearly-pronounced vowel and the last syllable of the noun has a reduced vowel).
I suspect he may be referring to a convention applied, when u and v looked very similar in print.
You're close but not quite right. Sorry about that, so I'll clarify this.
The letters u and v were once the same letter, which looked a bit like this: capital letter V, minuscule letter u. Around the time of Shakespeare, the letters began to be differentiated, but the modern usage of vowel=u, consonant=v was not settled until the middle of the 17th century. I posted some First Folio text in this thread. If you read it, you can see that the modern values for the letters was not yet standardized at the time of the publication of the First Folio in 1623.
Sometimes you can see examples of the letter V being used as a vowel even now. The façade of building 10 of the
MASSACHVSETTS INSTIVTE OF TECHNOLOGY is one example. (Photo
here).
Before the letters were differentiated, the way of disambiguating them was: if a consonant followed, it was a vowel; if a vowel followed, it was a consonant. See how it works with the sample MIT text above. Similar rules also existed for the letters I and J, and Classical Latin had these rules too.
The upshot of this is that the spelling of many English words with V in it still have a relic of the pre-split days. Many words with V in them (especially when V would be at the end of the word) are spelt with a silent E after the V. Those rare English words that do end in V are generally recent neologisms or foreign borrowings.
A related curio is that few English words have a double V in it, and those words that do are relatively recent neologisms such as
bovver. In English, we generally double consonants that follow short vowels such as
hammer,
bubble and
running. But we don't do it for V in older words because VV is an old digraph that eventually evolved into W. Early printers didn't always have boxes of W's available (it was a letter unknown in Europe), so they often made do with VV. The doubled V to mark a short vowel simply wasn't available.
If we put these together, it gives reasons behind some of the odder spellings in English when the letters o, u, v and w occur together. For example, we spell "woman" where "wuman" would be expected. Now try spelling it using the older conventions and we get: "uuuman". That's hard to read, so changing the vowel u into o was necessary to aid readability (uuoman), especially in handwritten mauscripts. There are not many words in English with the sequence "wu", but there are plenty of words that are pronounced as if spelt that way. Same goes for "uv"; few are spelt that way but many are pronounced that way.
I suspect he may be referring to a convention applied, when u and v looked very similar in print.
That's nvts..
i was looking for where they say N V T S, nuts! in history of the world part1, but i found the mighty joint scene:
[youtubewide]nv53M0gfvRs[/youtubewide]
I rather like the idiosyncrasies of English spelling; they inform and honor our language's complex history.
hehe Did you say that with a straight face? :)
That word...straight. Shouldn't it be strate? Otherwise it's confused with strait. I can't keep it all strate. Spelling is ruining the post.
That word...straight. Shouldn't it be strate? Otherwise it's confused with strait. I can't keep it all strate. Spelling is ruining the post.
Spelling is ruining the fence post? :right:
The spelling problem in English is a pansy next to the gender problem in other languages.
Maybe we should form a committee to sort it all out. That'll work.
Clearly, Dana is still feverish.
so wait, who thinks kingswood has a point?
(does that need context?)
I get his point, but I don't agree with it simply because languages evolve naturally, and regardless of whether spelling is made 'easier', there'll still be those who bastardize it anyway. For example, all this txt spk we hve l8ly. We all still get it, but it's hardly what you'd call english is it? Some people think txt spk is better and more economical. I think it's ugly and inexpressive. Well written and spoken english is beautifully expressive, just as the other romance languages are which is probably how they come by their definition.
Anyway, that's my point. :)
point as in a direction, a sharp end, or a topic of discussion? :rolleyes:
could the need for contect have been eliminated by spelling corrections?
could the need for contect have been eliminated by spelling corrections?
:thumb:
That word...straight. Shouldn't it be strate? Otherwise it's confused with strait. I can't keep it all strate. Spelling is ruining the post.
An interesting word (it is the only common root word with the sequence
aigh), but I do not have an issue with this particular spelling.
The reasons are to do with pronunciation in regional accents in England, particularly the north of England. In the Middle Ages, the
gh was pronounced, but was later lost. In most places, the consonant simply fell silent and the vowel in the sequence
aigh was pronounced identically to the sequence
ai, and the same for the similar sequences
ei and
eigh. However, in some regions the vowel was modified before the consonant was lost. In these regions
wait and
weight are still pronounced differently.
Although I do not know for sure, it is likely that these people pronounce
strait and
straight differently. If so, these words should remain differentiated in spelling and the current spellings are fine.
I get his point, but I don't agree with it simply because languages evolve naturally
I don't get this. Isn't orthography a part of the language too?
If spellings remain fixed while pronunciations change in the spoken language, it is inevitable that the orthography will diverge from the spoken language and the alphabetical principle will become more and more corrupted. Most languages have their orthographies maintained from time to time to prevent this. It doesn't happen in English because the English language lacks an NGO with the power to maintain the language. If such an NGO existed, it wouldn't even be necessary to ask whether the English orthography should be maintained, in much the same way that we don't ask if roads should be repaired. It would simply be maintained as necessary to keep pace with the evolution of the spoken language.
Regardless of whether spelling is made 'easier', there'll still be those who bastardize it anyway. For example, all this txt spk we hve l8ly. We all still get it, but it's hardly what you'd call english is it? Some people think txt spk is better and more economical. I think it's ugly and inexpressive.
I agree that textspeak is ugly. However, the idea that some people will spell words in a nonstandard way is not in any way a compelling argument against a revision of English orthography. In French, accents are often omitted in casual writing, but that doesn't cause the
Académie Française to stop reforming the orthography of the French language from time to time.
Well written and spoken english is beautifully expressive, just as the other romance languages are which is probably how they come by their definition.
Romance languages are so called because they evolved from vulgar Latin, the vernacular language of ancient Rome. English is not technically a Romance language, it is a Germanic language (however, it does have substantial borrowings from Romance languages like Norman French and Latin).
Almost every one of the Romance languages has an NGO that oversees the language and promulgates spelling reforms from time to time. French has the
Académie Française, Spanish has the
Real Academia Española, Portuguese has the
Academia das Ciências de Lisboa and the
Academia Brasileira de Letras.
Well-written English would by definition be well written if it conforms to the standard orthography of the day, regardless of whether it is the orthography of Shakespeare's time (with spellings like
logique,
warre,
atte,
sinne and
beare), the present orthographies (the national varieties of English each have their slight differences), or a revised orthography that results after any spelling reform. Thus, I do not agree that English would in any way be less well written or expressive if it conformed to a reformed orthography rather than any of the current standards.
British government spells end of 'i before e' rule
Sat Jun 20, 3:49 pm ET
LONDON – It's a spelling mantra that generations of schoolchildren have learned — "i before e, except after c."
But new British government guidance tells teachers not to pass on the rule to students, because there are too many exceptions.
The "Support For Spelling" document, which is being sent to thousands of primary schools, says the rule "is not worth teaching" because it doesn't account for words like 'sufficient,' 'veil' and 'their.'
Jack Bovill of the Spelling Society, which advocates simplified spelling, said Saturday he agreed with the decision.
But supporters say the ditty has value because it is one of the few language rules that most people remember.
(This version CORRECTS spelling of Bovill, sted Bovell, in graf 4.)
Oh, I got it - it was "[COLOR="White"]lol[/COLOR]" funny, but we aren't allowed to say that anymore.
Haggis and Tatties and Neeps, O Gawd, Haggis and Tatties and Neeps!
Oh I could just eat haggis, tatties and neeps!
Re "Favour:"
. . .Mostly I think the last syllable is shortened and pronounced with the schwa. What vowel sounds lives inside that shwa is very different town to town. *smiles* For me it's more of an uh sound Fav-uh (which is how it's said in Bolton) but if I was a full on Manc, I might say it as more of an short 'o' sound. Fav-o'. The 'r' is not pronounced. In Liverpool, it ends with more of an 'eh' sound (quite slight). Fav'eh. Again, the 'r' isn't pronounced.
The American pronunciation, prevalent everywhere but New England which goes like "fav-ah," would sure stick out enough to attract curious looks all down the bar: "Fav-rrr." The vowel gets almost entirely subsumed into the voiced consonant, a reflection of the R-effect.
