Beta, simpla speling

[Farren]

On this thread (http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?p=9370#post9370) a surprising number of analomolies in one of Liv's posts sent Joe and I haring off after a little fun at Liv's expense. Anyway, I was looking for a another site with really crazy spelling for a link and instead I found

The Simplified Spelling Society (http://www.spellingsociety.org/)

Basically these guys appear to be advocating a complete overhaul of our spelling system because unlike many of the good citizens of this board, most people can't spell for shit, never mind use apostrophes appropriately.

I've always thought there are a couple of illogical conventions in spelling, but when you read entire sentences with words pared down to their most onomatopoeically minimal form, it looks like another language.

F'rinstance:

PRINSIPELS.
PR1) Reformd spelling wil not be compulsery. Whoevver prefers an unreformd (TS) spelling (in wun werd or in his/her hole riting) may continnu to uze it. So if it is desided that we spel "wen" for TS when, if ennybody ses "hwen" s/he can spel "when".

PR2) We cannot spel 2 werds the same way if the pronunsiation of both is difrent (put and putt).

PR3) In case of dout thair wil be alternativ forms.

PR4) Propper Names and thair derivvativs remane az they ar, but derivvativs ar speld with loer case (England, english).

PR5) We keep root werds wen suffixes ar added or compounds ar bilt. For exampel, we spel "slite" for "slight", so we spel "slitely" insted of "slightly". However, if the conservation of the root werd woud be misleeding for the pronunsiation, we chanje it (for instense givving "acommodate" but "acomodation").

Waddya think? For? Or against? I have one request. Please make the spelling in your replies as simple and onomatopoeically correct as possible.

[freemonkey]

Mos defnitlee agenst it. I alwas hate wen peepol tri to chanj the way we shud spel. Nex thing yu no we be sa-ing nukuler.

Besideswich I don think it wud help eny becaws in my opinyun speling is abowt rememering plus peepol all over pronownse wurds difrenly.

[Goliath]

:glare:

What a bunch of god damn language butchers.

[livius drusus]

Onomotopaedia is in the ear of the belistener, to coin a tortured phrase. Whose accent do we pick? If we go with the GWB twang, it'll be all nukuler and laibery and war on tera.

Fucking kill me now.

[freemonkey]

Onomotopaedia is in the ear of the belistener, to coin a tortured phrase. Whose accent do we pick? If we go with the GWB twang, it'll be all nukuler and laibery and war on tera.

Fucking kill me now.
wel, thats exackly wut I sed. Yu mus not hav ben abol tu understand wut I speld. Pruving r case! :thankee:

[beyelzu]

Now I know how liv feels.

my eyes heart from reading this crap.

I will never make fun of her anality again, it is a bulwark against the simple simon simple spelling society.

[Farren]

Onomotopaedia is in the ear of the belistener, to coin a tortured phrase. Whose accent do we pick? If we go with the GWB twang, it'll be all nukuler and laibery and war on tera.

Fucking kill me now.

Fair enuf. But thair ar a lot of wurdz with ekstra letas that ar not rekwiurd regardles of yor aksent, lyk the "b" in "debt".

[JoeP]

:glare:

What a bunch of god damn laungage butchers.
Now who pronounces it laungage?

[Farren]

:glare:

What a bunch of god damn laungage butchers.
Now who pronounces it laungage?

Yeh. Fuking languij boocha

[JoeP]

The hole thing reeds lik a jok. In fact a spesifik jok i just cant find now.
I've always thought there are a couple of illogical conventions in spelling, but when you read entire sentences with words pared down to their most onomatopoeically minimal form, it looks like another language.
Egsaktli. I think thair ar far mor peepl hoo kan reed english az it is speld now than ar strugling to lern it. Orl thowz peepl wud hav a wurs tym.

PR2) We cannot spel 2 werds the same way if the pronunsiation of both is difrent (put and putt).O grait. "Read" wil haf to bekum "red" - dont thai cair abowt werds ov diffrent meenings keeping diffrent spelings? And sow on.

Gud luck to them. Thai tork abowt othur langwiges having dun this, but not all - chynees haz wun orthografi with almost distinkt langwiges. The fonetik prinsipl wud meen evn mor internashnl and rejnl diffrensiz, justifyd by how eech persn torks. Az thai sai:

PR3) In case of dout thair wil be alternativ forms.
Ultimtlee thair wil be no rong spelings - aniwun kud spel anithing the wai thai felt and it wud be ryt. The rizult wil be mor konfuzhn.

[JoeP]

And this is the area where their proposal will fall down (fuk, i carnt bi bothd to maik up fonetik krap ani mor). Pronunciation evolves, and it evolves differently in different countries and regions. Are they saying pronunciation should be standardised? Or perhaps that everyone should learn to write English phonetically as it is spoken in England? Or New England? That may be a good goal but it takes away half their case.

Are they saying (in fact, they are) that English spelling should continue to be changed as the language changes? What happens to old writings - will they be revised by this same language arbiter? Hello, Ministry of Truth. I think English has succeeded internationally because there isn't a governing body (even though purist English speakers, and the Oxford dictionary and so on may be pissed off). Unlike French French vs Canadian French; Dutch vs Afrikaans.

[Farren]

PR3) In case of dout thair wil be alternativ forms.
Ultimtlee thair wil be no rong spelings - aniwun kud spel anithing the wai thai felt and it wud be ryt. The rizult wil be mor konfuzhn.

Yeh but if we furst reformd the languij as a singel proses then setald on the result as fynal thair wood be enuf uniformiitee that peepal kood bekum akustumd too it and the languij wood be simpla for nukomas.

[JoeP]

PR3) In case of dout thair wil be alternativ forms.
Ultimtlee thair wil be no rong spelings - aniwun kud spel anithing the wai thai felt and it wud be ryt. The rizult wil be mor konfuzhn.

Yeh but if we furst reformd the languij as a singel proses then setald on the result as fynal thair wood be enuf uniformiitee that peepal kood bekum akustumd too it and the languij wood be simpla for nukomas.
For how long? It has been a long time sins Dr Johnson, I admit. But wot thair propozing is far mor revolooshnri than the Amerikn chanjiz in speling.

The idea has merit, OK. But the scale of the proposal is just too great: you'd need governmental and academic approval from at least 5 nations, probably over 20, and from the supranational organisations like the UN, NATO, EU, etc. Then you'd need to translate all 1m+ published novels and textbooks, and all 1trillion+ web pages - otherwise the confusion would increase, not decrease. I say it's impossible. Ov kors, i kud be rong.

[Farren]

PR3) In case of dout thair wil be alternativ forms.
Ultimtlee thair wil be no rong spelings - aniwun kud spel anithing the wai thai felt and it wud be ryt. The rizult wil be mor konfuzhn.

Yeh but if we furst reformd the languij as a singel proses then setald on the result as fynal thair wood be enuf uniformiitee that peepal kood bekum akustumd too it and the languij wood be simpla for nukomas.
For how long? It has been a long time sins Dr Johnson, I admit. But wot thair propozing is far mor revolooshnri than the Amerikn chanjiz in speling.

The idea has merit, OK. But the scale of the proposal is just too great: you'd need governmental and academic approval from at least 5 nations, probably over 20, and from the supranational organisations like the UN, NATO, EU, etc. Then you'd need to translate all 1m+ published novels and textbooks, and all 1trillion+ web pages - otherwise the confusion would increase, not decrease. I say it's impossible. Ov kors, i kud be rong.


Thairs orlwais the utha aproach. Chainj and popularize wun new speling at a time?

[Farren]

As a relaited asyd, has anywun read Iain M Banks' "Feersum Enjin" (actual title)?

[livius drusus]

Oh god I hate this thread so much.

[Farren]

Oh god I hate this thread so much.

Yued hate Feersum Enjin then.

[JoeP]

Oh god I hate this thread so much.
Liv, for your own safety and mental balance, put the thread on ignore now.

As a relaited asyd, has anywun read Iain M Banks' "Feersum Enjin" (actual title)?Yes, great book. I love all of Iain Banks' work but I have mixed feelings about Iain M Banks, but Feersum Endjinn (and that's the actual title, my boy: like you were saying, one new spelling, then it becomes standard) is very good. Did you like it? (Assuming you've read it?)

Note (to others) that in this book, only one character uses this changed spelling. The rest of the book is regular English.

[Farren]

Oh god I hate this thread so much.
Liv, for your own safety and mental balance, put the thread on ignore now.

As a relaited asyd, has anywun read Iain M Banks' "Feersum Enjin" (actual title)?Yes, great book. I love all of Iain Banks' work but I have mixed feelings about Iain M Banks, but Feersum Endjinn (and that's the actual title, my boy: like you were saying, one new spelling, then it becomes standard) is very good. Did you like it? (Assuming you've read it?)

Note (to others) that in this book, only one character uses this changed spelling. The rest of the book is regular English.

I red it and enjoyd it imenslee :)

[viscousmemories]

That reminds me. I was just wondering the other day if "Injun" is ever used to describe people from India, and if it is derogatory like when used to describe American Indians.

[Goliath]

:glare:

What a bunch of god damn language butchers.
Now who pronounces it laungage?

Why, I haven't the slightest idea...

:innocent:

[wade-w]

This is actually an attempt to turn back the clock. That may not be intentional, but it's true just the same. When Shakespeare and Marlowe et al were in business the idea of a particular spelling for each word was unheard of. Someone already mentioned Samuel Johnson. He is often popularly credited the first English dictionary, and that was in the 18th century. In reality the first English dictionary was published in 1604 by one Robert Cawdrey, called Table Alphabeticall (Note the "odd" spelling of "alphabetical"). Regardless, a fairly standardized spelling didn't begin to take hold until at least the late 18th century. The differences between American and British spellings like color/colour etc. can be traced to Webster's Dictionary, published in the 1820's.

[Farren]

That reminds me. I was just wondering the other day if "Injun" is ever used to describe people from India, and if it is derogatory like when used to describe American Indians.

I dont think so.

[lisarea]

Johnson's most notable accomplishment was more stylistic than anything. He's often credited as a prescriptivist, when he really was more of a cantankerous quasi-descriptivist. He started out talking all prescriptive, but ended up conceding that he was not boss of everybody by the time he finished his work. Prior to Johnson's dictionary, most dictionaries had been fairly specialized and fairly prescriptive, and Johnson did his level best to describe English as it was used, rather than simply being a "Compendium of Difficult Words" or somesuch. But again, he wasn't the first to try that, either, IIRC. He wasn't even among the first to try to regularize spellings. That just tends to go along with writing a dictionary. What makes Johnson stand out is really his commentary and his entertaining style.

It was Noah Webster who was the big crazy crusader for simplified spellings. Many of these ended up taking hold as American spellings, but I believe the majority fell by the wayside.

IMO, spelling reforms only serve to obfuscate language's history and meaning, and take written language out of context, making it a snapshot of some arguably low point in its development. Fuck that. Fuck it right in the ear. Didn't Jonathan Swift complain about fucking Grimm's Law? Gawd, what an arrogant little cock he was. Like it or not, language is more rich, varied, and complicated than any of us can describe. Ain't nobody qualified to pre- or proscribe shit on any scale like that.

To put a finer point on it, I'll argue for preserving some degree of semantic consistency and integrity of language, particularly those that only serve to make existing words less precise and less descriptive. I'll even argue for preserving some level of decorum in written language, if only for lingua franca purposes, and to preserve the history of the language.

But when some fuck comes along and prescribes some kind of sweeping change to the language itself, well, that's just worse than Delaware.

[Farren]

I must admit I started this thred mainlee to hav a littal fun with all the pedants, but thair ar many kwyt interesting points maid on that syt (most of the artikals orf the main paij yews normal speling). Thai aktualy maik a lot of sens. Weer torking triming yeers orf a child's edukashun:

WHY ENGLISH SPELLING SHOULD BE UPDATED.
English spelling is too difficult for most people.
Even after 11 years at school barely half of all English speakers become confident spellers.
Italian children can spell accurately after just 2 years at school.
Italy has only half as many identified dyslexics as England.

* Around 7 million British adults and 40 million US adults are functionally illiterate.
* English speaking adults always come near the bottom in international studies on literacy.
* In 1992 Dr. Lamb reported on the poor spelling standards of university students in the UK.
* In 1998 Bernard Richards reported on the poor spelling of many students at Oxford.
* In all UK schools there are some teachers who regularly make spelling mistakes on school reports.



Updating a spelling system can make it much easier to learn.

Denmark and Sweden have very similar languages. These neighbours also educate their children in similar ways: young children are allowed to learn mostly through play and formal education does not begin until the age of 7. Sweden updated its spelling in the last century. Danish spelling is still very much as Swedish used to be before it was reformed. Swedish spellers always come near the top in all in international comparisons on standards of literacy, Danish spellers near the bottom.

A large-scale study in 1963-64 proved that literacy in English can also be achieved easily if the writing system is based on regular spelling. The research compared 837 children learning to read and write with the Initial Teaching Alphabet and 837 children who were taught these skills with normal English spelling. The ITA children scored higher in reading and writing tests. They also used a much wider vocabulary. Teachers using ITA were also impressed by their pupils' more favourable attitude to learning.



Why pupils are slow to learn English.
English is such a difficult language that British children take twice as long to master basic reading skills as pupils on the Continent.

While most primary schools in Spain, Italy and Finland learn basic reading within 12 months, children learning English typically take two and a half years.

Researchers who carried out the study say that the arcane rules of the English language, and not the quality of teaching, are to blame.

Prof Philip Seymour, of the University of Dundee, who presented the findings, fell short of calling for spelling to be simplified, but suggested that parents could help children overcome the extra difficulties of English.

They could encourage them to "decode" new and made-up words at home, he said.

The study investigated the literacy skills of about 600 primary school children in 15 countries, including Britain.

"Mastery of the basic foundation elements of literacy clearly occurs much more slowly in English than in many other European languages," said Prof Seymour.

"It seems likely that the main cause is linguistic and derives from difficulties created by theh complex syllable structure and inconsistent spelling of English."

Complicated syllables - such as the "shr" sound in shrink and the "umph" in triumph - add to the difficulty as do the different pronunciations of "ough" as in cough, plough, through.

[Godless Dave]

Oh god I hate this thread so much.
Just lightening the mood.

[livius drusus]

I warned you. :angrynana:

[Farren]

Gee Liv, you're extending, enriching and embettering the language at Dubya-like rates lately. Go Girl!

[livius drusus]

:angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana: :angrynana:

[Adora]

I've always thought there are a couple of illogical conventions in spelling, but when you read entire sentences with words pared down to their most onomatopoeically minimal form, it looks like another language.


Or your average 13 yr old forum poster who spends 700 bucks (paid by mummy and daddy of course) on TXT messages a month.

Edit: And the easiest way to piss off someone from India is to call them a Paki. No one calls them Injuns- that's a term reserved for native Americans.

[lisarea]

Done efen luke like da langwidj. It luke mo like da pidgin.

Ju no, like dis:

Big name watchem sheepy-sheep
Watchem blackfela
No mo bellycry fela hab

Holy shit. I was going to try to verify my spellings and I done found anudda wun (http://www.booklineshawaii.com/BOOK/BSP/978217.html).


God, you our Fadda.
You stay inside da sky.
We like all da peopo know fo shua how you stay,
An dat you stay good an spesho,
An we like dem give you plenny respeck.
We like you come King fo everybody now.
We like everybody make jalike you like,
Ova hea inside da world,
Jalike da angel guys up inside da sky make jalike you like.
Give us da food we need fo today an every day.
Hemmo our shame, an let us go
Fo all da kine bad stuff we do to you,
Jalike us guys let da odda guys go awready,
And we no stay huhu wit dem
Fo all da kine bad stuff dey do to us.
No let us get chance fo do bad kine stuff,
But take us outa dea, so da Bad Guy no can hurt us.
Cuz you our King.
You get da real power,
An you stay awesome foeva.
Dass it!

No pidgin efen be langwidj! Be fo pepel cano tak togeffa.

[Godless Dave]

I'm sympathetic to the idea of spelling reform (sorry Lisarea), but the thread title points out one of the problems in reforming English. The various dialects of English differ more in pronunciation than in spelling. So either we would have different phonetic spellings for each dialect or accept standard spellings that aren't phonetic.

In the US (except for New York City and certain areas of the south), the thread title would be "betir, simplir speling".

[Ensign Steve]

Yeah, it took me a bet to get 'beta.' I was thinking of beta testing or something.

[Farren]

Yeah, it took me a bet to get 'beta.' I was thinking of beta testing or something.

That was a hard choice. I settled on it because "ee" clearly implies "ee" as in "eek" but no other spelling implies "e" as in "Eh?"

But that's the whole problem these guys are getting at. Pronounciation aside, there are a lot of universal sounds that are spelled in a hundred different ways, as indicated in many of their linked articles.

And they make some very good points about surplus spelling complexity that has no bearing on accent whatsoever.

- The b in "debt", "subtle" as so on.
- The "c" in "scissors"
- The use of the letter "x" in anything (boks, aks and so on)

[Farren]

Done efen luke like da langwidj. It luke mo like da pidgin.

Ju no, like dis:

Big name watchem sheepy-sheep
Watchem blackfela
No mo bellycry fela hab

Holy shit. I was going to try to verify my spellings and I done found anudda wun (http://www.booklineshawaii.com/BOOK/BSP/978217.html).


God, you our Fadda.
You stay inside da sky.
We like all da peopo know fo shua how you stay,
An dat you stay good an spesho,
An we like dem give you plenny respeck.
We like you come King fo everybody now.
We like everybody make jalike you like,
Ova hea inside da world,
Jalike da angel guys up inside da sky make jalike you like.
Give us da food we need fo today an every day.
Hemmo our shame, an let us go
Fo all da kine bad stuff we do to you,
Jalike us guys let da odda guys go awready,
And we no stay huhu wit dem
Fo all da kine bad stuff dey do to us.
No let us get chance fo do bad kine stuff,
But take us outa dea, so da Bad Guy no can hurt us.
Cuz you our King.
You get da real power,
An you stay awesome foeva.
Dass it!

No pidgin efen be langwidj! Be fo pepel cano tak togeffa.

Pidjin rawks!

Sign outside a Hong Kong laundromat:

"We will joyfully send your washing in all directions!"

I li' dat.

[lisarea]

I'm sympathetic to the idea of spelling reform (sorry Lisarea)

Hey, have a ball with it. While you're at it, declare yourself the boss of continental drift, too, and form a committee to finally put an end to this plate tectonics nonsense once and for all.

That would only be slightly less fruitful(l).

[Farren]

I'm sympathetic to the idea of spelling reform (sorry Lisarea)

Hey, have a ball with it. While you're at it, declare yourself the boss of continental drift, too, and form a committee to finally put an end to this plate tectonics nonsense once and for all.

That would only be slightly less fruitful(l).

You sound lyk a Bush supporter :D

"Don't like it? Whatcha gonna do about it? WE control the dickshinary now!

:poke:

(Farren likes Lisa angry and ranting).

[lisarea]

You sound lyk a Bush supporter :D

Oh, yeah? Well, you...you...YOU SOUND LIKE A SMELLY OLD BOTTOM!


(Farren likes Lisa angry and ranting).

Sorry. I tried.

I will probably be angry a little bit later.

[viscousmemories]

- The use of the letter "x" in anything (boks, aks and so on)
Why would having to use two letters be better than using one?

[Farren]

- The use of the letter "x" in anything (boks, aks and so on)
Why would having to use two letters be better than using one?

Using the same reasoning (insert symbol for new-letter-names): Why not have the letter "Aha!" for "ls", "Wham" for "ms", "Wow?" for "tl", "FUBAR" for "st" and so on? Come to think of it, lets just get all Chinese and start using single symbols for entire words. We, too, can have a 2,500 letter intermediate alphabet.

See the problem with that reasoning? Pretty soon, we'll be back to heiroglyphics.

[viscousmemories]

- The use of the letter "x" in anything (boks, aks and so on)
Why would having to use two letters be better than using one?

Using the same reasoning (insert symbol for new-letter-names): Why not have the letter "Aha!" for "ls", "Wham" for "ms", "Wow?" for "tl", "FUBAR" for "st" and so on? Come to think of it, lets just get all Chinese and start using single symbols for entire words. We, too, can have a 2,500 letter intermediate alphabet.

See the problem with that reasoning? Pretty soon, we'll be back to heiroglyphics.
Except of course I'm not suggesting the creation of any new letters.

[Farren]

Except of course I'm not suggesting the creation of any new letters.

So the suggestion is "Lets keep one letter that always forms a sound than can be constructed of two others, but never allow new letters that peform a similar function"?

Think about it. Read the articles I quoted at the end of the previous page. This is the kind of illogicality/inconsistency that ensures Italian students require a year of schooling and English students require five to learn to spell properly.

[Farren]

You sound lyk a Bush supporter :D

Oh, yeah? Well, you...you...YOU SOUND LIKE A SMELLY OLD BOTTOM!


O deer. Obviusly yoo havint yet realysd that my depravity and kapasity for abuse of English is BOTOMLES! HAHA.

[viscousmemories]

Except of course I'm not suggesting the creation of any new letters.

So the suggestion is "Lets keep one letter that always forms a sound than can be constructed of two others, but never allow new letters that peform a similar function"?
Yep. Read my lips: No new letters.

Think about it. Read the articles I quoted at the end of the previous page. This is the kind of illogicality/inconsistency that ensures Italian students require a year of schooling and English students require five to learn to spell properly.
And what grave social ills, pray tell, arise from misspellings? :P

[Godless Dave]

I'm sympathetic to the idea of spelling reform (sorry Lisarea)
Hey, have a ball with it. While you're at it, declare yourself the boss of continental drift, too, and form a committee to finally put an end to this plate tectonics nonsense once and for all.
Tell that to Italian and Spanish speakers (who have a much lower rate of dyslexia than English speakers). There's something to be said for 1:1 letter:phoneme correspondence.

As a former linguistics student, I tend to only think of spoken language as actual language; I mostly see written language as just a visual representation of spoken language. But I now know that's not entirely accurate.

For spelling reform to work you would have to redo it every 50 or 100 years as the spoken language changed. And I'm not sure it would work for English at all, because of the dialect differences I mentioned and also because English vocabulary comes from so many different source languages.

Yes, it's cool that you can often trace a word's history from how it's spelled. But I'm lucky enough not to be dyslexic. If I weren't I might not think it was so cool.

[livius drusus]

Tell that to Italian and Spanish speakers (who have a much lower rate of dyslexia than English speakers). There's something to be said for 1:1 letter:phoneme correspondence.

How do we know those lower dyslexia rates can be attributed to 1:1 letter:phoneme correspondence? How do we know the difference in diets or school systems or, say, the rate of parents reading to their children aren't the pivotal factors?

[beyelzu]

Gee Liv, you're extending, enriching and embettering the language at Dubya-like rates lately. Go Girl!
you are so going to be the first person ever banned at ff.

hell probably the only.

:D

[Godless Dave]

How do we know those lower dyslexia rates can be attributed to 1:1 letter:phoneme correspondence? How do we know the difference in diets or school systems or, say, the rate of parents reading to their children aren't the pivotal factors?
Because of some study I can't be bothered to search for now. And no, it wasn't conclusive that the consistency of Italian spelling was the reason, but it's a pretty good candidate.

[lisarea]

I'm sympathetic to the idea of spelling reform (sorry Lisarea)
Hey, have a ball with it. While you're at it, declare yourself the boss of continental drift, too, and form a committee to finally put an end to this plate tectonics nonsense once and for all.
Tell that to Italian and Spanish speakers (who have a much lower rate of dyslexia than English speakers). There's something to be said for 1:1 letter:phoneme correspondence.

And Italians think that unevacuated calf intestines are for eating. You just can't isolate one factor and discern what caused it, and predict its potential effects. Even I know this, and I barely ever even watch The Star Tracks.

Of course, if your real goal is to EAT STINKY MILK-FED SHIT, feel free to endorse spelling reform.


As a former linguistics student, I tend to only think of spoken language as actual language; I mostly see written language as just a visual representation of spoken language. But I now know that's not entirely accurate.

Yeah, I almost brought that up, but I felt it diluted my excellent and wicked burn. Written language is sort of a bastard child, really. It's not exactly an artificial language, but it's not purely natural either.

And isn't English one of the more hybrid languages as it is? One of the least pure of the natural languages? I was sure I'd seen stuff to this effect, but I couldn't find it on a cursory search before the lazy kicked in.


For spelling reform to work you would have to redo it every 50 or 100 years as the spoken language changed. And I'm not sure it would work for English at all, because of the dialect differences I mentioned and also because English vocabulary comes from so many different source languages.

Well, simplification does happen sometimes--not extensively or as a concerted effort, but it happens. If enough people adopt a given spelling, even without official efforts, it can take hold. All dictionaries pretty much are descriptive nowadays, so they'd no doubt start accepting the alternate spellings after a while.


Yes, it's cool that you can often trace a word's history from how it's spelled. But I'm lucky enough not to be dyslexic. If I weren't I might not think it was so cool.

It's not just tracing its history, though. You can also discern the meanings and subtleties of words through their spellings sometimes. I'm assuming we'd still have access to etymologies regardless. It's not that I'm afraid they'd all be lost to history or anything. It's just that, at some level, I see them as serving as something of a learning aid.

[Godless Dave]

And Italians think that unevacuated calf intestines are for eating.
I'm a quarter Scottish so that actually sounds appealing, but only if it doesn't cost very much.

And isn't English one of the more hybrid languages as it is? One of the least pure of the natural languages? I was sure I'd seen stuff to this effect, but I couldn't find it on a cursory search before the lazy kicked in.
Oh, yeah. If you don't already own the book "The Story of English" (complement to the PBS show of the same name, also worth owning) you should really get it. I think you'd love it.

Italian pretty much evolved like this:

Latin
|
|
Italian

English was a little more like this:
proto-Germanic
|
Anglo-Saxon (aka Old English)
|
Norman French | Old Norse
\ | /
Middle English
|
Modern English

And that's an oversimplification.

[JoeP]

Edit: And the easiest way to piss off someone from India is to call them a Paki. No one calls them Injuns- that's a term reserved for native Americans.
Yup, like calling a Canadian an "American" or a Kiwi an "Australian".

Paki is a common offensive word in Britain, where a lot of the south Asian immigrants are in fact Pakistani. Here in SA, where there are over 1m of Indian descent, the insult of choice is coolie. Although it's not always taken as offensive.

[JoeP]

Tell that to Italian and Spanish speakers (who have a much lower rate of dyslexia than English speakers). There's something to be said for 1:1 letter:phoneme correspondence.

How do we know those lower dyslexia rates can be attributed to 1:1 letter:phoneme correspondence? How do we know the difference in diets or school systems or, say, the rate of parents reading to their children aren't the pivotal factors?
No, there's a whole pile of evidence.
(A) The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(B) On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(C) The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(D) The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
Conclusion: Eat & drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you.

[JoeP]

I'm sympathetic to the idea of spelling reform (sorry Lisarea)
Hey, have a ball with it. While you're at it, declare yourself the boss of continental drift, too, and form a committee to finally put an end to this plate tectonics nonsense once and for all.
Tell that to Italian and Spanish speakers (who have a much lower rate of dyslexia than English speakers). There's something to be said for 1:1 letter:phoneme correspondence.

As a former linguistics student, I tend to only think of spoken language as actual language; I mostly see written language as just a visual representation of spoken language. But I now know that's not entirely accurate.

For spelling reform to work you would have to redo it every 50 or 100 years as the spoken language changed. And I'm not sure it would work for English at all, because of the dialect differences I mentioned and also because English vocabulary comes from so many different source languages.

Yes, it's cool that you can often trace a word's history from how it's spelled. But I'm lucky enough not to be dyslexic. If I weren't I might not think it was so cool.
Everyone wanting to get to a serious answer on this subject should go and read Stephen Pinker's Words and Rules. I myself will re-read because it's long ago enough that I can't recall all the good points. But he deals directly with the difficulties that non-English speakers have in learning English, and does not come up with any conclusions on reforming spelling (he's a scientist/philosopher not a social engineer).

It's not only English that has problems. French is full of silent letters that used to be sounded. In the chapter memorably entitled The Horrors of the German Language, he discusses how "regular" (easily learned) forms are actually a minority of German verbs. The chapter title is from Mark Twain who notes: "there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it".

And mentions a Russian story about a nightwatchman who couldn't order a set of pokers because, like most Russians, he didn't know the genitive plural.

I was reminded of this book by the mentions of Johnson and his now-troublesome insistence on including silent letters in words like debt, brought, and so on. He use people's understanding of the morphological structure of words as his direction in spelling, not the simple phonological approach. I can't map out the whole case at the moment, but there is something deep here: dumd-down fonolojikal speling may be eezia for ferst-tym lernuz, but there is something about morphological (and etymological and other ologicals) significance that has value for learning and reading beyond the basic level.

btw It was he that dropped the old habit of writing 'd for past participles (disturb'd, rebuk'd) which reflected a shift in pronunciation from when those endings were fully pronounced as rebuk-ed etc.

joe

[JoeP]

IMO, spelling reforms only serve to obfuscate language's history and meaning, and take written language out of context, making it a snapshot of some arguably low point in its development. Fuck that. Fuck it right in the ear. Didn't Jonathan Swift complain about fucking Grimm's Law? Gawd, what an arrogant little cock he was. Like it or not, language is more rich, varied, and complicated than any of us can describe. Ain't nobody qualified to pre- or proscribe shit on any scale like that.

To put a finer point on it, I'll argue for preserving some degree of semantic consistency and integrity of language, particularly those that only serve to make existing words less precise and less descriptive. I'll even argue for preserving some level of decorum in written language, if only for lingua franca purposes, and to preserve the history of the language.

But when some fuck comes along and prescribes some kind of sweeping change to the language itself, well, that's just worse than Delaware.
Dammit Lisa, you make it hard to argue with you. You're just too damned sensible.

[JoeP]

Maybe this will help.
The European Commission on the European Unification (EU) just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phase-in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish." In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c." Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k." This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have less letters. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f." This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"'s in the language is disgrasful, and they should go away. By the 4th year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v." During ze fif year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinazuns of leters. After ze fifz yer, ve vil hav a veri sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu unerstan ech ozer.

[Ensign Steve]

Everyone wanting to get to a serious answer on this subject should go and read Stephen Pinker's Words and Rules.

I love Pinker.

/aside

[JoeP]

Hi JD ... which of his books have you read?

[lisarea]

I only read the one Pinker book on language--I think it was The Language Instinct or something--and it was years after I'd studied linguistics, so I was probably a little foggy, but I got the distinct impression he was not-so-subtly trying to take credit for a bunch of Chomsky's stuff.

Am I wrong? Should I stop being mad at him?

[Ensign Steve]

My first and still my favorite was How the Mind Works. Then I read and loved The Language Instinct. Those are the only two I own, but eventually I will get around to the rest of the collection.

oops, crossposted with lisarea: lisa, I have no idea. I am too ignorant of Chomsky to say. ;)