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Originally posted by Enoch:
On the confusion about 'thrush' in Finnish, I was half expecting the link to take one to medical illustrations of embarrassing skin infections.

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l'Organist posted
Of course, homophones can give amusement too:
The Reverend Wright decided to write of the right way to perform the right.

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• principle/principal
• stationery/stationary
• practice/practise
• licence/license

• bated breath
• bearing with someone
• weighing anchors
• bosun / boatswain
• forecastle and fo'c'sle and all the other sailing terminology

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Originally posted by the gnome:
One problem with reforming spelling to reflect the actual pronunciation of words is that it's counterproductive if not everybody pronounces the same word the same way. Take, for instance, the word "schedule." We Americans pronounce it "skedjool" while many Brits pronounce it "shedyool." At present we have a single spelling to represent the word, which enables us to read each other's writing even in cases where we would find each other's speech nearly incomprehensible.

An extreme case of this is Chinese, which is a single language in its written form, but whose characters represent such wildly divergent pronunciations in different regions of the country that the different forms of spoken Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin, etc.) are considered by linguists to be distinct languages, not merely dialects of a single language. For purposes of communication between speakers of different forms of Chinese, having a single non-phonetic writing system is quite useful.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest
The argument that you should only use standardized spelling for the sake of legibility is as unconvincing as the argument that you shouldn't use uncommon words in your writing for the sake of comprehension. You judge your audience and their ability to understand spelling variations and typographical errors as well as their ability to know or lookup uncommon words. Most people have wide exposure to misspelled text and have learned to understand it.

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Originally posted by Moo:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest
The argument that you should only use standardized spelling for the sake of legibility is as unconvincing as the argument that you shouldn't use uncommon words in your writing for the sake of comprehension. You judge your audience and their ability to understand spelling variations and typographical errors as well as their ability to know or lookup uncommon words. Most people have wide exposure to misspelled text and have learned to understand it.

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The question is how much effort the reader is willing to put in. ....

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
So are you saying that ALL people should be expected to spell correctly or not write anything.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
'Kebab' hasn't got a long vowel. It has two short ones.

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And then there's the British version.

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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
'Kebab' hasn't got a long vowel. It has two short ones.

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Originally posted by orfeo:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
'Kebab' hasn't got a long vowel. It has two short ones.

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And then there's the British version.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
And it's a matter of processing. If I am having to read a book about a difficult concept AND plough through stupid spelling and grammar and punctuation errors, then I'm going to say "screw it" and go read a book by somebody who cares about me as a reader.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
So are you saying that ALL people should be expected to spell correctly or not write anything.

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No, but they shouldn't expect to be read if they're writing for widespread public consumption.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Well that is a moving of the goalposts. Many people do not write for widespread public consumption, even as they self publish on the web.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I attended an interesting and gloomy panel on the future of the e-book. Someone who is a professional copyeditor lamented the lack of a viable financial structure in electronic publishing that pays for copyediting.
From her point of view, most authors need a copywriter to correct their work for publication. This certainly shows up in the many factual, spelling, grammatical and typographic errors in the e-books I'm reading. It's obvious that many of them were introduced during the publishing process after the manuscript left the author.

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Originally posted by Porridge:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Well that is a moving of the goalposts. Many people do not write for widespread public consumption, even as they self publish on the web.

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[Splutter * Cough * Splutter]

I think people who self-publish on the, erm, World Wide Web and who are NOT also writing for widespread public consumption may be a couple of caramels shy of a taffy apple.

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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
'Kebab' hasn't got a long vowel. It has two short ones.

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Someone who knows more Arabic than I do (and more about it) can probably say more, but while "vowels" exist in that language, they vary according to the consonants between which they exist, and as Arabic is used from Algeria to at least Iraq, pronunciation of those consonants varies. So 'kebab' probably will always have two short vowels, I doubt they will always be the same

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Originally posted by Albertus:
Well, yes, Palimpsest, one might. But we're talking about spelling here. The oral equivalent of that would, I think, be pronunciation. If you wish to be understood in speech, you'd be wise not to adopt an eccentric and perhaps haphazard pronunciation system of your own.

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Originally posted by Albertus:
Well, yes, Palimpsest, one might. But we're talking about spelling here. The oral equivalent of that would, I think, be pronunciation. If you wish to be understood in speech, you'd be wise not to adopt an eccentric and perhaps haphazard pronunciation system of your own.

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Unless the audience you care about also uses that eccentric pronunciation or understands it. If comprehension of misspelled words was as poor as is claimed here, why would people continue to use it?

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I have read that English is robust in that there are very few dialects which can not be understood by other English speakers. (I think the cited exceptions are Gullah and Cockney although I'd believe Glaswegian is a problem if the movie Trainspotting is a reliable sample).

Pronunciation is an uphill battle because of the British coupling of accent and class. What percentage of the U.K. use Received Pronunciation all of the time? Why don't the others use it?

I believe that reading misspelled words is a lot easier than understanding extreme regional accents, but that may be my own personal strengths and weaknesses. A recent post on this thread was addressed to me, but misspelled my name. I was still able to figure out it was addressed to me and I think everyone else reading this was able to do so. People on here are usually able to comprehend the differences between British and American spellings and are more likely to trip over differences in word usage. Moaning about misspelling seems pedantic.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Moaning about misspelling seems pedantic.

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Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Trying to get it right at least raises the probability that my Deep Thoughts will get both read all the way through as well as understood.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I have read that English is robust in that there are very few dialects which can not be understood by other English speakers. (I think the cited exceptions are Gullah and Cockney although I'd believe Glaswegian is a problem if the movie Trainspotting is a reliable sample).

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" "
Pronunciation is an uphill battle because of the British coupling of accent and class.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I believe that reading misspelled words is a lot easier than understanding extreme regional accents, but that may be my own personal strengths and weaknesses.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I have read that English is robust in that there are very few dialects which can not be understood by other English speakers. (I think the cited exceptions are Gullah and Cockney although I'd believe Glaswegian is a problem if the movie Trainspotting is a reliable sample).

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What percentage of the U.K. use Received Pronunciation all of the time?

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Why don't the others use it?

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I believe that reading misspelled words is a lot easier than understanding extreme regional accents

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People on here are usually able to comprehend the differences between British and American spellings...

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Moaning about misspelling seems pedantic.

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Yes, well, this whole thread is a bit of a meaningless straw man. OP says "OMG!!!!!! THE WORLD IS BEING TAKEN OVER BY EVIL MONSTERS FROM TEH DARK LAGOON WHO ARE TRYING TO DESTROY OUR SPELLING" And everyone who posts agrees sort of sensibly that using agreed spelling is in fact quite useful and it would be a bad thing if we stopped although its not exactly a barbarians-at-the-gates end-of-the-world scenario. Made me wonder what the real purpose of the OP was - those mysterious references to "some people" read very much like the start of a Daily Mail hate-fest.

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I have read that English is robust in that there are very few dialects which can not be understood by other English speakers...

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Just as with spelling, the ability to understand an accent seems to depend on the amount of difference and the amount of effort that the receiver is willing to do to decode the information.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Palimpsest, if it will cheer you up a bit, I was very grateful that the film, The Help, as issued in the UK on DVD had a subtitles option - sorry, but the system won't let me link to the wikipaedia entry as the web address has some brackets in it. Indeed, without the help of the subtitles, the whites were as difficult to follow as the black servants. To my ears, they all had the same accent and sounded the same.

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Originally posted by Moo:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Palimpsest, if it will cheer you up a bit, I was very grateful that the film, The Help, as issued in the UK on DVD had a subtitles option - sorry, but the system won't let me link to the wikipaedia entry as the web address has some brackets in it. Indeed, without the help of the subtitles, the whites were as difficult to follow as the black servants. To my ears, they all had the same accent and sounded the same.

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I saw the film 'Endurance' and had a great deal of trouble understanding the speech of some of the crew members. I later rented the DVD which had subtitles.

Moo

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Originally posted by Enoch:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I have read that English is robust in that there are very few dialects which can not be understood by other English speakers. (I think the cited exceptions are Gullah and Cockney although I'd believe Glaswegian is a problem if the movie Trainspotting is a reliable sample).

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Trainspotting is set in Edinburgh. That may not make it any easier to follow, but it is very important not to mix up Edinburgh and Glasgow. They are two different cities and very touchy about mistaken for each other. You indicate that you come from Seattle. Would you like me to assume you're just the same as a Canadian from Vancouver?

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" "
Pronunciation is an uphill battle because of the British coupling of accent and class.

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How familiar as you with the culture? Do you know enough about this to pronounce on it? How one speaks is also linked to how strongly one feels about one's own regional identity. Rowan Williams does not speak RP. He is easy to follow, even if some of what he says is difficult to understand.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Rowan Williams makes my point exactly about our ability to understand variants in both spelling and speech.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Palimpsest, if it will cheer you up a bit, I was very grateful that the film, The Help, as issued in the UK on DVD had a subtitles option - sorry, but the system won't let me link to the wikipaedia entry as the web address has some brackets in it. Indeed, without the help of the subtitles, the whites were as difficult to follow as the black servants. To my ears, they all had the same accent and sounded the same.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
I think it may be worth thinking about a mild orthography reform. However, is there a desire among native English speakers for that? In the end, this would have to be pushed through by the government, mostly by using it in its own communications and by dictating it to schools as the new standard for their curriculum. That's only going to happen if the population actually thinks that the spelling needs some fixing, rather than treating it as a kind of achievement to know the more obscure ins and outs.

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Originally posted by ken:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I have read that English is robust in that there are very few dialects which can not be understood by other English speakers. (I think the cited exceptions are Gullah and Cockney although I'd believe Glaswegian is a problem if the movie Trainspotting is a reliable sample).

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I think you are confusing dialect and accent. Gullah is a dialect, Cockney an accent. People who speak Cockney mostly speak standard English, or something very near it. By definition dialects are versions of a language which have some reduced mutual intelligibility. If the intelligibility was reduced so much it became impossible for people to understand normal conversation then really we are dealing with a different language, not a dialect. So Jamaican "creole" or "patois" can be considered a different language from English - though almost everyone who speaks it can also speak English and there is a continuum between patois, and a Jamaican dialect of English, and Jamaican English, and standard English in a Jamaican accent that just about any Jamaican can navigate quite easily.


Also I think wherever you got the idea that Cockney is hard for most English speakers to understand must be very confused. its a pretty straightforward south-eastern English accent, not very far from RP (and even closer to standard Australian) Its also close to the normal urban south-eastern English accent that has now become the most widely spoken accent in Britain (what journalists call "estuary English" that is in some ways a compromise between Cockney and RP) Do Americans really have trouble understanding Michael Caine or Alan Sugar?

But yes its true. Almost all commonly sp0ken English accents are easily intelligible to speakers of all the others. British viewers on the whole didn't need help to understand The Wire (though as lots of the main actors were in fact British or Irish its possible the accents were watered down for TV). Most Americans and Australians seem quite able to cope with the wide variety of British and Irish accents used in Game of Thrones. I doubt if many English or American people have much trouble understanding Sean Connery, and his accent is much further from average than any Cockney is. Some British English accents might be so outlying as to be hard for Americans to understand (a few of them are hard for other Brits to understand) but very few of them, and certainly not Cockney. Cockney and RP and other south-eastern accents (and also Australian) are all closer to each other than they are to Midlands accents. And Southern and Midland and North-western English accents, along with Australian, Welsh, most American accents, and many Scottish and Irish accents are all closer to each other than they are to some of the accents of the north-east of England and the east coast of Scotland.

As others have said, Trainspotting is Edinburgh.

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What percentage of the U.K. use Received Pronunciation all of the time?

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All of the time? No-one knows, usual guesses are between 1% and 2%. Though plenty of people code-swtich towards RP in formal situations, without usually quite getting there.

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Why don't the others use it?

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Why the fuck should we? My parents didn't speak it, the other kids at my school didn't speak it, my neighbours don't speak it, very few of the people where I work speak it. (Of maybe 30 people in our department I think perhaps 2 have a clearly RP accent and another 2 or 3 are sometimes close to it - but this is in a university where just about everyone is well-educated and middle-class)

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I believe that reading misspelled words is a lot easier than understanding extreme regional accents

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Well, yes. Kind of obviously. Though I suppose it depends how extreme "extreme" is.

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People on here are usually able to comprehend the differences between British and American spellings...

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I doubt if any literate English speaker has any trouble with variant British and American spellings at all. There are very few of them, most of them are pretty obvious, and very often the supposedly British or American version also exists on the other side of the Atlantic.

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Moaning about misspelling seems pedantic.

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Yes, well, this whole thread is a bit of a meaningless straw man. OP says "OMG!!!!!! THE WORLD IS BEING TAKEN OVER BY EVIL MONSTERS FROM TEH DARK LAGOON WHO ARE TRYING TO DESTROY OUR SPELLING" And everyone who posts agrees sort of sensibly that using agreed spelling is in fact quite useful and it would be a bad thing if we stopped although its not exactly a barbarians-at-the-gates end-of-the-world scenario. Made me wonder what the real purpose of the OP was - those mysterious references to "some people" read very much like the start of a Daily Mail hate-fest.

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Then after I made Alfie, it was very popular, and then suddenly they said, “You’ve got to redo 122 lines,” because Alfie was being released in America. And that’s where my voice came from, the one I have now.

You changed your voice?
I had to make Cockney understandable to Americans. One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

I think it may be worth thinking about a mild orthography reform. However, is there a desire among native English speakers for that? In the end, this would have to be pushed through by the government, mostly by using it in its own communications and by dictating it to schools as the new standard for their curriculum.

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Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
We're not German, and we're not French.

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...and we love you for it.

but seriously, I think you are right in that this should not be something left to politicians. There was a spelling "reform" in Germany some years ago. It was a cheap populist exercise, a dumbing down of the language, another result of "culture" ministries pandering to the lowest common denominator.

The German "newspell" just looks plain stupid and many people think it went too far. Now they're talking of a reform of the reform.


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"Prayer is the rejection of concepts." (Evagrius Ponticus)

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Originally posted by John Holding:
(I'm not actually suggesting that you were proposing that the UK government could impose such a change, and that the rest of the world's native English speakers would even notice, much less pay attention.)

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IngoB: The German orthography reform has been mentioned.

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