Thread: Is Standardized Spelling Elitism? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
I have read some people claiming that having and/or enforcing standard spelling, punctuation, etc. (orthography) is elitist, and serves only to separate "us" from "them." It's meaningless, the argument goes, to "make" people spell (and punctuate etc) things "properly" except to make them feel bad and let them know that they're not as good as people who have mastered the standard orthography.

It seems to me that what standardized orthography allows is untroubled and quick reading. Humans only have so much working memory. If you know a word by sight, you don't have to waste any cognition figuring out. Words you don't recognize, you have to puzzle out. When a word is spelled weirdly, you have to stop and puzzle it out. A big chunk of text with random spelling would take much longer to read than the same chunk with the normal, recognized spelling. If you've ever tried to read the original 1611 King James, or some other old book with familiar words in unfamiliar spellings, you know what I mean. Fluency in reading a text with odd (to the reader) spellings is near impossible.

Or so it seems to me. I tried to see if any research had been done on this, but all the research I could find seems to be about beginning readers, who of course don't have regular word forms memorized, so any old spelling works -- they have to sound everything out.

It also seems to me that making excuses for people using non-standard orthography is basically racist and patronizing, as it is often raised in defense of minority groups. "Those poor blacks/Latinos/whatever," the argument seems to say. "They can't possibly learn to spell as easily as whites do. It's not fair to make them try." It's insulting.

What do people think?
 

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Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 
The bigger issue is one of practicality - if everyone writes what they consider to be a phonetic rendering of the word then I'm going to have awful trouble trying to read anything written by a Glaswegian even if I can work out the sounds they are trying to represent. Standard spelling allows for communication that doesn't depend on being able to understand accents. I understand Chinese is the extreme example, where written Chinese is mutually intelligible but the spoken dialects are largely incomprehensible to speakers of other dialects.
 

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Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :
 
Alphabets are always approximations, so standardized spelling is necessary. More so in English, which has neither a dominant dialect nor a language academy. Whatever influence "The King's English" might have had has waned.

In French the entire idea of non-standarized spelling is absurd; there is one way, the only way, and that is the French Academy way. Any deviation from that pushes you down the respectability scale.

As an English Canadian with French as my second language, I speak French with a Québecois twang; it works because I want to get a job in Montreal, not Paris.

France-Québec jealousies are another thread though.
 

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Posted by the giant cheeseburger (# 10942) on :
 
Surely there's a solution to that jealousy though - simply emigrate to France and get the rest of Europe thrown in as well
 

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Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :
 
English, as my Nepali staff struggle with it, is notoriously difficult to acquire as a second language, and even for my staff who are native speakers, it's difficult to spell.

Precise communication in written English is tough enough WITH standardized orthography, punctuation, and usage. Without these, communicating in English would become a nightmare.

There are a few hundred (maybe 350) words in common use (most of them coming down to us from the language's Anglo-Saxon roots) which seem to comply with no spelling "rules." (As a one-time English major, I seem to recall that the now-silent "L" in "half," for example, was pronounced back in Chaucer's day; all that's changed is the pronunciation.)

Most people who practice reading and writing on a regular basis will encounter these 350-or-so words constantly. Suck it up and memorize 'em.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that we are rapidly becoming a post-literate society. During a brief stint at college teaching, I was appalled at the writing my students turned in. Some of their papers were incoherent, illogical, and just plain indecipherable -- and these were people who had secondary-school diplomas. Ye gods.
 

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Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
The bigger issue is one of practicality - if everyone writes what they consider to be a phonetic rendering of the word then I'm going to have awful trouble trying to read anything written by a Glaswegian even if I can work out the sounds they are trying to represent. Standard spelling allows for communication that doesn't depend on being able to understand accents.

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Originally posted by Porridge:

Most people who practice reading and writing on a regular basis will encounter these 350-or-so words constantly. Suck it up and memorize 'em.

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Originally posted by Boogie:

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Originally posted by Porridge:

Most people who practice reading and writing on a regular basis will encounter these 350-or-so words constantly. Suck it up and memorize 'em.

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That'll be 'memorise' - thank you.

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Actually -ize endings are a valid, if vulgar , alternate form even in British English.
 

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Posted by Olaf (# 11804) on :
 

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Originally posted by mousethief:
I have read some people claiming that having and/or enforcing standard spelling, punctuation, etc. (orthography) is elitist, and serves only to separate "us" from "them." It's meaningless, the argument goes, to "make" people spell (and punctuate etc) things "properly" except to make them feel bad and let them know that they're not as good as people who have mastered the standard orthography.

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Originally posted by Olaf:
This is a cop-out. In the world of education,
passages such as this one are passed around to teach poor, simpleminded, traditionalist morons of the errors of their ways... Yet, the simple fact is that the overwhelming majority of employers in professional and specialized fields will not hire people whose applications are full of errors.

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Originally posted by Olaf:
Yet, the simple fact is that the overwhelming majority of employers in professional and specialized fields will not hire people whose applications are full of errors.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

It seems to me that what standardized orthography allows is untroubled and quick reading.

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
I'm going to have awful trouble trying to read anything written by a Glaswegian even if I can work out the sounds they are trying to represent.

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Originally posted by Olaf:
This is a cop-out. In the world of education,
passages such as this one are passed around to teach poor, simpleminded, traditionalist morons of the errors of their ways...

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Originally posted by Porridge:
... (As a one-time English major, I seem to recall that the now-silent "L" in "half," for example, was pronounced back in Chaucer's day; all that's changed is the pronunciation.) ...

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:

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Originally posted by Boogie:

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Originally posted by Porridge:

Most people who practice reading and writing on a regular basis will encounter these 350-or-so words constantly. Suck it up and memorize 'em.

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That'll be 'memorise' - thank you.

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Actually -ize endings are a valid, if vulgar , alternate form even in British English.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
A single way to spell is the mark of an elite that values ease of reading over the difficulty of learning.

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Originally posted by the giant cheeseburger:
Very true. Even in non-specialised fields it is common for error-ridden application letters to be put straight in the bin, as a way of culling a pile with hundreds of applications down to a manageable number which can be considered properly.

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Originally posted by Porridge:
If Aussies use British spelling, shouldn't it be "realise?"

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Standardised spelling and punctuation. First things first, ban Yank spelling.

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Originally posted by Anglican't:

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:

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Originally posted by Boogie:

quote:

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Originally posted by Porridge:

Most people who practice reading and writing on a regular basis will encounter these 350-or-so words constantly. Suck it up and memorize 'em.

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That'll be 'memorise' - thank you.

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Actually -ize endings are a valid, if vulgar , alternate form even in British English.

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Doesn't the OED use -ize?

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Originally posted by Moo:
The problem is that if something is difficult to read, many people won't bother with it.

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Originally posted by Porridge:
Aw, hell. You lost that war, guys. We won the right to develop our own vocab ("boot" and "bonnet," indeed) , and our own damn spelling. Not to mention being the first to chuck those funny-looking double esses that look like effs.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Standardised spelling and punctuation. First things first, ban Yank spelling.

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Um, what is Yank and what is Brit? Every time we have these discussions, we find it is not completely clear.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
A single way to spell is the mark of an elite that values ease of reading over the difficulty of learning.

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Originally posted by rufiki:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
A single way to spell is the mark of an elite that values ease of reading over the difficulty of learning.

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Doesn't standardized spelling make learning easier? If you come across a word you don't know, you can look it up. Same goes for people reading text in a foreign language.

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This seems a very small tempest in a teacup.
A single way to spell is the mark of an elite that values ease of reading over the difficulty of learning. This was not a problem when only the upper class could read.

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
...which is probably the equivalent of the "spelling and grammar doesn't matter so long as you communicate your meaning".

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Originally posted by Moo:

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
...which is probably the equivalent of the "spelling and grammar doesn't matter so long as you communicate your meaning".

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The thing is that with poor spelling and grammar you are much less likely to communicate your meaning.

Moo

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Originally posted by Moo:
... The problem is that if something is difficult to read, many people won't bother with it. ...

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Originally posted by Porridge:
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Precise communication in written English is tough enough WITH standardized orthography, punctuation, and usage. Without these, communicating in English would become a nightmare.

..

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I have read some people claiming that having and/or enforcing standard spelling, punctuation, etc. (orthography) is elitist, and serves only to separate "us" from "them." It's meaningless, the argument goes, to "make" people spell (and punctuate etc) things "properly" except to make them feel bad

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The people who complain about "elitism" often come from the group that either refused to participate in the attempt to "educate" them or were forced into submission by a system that did not deal well with them.

The former group were pushed by their peer group or community to avoid becoming educated, on the grounds that they might then leave the tribe; the latter were bullied by incompetent teachers into some form of submission, where they learned that they would not be allowed to become educated - which was OK when a man could get a job at 15 or 16 and learn "on the job" but doesn't work now. This is where the large group of presently-unemployable men are stuck, knowing that they can't work in the modern society.

The two groups form the basis of the various political groups that seem to take pride in being unruly and difficult. The view of "elitism" is just an expression of their alienation.

Pink Floyd did a pretty good description: "We don't need no education" to a good heavy beat.
 

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Posted by irish_lord99 (# 16250) on :
 
My personal gut reaction* to calling standardized spelling "elitist" was, "Seriously, how low do you want to set the bar for our public education system?"**

Although I do see a particular element of elitism in general academia, this call to accept poor spelling without criticism seems more an invitation to laziness rather than a "line separating 'us' from 'them'."

IMO, it's such thinking that will ultimately create a lower-class of lazy and under-educated people that have even less of a chance of advancing up the ladder. "Don't want to learn to spell? Fine, well since I don't want to hurt your little feelings I'll pass you along anyway. Oh, you don't want to learn math either? Well that's why they invented calculators, isn't it? And you, in all your infinite teenage wisdom think that a third-grade reading level is satisfactory? Okay then, here's your diploma; good luck out there!"

Most people from my generation learned their work ethic in school. Even if every student doesn't walk out of high school a Rhodes Scholar, they should have at least learned how to dedicate themselves to achieving a goal: even if that's just learning how to spell most commonly used words properly.

_____

*At least regarding native speakers: I have all the sympathy in the world for those trying to learn English as a second language

**Disclaimer: I probably make as many spelling and grammar errors as anyone else.
 

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Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on :
 
One of the joys (?) of my profession is marking essays. These are composed by university students from varying socio-economic backgrounds. And in the following discussion I exclude those with dyslexia or a migrant background where French is not their first language:

The French language is notoriously difficult to spell correctly. I know, because I learned French as third language and the spelling was one of the banes of my teenage years. What is worrying is that in France an astonishingly large part of the native (before anyone with PC-concerns squeaks: referring here to those born and raised in the country by native French speaking parents) population does not / cannot spell correctly.

What I have, however, observed over the years is that there is no apparent relation between the density of spelling mistakes in a text and the student's background. It is just that some students take the time and effort to think before they write and run their stuff through a spellchecker before sending it to me. The majority don't bother. Ditto with e-mails sent to me in the context of general student-professor interaction. I must say I am much more favourably disposed to those students who send me a correct e-mail in decent French with few, if any, spelling mistakes, as I take it as a sign of if not respect then at least consideration. This has nothing to do with snobbishness, and everything to do with trying to uphold a certain degree of civility, style and courtesy in communication. It's about civilised behaviour and showing respect. You don't need rich parents to learn the rules of grammar and good spelling (at least not in a country with free secondary schools), or at the very least use the spellchecker of your word processor.

Very often, it's a question of attitude, not of education.

[ 30. November 2013, 15:52: Message edited by: Desert Daughter ]
 

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Posted by Carex (# 9643) on :
 
Clarity of communications: it comes down to the difference between

You know your shit.

and

You know you're shit.


Working in a technical field, especially with staff in distant countries where English is not their first (or even second) language, I find that spelling is very important. I don't always know who at the other end might have to be looking up my words in a dictionary to make sure they have the proper meaning, and that is much more difficult if I don't spell the word properly.

Not to say that my spelling is perfect, or that I can't understand sentences with poor spelling or grammar - I deal with that all the time (especially when auto-correct inserts the wrong word, or when text is auto-translated, which can cause some interesting terms in a technical paper - one paper in electrical engineering was full of sea urchins, but I was able to figure out what it meant.)
 

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Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :
 

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Originally posted by Og: Thread Killer:

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Originally posted by Porridge:
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Precise communication in written English is tough enough WITH standardized orthography, punctuation, and usage. Without these, communicating in English would become a nightmare.

..

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The internet seems to survive.

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Originally posted by Og: Thread Killer:
My issue with standardized spelling is not elitism, its Canutism.

The English language evolves as fast as culture evolves. To attempt to deny change within it is to attempt to deny the biggest strength of English - its ability to adapt quickly.

Might as well hold back the tide.

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Of course English changes, and must change, and you're right that its flexibility is one of its strengths as a language.

However, I'm not sure it's "change" that's the issue here. Certainly if the majority of English speakers agree to spell "see you later" as "c u l8r," no problem arises. But that's simply establishing a new, different standard: "c u l8r" becomes common usage, and people who deviate from that common expectation deviate from what has become the new standard.

Having everybody spell that phrase however they like -- "si yoo latre," "sea yu lattr," "c u l8tr," "see you later," etc. is what causes the problems and potentially interferes with the accurate communication of the writer's intentions (though probably not with this particular phrase).
 

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Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
Clear communication needs correct spelling and grammar, e.g. should have plus past participle, not should of.*wince* I cannot think of 'easier' spelling which would improve communication. I'm slightly saddened by today's - I suppose one would call it 'return' - to words like re-occur instead of recur, and another similar lengthening of a word beginning with re, but which escapes my mind just at this moment.

I think I'm lucky, spelling came easily to me and errors jumped off the page at me. My ears have to spot them now, which I hope they do most of the time with Synthetic Dave's pronunciation of whatever is there.
 

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Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :
 
Desert Daughter:

That is because French never uses one vowel where three will do.
 

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Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 

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Originally posted by Og: Thread Killer:
The internet seems to survive.


My issue with standardized spelling is not elitism, its Canutism.

The English language evolves as fast as culture evolves. To attempt to deny change within it is to attempt to deny the biggest strength of English - its ability to adapt quickly.

Might as well hold back the tide.

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Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
While I'm here - what exactly does "elite" mean in this context?

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Originally posted by Alogon:

Pre-Web, I'd hang my head in shame when told that we Americans are a particularly sloppy and stupid lot, not knowing our own language. This may be true enough, but we are not alone! Take anything written by a French or German member of the hoi-polloi to Google Translate and see if it (or you) can make anything of it. One of my Facebook friends is a young Finn, and machine translators and I can't make sense of even the briefest of posts or comments from his page.

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Originally posted by rufiki:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
A single way to spell is the mark of an elite that values ease of reading over the difficulty of learning.

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Doesn't standardized spelling make learning easier? If you come across a word you don't know, you can look it up. Same goes for people reading text in a foreign language.

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The asymmetry is that it's easier to learn to read text with standardized spelling and harder to learn to write text with standardized spelling.

This view comes out of a discussion I had recently with some Arabic typographers who said that there is growing evidence that classical Arabic scripts are harder to read then ones with the classical contractions and optional diacritics filled in. This may be part of an asymmetry introduced by manual calligraphy; the contracted form may have been chosen for ease of writing rather than ease of reading. Printing changes the balance, since text becomes written once and read by many people.


When I mentioned elites, I was talking about people who work with written texts. I know this is a narrow definition and others might prefer a definition that references money or political power.

My comment about "Selfie" is just how rapidly it became part of the language. It probably takes longer for new words to enter the common vocabulary if there's a standardized vocabulary. e.g. French and loan words from English.
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
<tangent>Finnish is complicated by having two versions - a spoken and a written form. The translators expect the written form; Finns talking informally between themselves use the spoken form, even in writing.

I have a couple of Finnish friends on Flickr / 365, even met one when she was over earlier this year. When they chat between themselves the translator gives up in disgust.</tangent>

Even using correct English the misunderstandings can be rife. I posted a comment on one of Finnish friends' pictures asking what the fledgling birds he'd photographed were because they looked like thrushes to me. He googled thrush and did not enjoy the resulting images. What I should have given him was the species name Turdus philomelus or Turdus viscivorus or specified song or mistle thrush. (The photograph was of fieldfares, Turdus pilaris)
 

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Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :
 
For many years I was way the best in my class at spelling...I guess that is another thing that made me the arrogant little (5-foot-4) "$^&*%" that I am today...
 

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Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on :
 
/Tangent/ Finnish does not fare well in google translate and other similar softwares because its syntax (participle constructions) and the fact that it is an agglutinative language makes it difficult to handle for automatic translation.

My own notions of Finnish are minimal, I understand more than I can speak, but I love that language precisely for its defiance of any notions of user-friendliness
 

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Posted by Higgs Bosun (# 16582) on :
 

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
<tangent>Finnish is complicated by having two versions - a spoken and a written form. The translators expect the written form; Finns talking informally between themselves use the spoken form, even in writing.

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I've run out of food.
I'm going to eat the dogs.
What apostrophe?

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

My comment about "Selfie" is just how rapidly it became part of the language. It probably takes longer for new words to enter the common vocabulary if there's a standardized vocabulary. e.g. French and loan words from English.

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Originally posted by Tortuf:
or you ignore your spell checker when using a computer.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
When I mentioned elites, I was talking about people who work with written texts.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
When I mentioned elites, I was talking about people who work with written texts.

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Emails and text messages are written texts. Very, very few people in our culture do not work with written texts.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
But "selfie" does not contrevene the rules. It is a new word added, such as all laguanges do. Selfie demonstrates collective acceptance, not random illiteracy. In short, it is a demonstration of why rules matter, not the opposite.

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Originally posted by Desert Daughter:
what's wrong with striving to emulate the "elite"?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

However, in rural Brazil and in popular neighbourhoods of the cities, people will say (and often write) pranta.

The question is: is this the wrong spelling, or is this the 'elitists' trying to stop a natural development of a language?

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
But "selfie" does not contrevene the rules. It is a new word added, such as all laguanges do. Selfie demonstrates collective acceptance, not random illiteracy. In short, it is a demonstration of why rules matter, not the opposite.

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Extremely rapid collective acceptance means readers have a tolerance for new words, new usage and variant spellings that they disambiguate by context. You end up using words before they have a canonical spelling.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Selfie follows conventional spelling pattern. It could have been selfy but the core self is retained. Regardless, even a new word such as pwned follows the rules of usage and acceptance. Online communication speed acceptance, but does not change the basic rules. I think one could make a case for it strengthening common spellings rather than the reverse.

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The precedent is that Radio and Television in the United States really reduced regional accents and word usage in favor of a national network standard. However that hasn't stopped rapid evolution of local idioms such as Valley speak. Increased technology comes with the propagation of variant spellings. "Pwned" may be in wide spread use, but so is the variant spelling "owned". If you believe some of the many explanations in the frequently not suitable for work Urban Dictionary, it was the playful adaption of a misspelled word used in a computer game.
Similarly "teh gayz" is another example of a recent common satirically misspelled usage. Variant spellings and mock dialect words are enabled by the improvement in printed communication. The previous revolution gave us "Mr. Dooley on Ivrything and Ivrybody".

If you complain about how incomprehensible a variant spelling is, you're also going to miss out on the riffs of the playful or regional. You could complain that non-standardized spelling is elitism.

[codefix]

[ 03. December 2013, 05:05: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
I am not complaining. I am saying that the variant spellings fall into accepted variations, therefore do not contravene convention. It is having a standard reference that makes the variations comprehensible.
Rhyming slang is a good example of how convention anchors the unconventional.
 

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Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 
That raises the interesting question of how unconventional misspellings are. Google usually can detect misspellings and this is mostly based on the data of prior misspellings of the same word. If some words are frequently misspelled in a few ways are these ways acceptable variants? If googling the misspelled word brings up the correct spelling and the dictionary definition does that define the word as an acceptable variant? (e.g. googling the word "googling").
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 

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Palimpsest: My understanding is that much of Quebec French is viewed in France as some sort of archaic provincial dialect.

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I speak French well, and sometimes I have to work together with someone speaking Québécois all day. Sorry towards the Canadian Shipmates, but this gives me a headache in the evening that only a white wine will cure

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Palimpsest: I would be curious if this Brazilian rural usage is a new simplification of Portuguese or an old rural usage in Portugal.

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Palimpsest: Other than that, I can only offer the factoid that in the Microsoft localization software Brazilian Portuguese is seen as sufficiently different then Portuguese that it has it's own set of hyphenation rules.

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Definitely. I'm using software in Brazilian Portuguese right now as I type The difference between the language spoken in Portugal and Brazil is considerable, much bigger than that between the UK and the US, or between the Netherlands and Flandres. Portuguese is almost in the process of splitting up into two different languages. The question is whether the 'elitists' will let it
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
That raises the interesting question of how unconventional misspellings are.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
That raises the interesting question of how unconventional misspellings are.

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Misspellings online seem to work because there is a standard.
Common =/= conventional.

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The French language is notoriously difficult to spell correctly.

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REALLY? Now, I always found French spelling a relief after grappling with the intricacies of English. The main reason I liked it was because once I'd learned the French rules for pronunciation I could read aloud any French word I liked and pronounce it correctly. Not so easy to do this in English...

I blame the Great English Vowel Shift myself. But trying to write down a language with between 15 and 22 different vowel sounds* using an alphabet with only 6 vowel letters doesn't help.

*depending on your dialect
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Standardised spelling is not elitist, it is essential and to pretend otherwise, especially basing such mis-belief on a manufactured "class" bias is foolish and wrong.

Why?

Well, English as a spoken language - thinking especially British English here - is a lazy language: we use only a small part of our lung capacity and our faces often lack mobility which restricts the variations in sound. As a result words with very different meanings can frequently sound the same.

Example: hyperglycaemia and hypoglycaemia. If mis-heard then the only hope is that someone is able to smell the breath of the person suffering from the first, because treatment for the second could be fatal.

Granted, this is an extreme example but there are other words which sound the same or very similar but have different meanings.

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

Teaching children correct spelling enables them to communicate on paper or screen with less risk of being misunderstood. This aim is not elitist.
 

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Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 
In Metropolitan France, and especially in Paris, québecois is generally viewed as rather cute and parochial. The main differences are to do with vocabulary and accent though, rather than spelling of the same words.

However, and that being said, the main thing that makes writing correct French such a bloody nightmare is not actually spelling as such, but grammer*

To wit, the words

Donner
Donnez
Donnais
Donnait
Donnaient
Donné
Donnée
Donnés
Données

(myriad conjugations of the verb "to give")

are ALL pronounced more or less the same. Knowing which one you are supposed to use is a question of grammar, and if you don't use the right one you look a bit lazy and careless. Still, some very educated people get them wrong. Don't tell anyone , but my boss (partner in a top law firm, so not a stupid or uneducated person by any means) is a terrible speller. This comes about because he writes down what he hears in his head instead of thinking through the grammar rules, and he's going too fast to make sure he's got it all right. Fortunately he has a good PA (moi) who goes behind him making sure it's corrected, because otherwise it doesn't make a fantastic impression on the client… Another example: my boyfriend teaches in a middle school. One of the kids' favourite occupations consists of trying to catch a teacher out making a spelling mistake on the board (usually a missing agreement - one of the last three in the list above).

*(unintentional) typo, but in the context of this thread I think I quite like the irony so I'm going to leave it there
 

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Posted by Higgs Bosun (# 16582) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by la vie en rouge:

However, and that being said, the main thing that makes writing correct French such a bloody nightmare is not actually spelling as such, but grammer*

To wit, the words

Donner
Donnez
Donnais
Donnait
Donnaient
Donné
Donnée
Donnés
Données

(myriad conjugations of the verb "to give")

are ALL pronounced more or less the same. Knowing which one you are supposed to use is a question of grammar, and if you don't use the right one you look a bit lazy and careless.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:

quote:

---

I've run out of food.
I'm going to eat the dogs.
What apostrophe?

---

---

That definitely gets a


I've never heard of the word 'pwned' before. Was it a misprint or is it a Welsh word that has somehow acquired an English ending? If so, it's very surprising if it has migrated into English as far away from most Welsh speakers as Seattle.

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

La vie en rouge, it's nearly 50 years since my last school French lesson. Nevertheless, you can't imagine how cheering it is to learn that a lot of French people can't spell their language correctly either, particularly not being able to write down the right endings when they are all said the same.

Do they have problems remembering which gender goes with which noun? This is something we all found irrational, frustrating and difficult - so much for the French claim that their language was in some way more logical than anyone else's.

[ 06. December 2013, 11:09: Message edited by: Enoch ]
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:
I've never heard of the word 'pwned' before.

---

It's leetspeak for to be conquered (but to preserve hosts' sanity, please no leet here*).

French spelling has deteriorated noticeably with the advent of text messaging (which doesn't take kindly to accents either), and the agreements are too tortuous for a standard Word spell-checker to catch all of them. My colleagues who translate into French use Antidote. I have a particular inability to get preceding direct object agreements right - I think I must have been absent the day we did them in school.

Genders are rarely confused by native speakers though, with the possible exception of a few tricky words such as victime (which is feminine even though most generic nouns referring to people are masculine) and silence which "looks" feminine but is masculine and a couple I always have to look up, such as horaire (timetable).

A Nigerian I know who has recently arrived in France from Spain where he has lived for ten years says Spanish is much easier because it is always, consistently, pronounced as it is spelled, and I think he's right.

As to English, George Bernard Shaw famously said "fish" should be spelled "ghoti": "f" as in "tough", "i" as in "women" and "ti" as in "station".

*(While on the French theme, though, a prize to anyone who can spot the hidden leet in this ad for a geeky ISP - I actually have this exact router and very cool it looks too)

[ETA and I don't care what the OED says, that "z" in "standardized" in the title is getting to me. Especially as I have just had to complete a translation using that variant]

[ 06. December 2013, 11:28: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
I've just realised that "leet" is of course derived from "elite", which suggests that the answer to the OP is "no"
 

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Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by L'organist:
Teaching children correct spelling enables them to communicate on paper or screen with less risk of being misunderstood. This aim is not elitist.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
...As to English, George Bernard Shaw famously said "fish" should be spelled "ghoti": "f" as in "tough", "i" as in "women" and "ti" as in "station".

...

---

Yes, the author John Scalzi has a cat named Ghlaghghee (Fluffy) making the same point.
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
In the Netherlands, there is a group who wants to introduce a simplified 'scientific' spelling for the Dutch language.

For example, whenever a Dutch word ends in a d, it is pronounced with a t. So, the word hond ('dog') is pronounced hont. In practice this means that for every word that ends in a t sound, one has to learn whether it is spelled with a d or a t. For many Dutch children (as for foreigners) this takes quite an effort, and the mistakes are many.

The proposal of this group is that we just spell it hont, and dedicate the effort we put into learning the d/t difference to other things. Its opponents say that a hont spelling looks wrong, or even that it is childish.

Is the opponents' argument 'elitist'? It could be.
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Speak to my old friend Lalage Cholmondeley who married a lovely member of the Marjoribanks family; the reception, hosted by her Leveson-Gower grandmother, was somewhere in Beauchamp Place, I think.

Spelling as things sound? Bah, humbug

[ 06. December 2013, 12:43: Message edited by: L'organist ]
 

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Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
*(While on the French theme, though, a prize to anyone who can spot the hidden leet in this ad for a geeky ISP - I actually have this exact router and very cool it looks too)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by L'organist:
Speak to my old friend Lalage Cholmondeley who married a lovely member of the Marjoribanks family; the reception, hosted by her Leveson-Gower grandmother, was somewhere in Beauchamp Place, I think.

Spelling as things sound? Bah, humbug

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by la vie en rouge:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
*(While on the French theme, though, a prize to anyone who can spot the hidden leet in this ad for a geeky ISP - I actually have this exact router and very cool it looks too)

---

Me me me!

The person typing the thing had the caps lock on and forgot turned their é into a 2 in the word "théorie" (é and 2 are the same key on a French AZERTY keyboard).

What do I win?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Palimpsest:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Desert Daughter:
what's wrong with striving to emulate the "elite"?

---

That's not the relevant question. No one is complaining about people who try to spell words correctly. What's wrong with not striving to emulate the so-called "elite"?

---

quote:

---

The precedent is that Radio and Television in the United States really reduced regional accents and word usage in favor of a national network standard. However that hasn't stopped rapid evolution of local idioms such as Valley speak. Increased technology comes with the propagation of variant spellings. "Pwned" may be in wide spread use, but so is the variant spelling "owned".

---

quote:

---

In Google search, misspellings work because there are a lot of people using them, not because there is a single standard usage. The search results are pruned using context with other words and what results prior users found useful.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:
I've never heard of the word 'pwned' before.

---

It's leetspeak for to be conquered (but to preserve hosts' sanity, please no leet here*).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ArachnidinElmet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
...As to English, George Bernard Shaw famously said "fish" should be spelled "ghoti": "f" as in "tough", "i" as in "women" and "ti" as in "station".

...

---

Yes, the author John Scalzi has a cat named Ghlaghghee (Fluffy) making the same point.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Palimpsest:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Desert Daughter:
what's wrong with striving to emulate the "elite"?

---

That's not the relevant question. No one is complaining about people who try to spell words correctly. What's wrong with not striving to emulate the so-called "elite"?

---

But we've covered that. Legibility.

quote:

---

The precedent is that Radio and Television in the United States really reduced regional accents and word usage in favor of a national network standard. However that hasn't stopped rapid evolution of local idioms such as Valley speak. Increased technology comes with the propagation of variant spellings. "Pwned" may be in wide spread use, but so is the variant spelling "owned".

---

Would you say, then, that the distinction between slang and standard register has gone away? Would you write a business letter with "pwned" in it?

quote:

---

In Google search, misspellings work because there are a lot of people using them, not because there is a single standard usage. The search results are pruned using context with other words and what results prior users found useful.

---

I was under the impression that their engine compared the input words to the standard spelling using some kind of fuzzy logic. If I read you right they're instead using some kind of lookup table to get from the nonsense input to the real thing. You'll note that few websites actually have one of the misspellings as their title, with the exception of blogs, and there it's self-consciously done to be cutesy.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:
I've never heard of the word 'pwned' before.

---

It's leetspeak for to be conquered (but to preserve hosts' sanity, please no leet here*).

---

It may be leet speak, but it arose originally from a typo, as did filk.

.....

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

---

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.

---

So fuck everybody who can't? Dyslexics, people who need to look up words in the dictionary but can't find them because they're so badly misspelled, English language learners, fuck 'em all?

"Most" people can do a lot of things but that doesn't mean we should expect ALL people to be able to do them. THIS is elitism. THIS is also privilege.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Palimpsest:
So are you saying that ALL people should be expected to spell correctly or not write anything. That's an interesting definition of non-elitism.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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

---

• 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

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:

quote:

---

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.

---

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

---

quote:

---

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

---

quote:

---

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

---

And then there's the British version.
 

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Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 

quote:

---

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

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by orfeo:

quote:

---

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

---

And then there's the British version.

---

quote:

---

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.

quote:

---

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

---

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

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:

quote:

---

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.

---

[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.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

quote:

---

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

---

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

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

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.

---

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?

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Moaning about misspelling seems pedantic.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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).

---

quote:

---

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

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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).

---

quote:

---

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

---

quote:

---

Why don't the others use it?

---

quote:

---

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

---

quote:

---

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

---

quote:

---

Moaning about misspelling seems pedantic.

---

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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Posted by Carex (# 9643) on :
 

quote:

---

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...

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:

quote:

---

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.

---

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

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:

---

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).

---

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?

quote:

---

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

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:

quote:

---

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).

---

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.

quote:

---

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

---

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.

quote:

---

Why don't the others use it?

---

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)

quote:

---

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

---

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

quote:

---

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

---

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.

quote:

---

Moaning about misspelling seems pedantic.

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

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

---

...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.

 

---

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 

quote:

---

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.)

---

quote:

---

IngoB: The German orthography reform has been mentioned.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
I'm not sure how the Chinese would see this, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are trying to learn British English, too.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by orfeo:
America had a spelling reform. That's precisely why their spelling isn't the same as UK spelling!

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by orfeo:
America had a spelling reform. That's precisely why their spelling isn't the same as UK spelling!

---

And any but the most hardened jingoist will admit that "jail" makes more sense than "gaol."

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by orfeo:
America had a spelling reform. That's precisely why their spelling isn't the same as UK spelling!

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by orfeo:
America had a spelling reform. That's precisely why their spelling isn't the same as UK spelling!

---

When I was working on the history of various Ulster dialects, I noticed that many 19th century documents used the spelling honor rather than honour.

I suspect that rather than a conscious spelling reform, honor just came to be more widely accepted in America.

Moo

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by orfeo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by orfeo:
America had a spelling reform. That's precisely why their spelling isn't the same as UK spelling!

---

When I was working on the history of various Ulster dialects, I noticed that many 19th century documents used the spelling honor rather than honour.

I suspect that rather than a conscious spelling reform, honor just came to be more widely accepted in America.

Moo

---

Have you not heard of
Webster?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:
I am saying that many residents of 19th century America came from Ulster, and they brought their spelling with them.

Webster did not invent the spelling honor; he found it side-by-side with honour. He preferred the shorter form.

He did not simplify spelling; he standardized it.

Moo

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
You may be underestimating the power that Webster had on the American language. His "Blue Backed Speller" became THE book children in American public (tax-funded) schools learned their vocabulary from for nearly 100 years.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
You may be underestimating the power that Webster had on the American language. His "Blue Backed Speller" became THE book children in American public (tax-funded) schools learned their vocabulary from for nearly 100 years.

---

I am not denying his influence. I am talking about how he arrived at his standardization. He did not simplify the spelling of honour. He endorsed the already-existing form honor

Moo

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:
He did not simplify spelling; he standardized it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by orfeo:
I said there was a spelling reform. Why are you excluding the word 'standardized' from a reform?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by orfeo:
I said there was a spelling reform. Why are you excluding the word 'standardized' from a reform?

---

Because if he had been trying to create a genuine spelling reform he would have done something about the spelling of right and rough.

He dealt with the very small area where there were alternate spellings. To me reform means something much more sweeping.

Moo

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:
My field is linguistics, and I have always heard 'spelling standardization' and 'spelling reform' treated as two separate concepts. I think it is a mistake to conflate them.

Moo

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:
I know that when two forms existed side-by-side, such as honor and honour, he chose one and rejected the other.

Can you tell me of words with only one spelling which he changed?

There may be such cases, but I don't know of them.

Moo

---

quote:

---

Thus bread, head, give, breast, built, meant, realm, friend, would be spelt, bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment, relm, frend.
[...]
Thus by putting ee instead of ea or ie, the words mean, near, speak grieve, zeal, would become meen, neer, speek, greev, zeel.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dave W.:
I'm pretty sure many of these proposed changes involved introducing novel spellings:

quote:

---

Thus bread, head, give, breast, built, meant, realm, friend, would be spelt, bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment, relm, frend.
[...]
Thus by putting ee instead of ea or ie, the words mean, near, speak grieve, zeal, would become meen, neer, speek, greev, zeel.

---

These and other examples of Webster's suggestions are found in this article.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mousethief
You may be underestimating the power that Webster had on the American language. His "Blue Backed Speller" became THE book children in American public (tax-funded) schools learned their vocabulary from for nearly 100 years.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dave W.:
I'm pretty sure many of these proposed changes involved introducing novel spellings:

quote:

---

Thus bread, head, give, breast, built, meant, realm, friend, would be spelt, bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment, relm, frend.
[...]
Thus by putting ee instead of ea or ie, the words mean, near, speak grieve, zeal, would become meen, neer, speek, greev, zeel.

---

These and other examples of Webster's suggestions are found in this article.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mousethief
You may be underestimating the power that Webster had on the American language. His "Blue Backed Speller" became THE book children in American public (tax-funded) schools learned their vocabulary from for nearly 100 years.

---

Webster did not include these innovations in his Blue Backed Speller, and they do not appear to have had any effect on American orthography.

Moo

---

quote:

---

Imposing a language-wide spelling system on the language's sounds at this point is probably impossible; there are vowel sounds used in Australia (as one example) I never hear in normal native American speech.

How would we standardize these?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:
Surely the point of a spelling reform would be to allow the speaker to work out how the word is to be pronounced in his own accent. If a combination of (say two) vowels produced a different sound in another accent - so what? At least an Aussi would easily learn the reformed spelling.

Again, if an alternative spelling for a word was commonly defined and accepted, then those sitting in judgement could not complain.

---

quote:

---

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that people should be able to spell words the way they sound in their own accents, without considering that those who read the words might have an entirely different accent?

---

quote:

---

I have witnessed two people speaking English with vastly different accent need to resort to spelling to effectively communicate.

---

quote:

---

At present spellings often give no clue.

---

quote:

---

In the closed thread on simple spellings, you included several words which took me a while to puzzle out, as the way they were spelled bore no relation to the way I pronounce them. - "vier", "advarnss" "arfter" "ideer." Fortunately I could work out which words you meant from the context.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:
If you had been taught what sound (in your own accent) 'i' and 'ee' made then you could work out the word and spell it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:
If you had been taught what sound (in your own accent) 'i' and 'ee' made then you could work out the word and spell it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
I think the confusion is that "alternate" is in fact two words and not one - an adjective broadly synonymous with with the adjectival form of alternative, and a verb meaning "to switch back and forth". This is detectable (at least in my dialect) by the adjective being alTERnut and the verb being ALTernayt.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge
I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that people should be able to spell words the way they sound in their own accents, without considering that those who read the words might have an entirely different accent?

I'm thinking of the song from My Fair Lady which is sung by Liza Doolittle: "Wouldn't it be Lovely"

The first lines are:

“All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air”

To my New England ear, Liza's rendition could be spelled as follows:

"Oll Oi wont iz a rheum sumwheh
Fah Rawhey frem the coald noit aih"

People from my state might render it this way:

"Ahl I wunt iz a rum sumwheh
Faah 'away fr’m the cold nite aih"

People from the coastal south US might sing it as follows:

"All Ah wo-ant iyiz a ruom some whe-ah
Foh awah-y fr’m the co-ald naaht ai-ah"

In upper-class Brit-Speak, it might sound (from my point of reference) like this:

"Awl I wont iz a rheum somm wheh
Faah r’away from the coled nite eyuh"

And from the Ohio area, it might go this way:

"Orl I woant iz a rhum some wherrr
Farr away fr'm the cold nite errr"

It might be easier for individuals to spell as they (think) they speak, but it would render written communication -- which, after all, is what spelling is for -- far more complicated. Certainly it would slow our reading down.

There's overlap and similarities among these renditions, but I can't see how it helps us out with communicating easily and effectively.

If I've misunderstood, my apologies. Perhaps you're suggesting that opposite: that we each pronounce one spelling in our various ways.

But isn't that precisely what we do now?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:
If you had been taught what sound (in your own accent) 'i' and 'ee' made then you could work out the word and spell it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:
North East Quine

quote:

---

In the closed thread on simple spellings, you included several words which took me a while to puzzle out, as the way they were spelled bore no relation to the way I pronounce them. - "vier", "advarnss" "arfter" "ideer." Fortunately I could work out which words you meant from the context.

---

It seemed I had rushed in not knowing that the angels were somewhere else discussing if there was a door! As an example it was entirely off the cuff and just to make a point. If you had been taught what sound (in your own accent) 'i' and 'ee' made then you could work out the word and spell it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
I'm under pressure to use (winces) "well-paying jobs."

Ammunition welcomed.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
I also have a question unrelated to spelling. I keep hearing or reading about "well-paying jobs" and "good-paying jobs." To my ear, "well-paying" sounds very wrong, and good-paying a step or two better, but still not Quite Right.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
I'm not sure how "this job pays well" can be acceptable but "this is a well-paying job" not.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
Do you feel that way about other adverb-gerundive combinations? Rapidly-rising prices?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
Or other adverb-adjective combinations? Closely-held secret??

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
ETA: Well-paid job only makes sense if someone is paying the job. But you don't pay jobs; jobs pay you. So that makes no sense.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:
I'm saying that the spelling would always be the same for the english word, but the pronounciation would always vary. ...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
Well-paid job only makes sense if someone is paying the job. But you don't pay jobs; jobs pay you. So that makes no sense.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jonah the Whale:

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
Well-paid job only makes sense if someone is paying the job. But you don't pay jobs; jobs pay you. So that makes no sense.

---

That seems equally illogical to me. It is the employer who is doing the paying, not the job.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch :
But isn't that the present situation, in which case why change it to a different version of the same thing? Or have I completely missed the point?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:

The odd thing is that we change the meaning of words (viz 'issue' - an avoidance of saying 'problem', or even 'gay' for homosexual) without much hew and cry, but if a jot or tittle of spelling is changed we can fail a job interview!

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:
What I am getting at is that the spelling of many words gives no clue to their pronunciation e.g. 'thought' 'taut', whereas a simple combination of two vowels (a standardised version) would allow the reader (and speller) to at least have a good idea of how to say them even if it has a local accent.

---

quote:

---

It might also help if English stopped incorporating words from other languages and "grew our own," as the Germans tend to do.

---

You do realise we do both in English? Word-formation is alive and well - especially in management-speak.

And only dead languages are pickled in aspic. If we do change the spelling to reflect the way (some) 21st century people pronounce English, in a few hundred years' time I can guarantee the spelling system will be just as impenetrable.

Here's a famous example of a sound change that's taking place in North American English right now: the Northern Cities Vowel Shift

[ 10. February 2014, 14:02: Message edited by: Jane R ]
 

---

Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :
 
I like the English language as it is, that is, with all its oddities.
 

---

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
It may be that, to simplify spelling, we have to develop a writing system which is not tied to sound, but to meaning. Some version of pictograms? I have no Japanese, but am given to understand that Japanese children have no trouble with what we call "spelling."

---

quote:

---

It might also help if English stopped incorporating words from other languages and "grew our own," as the Germans tend to do.

---

quote:

---

Presumably, most Germans can already spell their words for hair, wash, and method, So when a new substance arrives from India in the 1600s (or whenever) meant for washing hair, they dub it Haarwaschmittel.

---

quote:

---

Not us English-speakers: we transliterate phonically from the Hindi and call it shampoo.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
They tend to nipponify loan words to an great extent, to fit into their existing writing schemes.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
I think we should stop this right away and make more effort to get our mouths around the words that people use to call themselves.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

ETA: Well-paid job only makes sense if someone is paying the job. But you don't pay jobs; jobs pay you. So that makes no sense.

---

Jobs don't pay anybody. Employers pay people to do jobs
 

---

Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :
 
Innit. Quite why we had to start calling Bombay Mumbai and Peking Beijing, I'll never know.
 

---

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

ETA: Well-paid job only makes sense if someone is paying the job. But you don't pay jobs; jobs pay you. So that makes no sense.

---

Jobs don't pay anybody. Employers pay people to do jobs

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:

What I am getting at is that the spelling of many words gives no clue to their pronunciation e.g. 'thought' 'taut', whereas a simple combination of two vowels (a standardised version) would allow the reader (and speller) to at least have a good idea of how to say them even if it has a local accent.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:

I suspect the words we call other people have a long history of racial slurs and mis-hearing by colonial masters.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gwai:

However, most people who can't spell just didn't bother to learn. They saw it as useless. If I were an employer, I don't think the ideal employee is one who decides not to do things that they can't be bothered to do. Also, misspellings on a job applications show not just that the applicant couldn't be bothered to learn spelling, but often that they didn't spell-check, and didn't ask anyone to look over their application letter. Any prospective employee who can't use spell-check, doesn't work with other people, and can't be bothered to spell? Yeah, probably not the top of my list. (Also, in many jobs communication is an important skill, and there are always people who are not easy to communicate with. If someone considers spelling a waste of time, do they rate other written-communication skills as important?)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:

Again, if an alternative spelling for a word was commonly defined and accepted, then those sitting in judgement could not complain.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
That seems to me to be an odd thing to argue. Presumably one might think that someone who regularly breaks the speeding laws is unfit for any job which requires personal integrity.

---

quote:

---

It seems to me that the only difference here is that you happen to know that this person has a characteristic you can infer from their poor spelling, whereas speeding is not something you can tell from an application form.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Well, yes. That's rather the point. Are you arguing that I should ignore the evidence of the poorly-presented application because I can't know the applicant's attitude towards the posted speed limits?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gwai:


Is everyone who makes a spelling error on a job app a bad speller? Certainly not, but if one has to choose between qualified applicants, I have heard of far worse criteria being used at places I worked. "X won't get promoted under Y. Y has said she prefers people who dress in a more modern way." Note that X dressed completely professionally, and this was not a customer-facing job or anything like it.)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
In almost every situation I can think with, it is a positive bonus to be able to communicate effectively in non-standard English.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anglican't:
I'd be interested to know what these situations are, because I can't think of how speaking in non-standard English could be considered a 'positive bonus'.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anglican't:

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
In almost every situation I can think with, it is a positive bonus to be able to communicate effectively in non-standard English.

---

I'd be interested to know what these situations are, because I can't think of how speaking in non-standard English could be considered a 'positive bonus'.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
One thing I've never really understood about English is why we insist on using Anglicised names for other places and countries. Sometimes the word in English appears to have very little to do with the way that natives use the word.

For example, the Japanese word for Japan doesn't to me sound anything like the English word Japan.

I think we should stop this right away and make more effort to get our mouths around the words that people use to call themselves.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Innit. Quite why we had to start calling Bombay Mumbai and Peking Beijing, I'll never know.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:


Unless you say Madreeth, Abertawe, Parree (complete with rolling 'rs'), Roma, and Wien, you should also stick to Peking, Bombay and Madras.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:

Unless you say Madreeth, Abertawe, Parree (complete with rolling 'rs'), Roma, and Wien, you should also stick to Peking, Bombay and Madras.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
To return to spelling, here's an issue for Gwai:

Earlier, you exempted second -language users and dyslexics from your "rule." In a job app scenario, how does one do this? Perhaps it happens differently where you work; where I work, we get initial applications both by snail-mail and e-mail. Aside from knowing the person's name, address, and often (though not always) their gender, I know nothing about these people.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:
Peking, Bombay and Madras.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:


Unless you say Madreeth, Abertawe, Parree (complete with rolling 'rs'), Roma, and Wien, you should also stick to Peking, Bombay and Madras.

---

Given English is one of the national languages of India, I think they might be entitled to rename their own cities.

Herein illustrates the problem.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:
Peking, Bombay and Madras.

---

I don't agree with the last. Calling Chennai "Madras" or Mumbai "Bombay" is using a colonial-era name rather than an English name. It's like calling modern Istanbul "Constantinople".

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:
Peking, Bombay and Madras.

---

I don't agree with the last. Calling Chennai "Madras" or Mumbai "Bombay" is using a colonial-era name rather than an English name. It's like calling modern Istanbul "Constantinople".

---

quote:

---

On the other hand, without the spelling differences, it is harder work for the reader to determine whether you meant "taught", "taut", "tort", or "torte".

---

quote:

---

There would be two "accepted" spellings - the one that marks you out as having been educated at the right school, and the one designed for stupid people. Your suggestion would seem to open up more avenues for elitism.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:

The applicant could, having just stumbled on the "help wanted" notice for The Perfect Job, be in a tearing rush to get the app in by deadline.

---

quote:

---

The applicant could be collecting unemployment compensation and doesn't give a toss about this particular job, but must submit proof that s/he's applying for jobs to continue collecting unemployment.

---

quote:

---

The applicant could be filling the app out while a parent / spouse / friend is chewing him/her out because s/he hasn't got a job, and is only half-attending to the app.

---

quote:

---

The applicant could be filling out his/her two-hundredth app that day in a desperate effort to secure employment and is dead-tired . . .

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:
Leorning Cniht

quote:

---

On the other hand, without the spelling differences, it is harder work for the reader to determine whether you meant "taught", "taut", "tort", or "torte".

---

The context of both speech and writing usually makes this problem minimal.

---

quote:

---

No one seems to have a problem with 'lite' as opposed to 'heavy' .

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Anyone who uses "lite" needs a good whipping.

---

Except those of us who refer to "Sunday Lite" to describe the liturgy suggested by the Moore College school.
 

---

Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :
 
I'll have to think about that one.

"Nite" and "donut" also deserve a good whipping, if you ask me.
 

---

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:
Leorning Cniht

quote:

---

On the other hand, without the spelling differences, it is harder work for the reader to determine whether you meant "taught", "taut", "tort", or "torte".

---

The context of both speech and writing usually makes this problem minimal.

---

quote:

---

I don't know anybody who thinks that "lite" is a word

---

quote:

---

• informal; denoting a simpler or less challenging version of a particular thing or person:

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
I'll have to think about that one.

"Nite" and "donut" also deserve a good whipping, if you ask me.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:


Anyway, this could go on for ever. My main point is that in the same way new words are coined, why shouldn't new spellings, if agreed and standardized?

---

quote:

---

The applicant could be a second-language user. And if that is clear from their application, I would probably overlook minor spelling/grammar issues that might otherwise have troubled me.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
I'll have to think about that one.

"Nite" and "donut" also deserve a good whipping, if you ask me.

---

Isn't donut the correct spelling in North America?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Americans don't speak proper English.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
But "doughnut" is the preferred spelling, surely, regardless of whether one lives to the left or right of the pond?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Americans don't speak proper English.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
But "doughnut" is the preferred spelling, surely, regardless of whether one lives to the left or right of the pond?

---

I await correction, but I understood that 'doughnut' was not a word in North American English.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
Although you did say North American. I speak only for those South of the Border; I've no idea how the Canadians handle this dilemma.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
Although you did say North American. I speak only for those South of the Border; I've no idea how the Canadians handle this dilemma.

---

You are in Mexico?
I checked three American dictionaries. Two directly listed donut as a variant and one obliquely did by displaying a link to doughnut instead of a definition.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
I've no idea how the Canadians handle this dilemma.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
But "doughnut" is the preferred spelling, surely, regardless of whether one lives to the left or right of the pond?

---

I await correction, but I understood that 'doughnut' was not a word in North American English.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The word dougnut and donut are covered in Wikipedia. Bear in mind it was likely of Dutch settler origin, although I suspect a bit of Jewish influence given the hallmark of lavish use of oil.
The shape we still see as a filled doughnut precedes the ring doughnut so the "dough" "nut" explanation is plausible.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:
Peking, Bombay and Madras.

---

I don't agree with the last. Calling Chennai "Madras" or Mumbai "Bombay" is using a colonial-era name rather than an English name. It's like calling modern Istanbul "Constantinople".

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
Yabbut.

What we see on signs are advertisements for brands. Neither Tim Horton's nor Dunkin' Donuts owns the English language.

Unless, of course, we hand it over to them. I may now officially be an old fart for saying so, but "donuts" looks like a low-life, no-class, drop-out, lazy, feckless, layabout word to me, albeit simpler to spell.

Besides, break the word down: "dough" plus "nut" equals a pastry product loaded with fat, like nuts. I grant you, the visual might be more like the fried leftover bit from punching out the hole in the middle which Dunkin Donuts calls a "munchkin," but still . . . what does "do" plus "nut" call up for us? Cracking open a pecan?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
No it's not. "Constantinople" is not a colonial-era name, nor is it associated with colonialism in any way. If anything it goes the other way.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:


On the other hand, calling Moscow "Moskva" whilst speaking English is just silly.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
... Calling Chennai "Madras" isn't bad because "Madras" is what the nasty colonial oppressors used to call it, it's bad because the Indian people/government say "it's not called Madras any more, it's called Chennai."

And yes, there's an argument about Hindu nationalism in there, but to refuse to call the city by its official name is taking an explicit side in that dispute.

The default, neutral position (in so far as one exists) is to use the current official name of the city. For example, calling the city 500 miles north-west of Moscow "Leningrad" now carries strong political implications, as would having called it "Saint Petersburg" 30 years ago.

On the other hand, calling Moscow "Moskva" whilst speaking English is just silly.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:
Spelling was free-style back then.

---

quote:

---

Getting a pronunciation out of alphabetic writing requires people to analyze the sound string down to the level of component sounds. Yet this type of phonemic analysis is apparently not an obvious or natural one for humans; it needs to be taught intensively before it can be done fairly automatically and that is one reason why acquisition of literacy at an early age is stressed in cultures with alphabetic writing. It takes a lot of practice to reliably decode messages from alphabetic writing.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:
None of that follows except for the last sentence. Indeed, if a place has already got an English name, what right has anyone outside England got to tell us what we should call a place in our own language. It's up to us.Brussels isn't Brussels in either of the two languages spoken there. It's either Bruxelles or Brussel. If the government of Belgium were suddenly to announce that in English, it should become something other than Brussels, IMHO we're entitled to say 'up yours' and carry on as before. Likewise if the Russians were to say we should say Moskva.

---

quote:

---

To return to one of my previous examples, I've no idea what the better name in English is for Bratislava/Pressburg/Pozsony. By current English usage it's probably Bratislava, but that's the name it had when it was in Czechoslovakia. I don't even know, since the country has split in half, whether that's still its name in Slovak.

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quote:

---

I think I'd probably still talk of the siege of Leningrad, but would normally now refer to the city generally as St Petersburg. It's easier for a place to revert to a name it used to have than for it to acquire a completely new one.

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quote:

---

On Constantinople/Istanbul, I would take it that the current English usage is probably to call the city now Istanbul, but if the context is before about 1920 to call it Constantinople.

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quote:

---

Whether 'Chennai' eventually catches on or not here, I'm not sure, but it's up to us, not the government of India. In a lot of these cases, I suspect there's a period when it depends how old you are whether you go on calling a place by the name you've always called it or not.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:

Whether 'Chennai' eventually catches on or not here, I'm not sure, but it's up to us, not the government of India.

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quote:

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Originally posted by pydseybare:
Why is it up to us? Because we're offensive Englishmen who continue using whatever terms we like for other peoples' countries/cities, no matter what they themselves think?

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quote:

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What you really mean is that the correct English name for foreign parts is whatever you say it is. Excuse me for thinking we might need a rather more sophisticated and diplomatic approach to our neighbours and other cultures.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:

Whether 'Chennai' eventually catches on or not here, I'm not sure, but it's up to us, not the government of India.

---

This strikes me as very arrogant.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I think cities, countries and the like are in a different category because as proper nouns they carry a lot more cultural and political baggage than other words.

PS Myanmar and I claim my €5 (although I see Wikipedia begs to differ...)

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quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:

quote:

---

On Constantinople/Istanbul, I would take it that the current English usage is probably to call the city now Istanbul, but if the context is before about 1920 to call it Constantinople.

---

I see. What you really mean is that the correct English name for foreign parts is whatever you say it is. Excuse me for thinking we might need a rather more sophisticated and diplomatic approach to our neighbours and other cultures.

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quote:

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Originally posted by pydseybare:
One thing I've never really understood about English is why we insist on using Anglicised names for other places and countries. Sometimes the word in English appears to have very little to do with the way that natives use the word.

For example, the Japanese word for Japan doesn't to me sound anything like the English word Japan.

I think we should stop this right away and make more effort to get our mouths around the words that people use to call themselves.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by L'organist:
Dunno why you're going outside the British Isles to find examples of the English habit if using their own names for places.

What about Swansea? The English called it that because there were swans at the mouth of the river - the proper name is Abertawe.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
It's supposed to derive from Norse, Sweyn's Eye, or island,

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Anglican't:
Are you put out by the fact that French people say 'Londres'?

---

quote:

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For years, the BBC has steadfastly referred to the country east of India as 'Burma',

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Anglican't:
Are you put out by the fact that French people say 'Londres'?

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If there were a political flap in England about calling London "London" instead of "Londres" this might have something to do with this thread. As there isn't, it doesn't.

---

quote:

---

quote:

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For years, the BBC has steadfastly referred to the country east of India as 'Burma',

---

How odd. I'd have thought they'd call it "Bangladesh."

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anglican't:

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anglican't:
Are you put out by the fact that French people say 'Londres'?

---

If there were a political flap in England about calling London "London" instead of "Londres" this might have something to do with this thread. As there isn't, it doesn't.

---

But this is my point. We accept that some foreigners have different names for places in Britain. I'm fine with that. I'm applying the same principle but in reverse.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:



Second, about Istanbul/Constantinople: This is not a matter of changing a city name spelling! (like Peking/Beijing) Turkey changed the city name as part of de-Greeceing that area.
It still leaves a nasty taste in Greek peoples' mouths, and many refuse to use the 'new' name.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Anglican't:
But if, say, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary and the Prime Minister wrote to the Academie Francaise asking that British place names should always be spelt as they are in English, do you think the French should take a blind bit of notice?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
Depends. Why would they do that? One thing I notice is that there is little subjection/subjectee history between England and France, at least in the last 1000 years. India and Britain, way different story. Context matters. Lots.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:



Second, about Istanbul/Constantinople: This is not a matter of changing a city name spelling! (like Peking/Beijing) Turkey changed the city name as part of de-Greeceing that area.
It still leaves a nasty taste in Greek peoples' mouths, and many refuse to use the 'new' name.

---

"Istanbul" is a Greek name also. Just a different Greek name. And well over a thousand years old.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:
I don't accept your 'subjection history' argument,

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:
I don't accept your 'subjection history' argument,

---

It's hard for imperial countries to accept the desires of their former colonies.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anglican't:
...do you think the French should take a blind bit of notice?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
Also, just because we've done something for centuries is not in itself a good reason to continue doing it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Peking (in Finnish it is still called Peking).

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Anglican't:
Personally, I think that's an excellent reason to continue doing it. (Or at least to think very, very hard when thinking whether or not to stop doing it.)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anglican't:
Personally, I think that's an excellent reason to continue doing it. (Or at least to think very, very hard when thinking whether or not to stop doing it.)

---

Even where someone else has specifically asked you to stop? I think that is pretty rude.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Personally, I'll call a place whatever I damn well like. So for me that's Bombay, Peking (in Finnish it is still called Peking), Constantinople and Bonkersland for America.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anglican't:

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anglican't:
Personally, I think that's an excellent reason to continue doing it. (Or at least to think very, very hard when thinking whether or not to stop doing it.)

---

Even where someone else has specifically asked you to stop? I think that is pretty rude.

---

I don't think it's rude to write one's own language in one's own way.

The government of the Ivory Coast has asked everyone to refer to the country as 'Cote d'Ivoire' regardless of language, and the government of the Ukraine would like everyone to drop the definite article when referring to the country. While these people can ask, I don't think it follows that everyone should fall into line.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
Is it OK to willingly mis-pronounce the name of an absent famous person, but not a present famous person, or a present civilian?

---

quote:

---

It becomes even more loaded when it's people rather than countries. My mother once called my sister pretentious for pronouncing the name of Chilean writer Isabel as "ai-yen-day" rather than "al-en-dee". But surely no-one would insist on addressing that writer to her face using a mis-pronunciation?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge
I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that people should be able to spell words the way they sound in their own accents, without considering that those who read the words might have an entirely different accent?

I'm thinking of the song from My Fair Lady which is sung by Liza Doolittle: "Wouldn't it be Lovely"

The first lines are:

“All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air”

To my New England ear, Liza's rendition could be spelled as follows:

"Oll Oi wont iz a rheum sumwheh
Fah Rawhey frem the coald noit aih"

People from my state might render it this way:

"Ahl I wunt iz a rum sumwheh
Faah 'away fr’m the cold nite aih"

People from the coastal south US might sing it as follows:

"All Ah wo-ant iyiz a ruom some whe-ah
Foh awah-y fr’m the co-ald naaht ai-ah"

In upper-class Brit-Speak, it might sound (from my point of reference) like this:

"Awl I wont iz a rheum somm wheh
Faah r’away from the coled nite eyuh"

And from the Ohio area, it might go this way:

"Orl I woant iz a rhum some wherrr
Farr away fr'm the cold nite errr"

It might be easier for individuals to spell as they (think) they speak, but it would render written communication -- which, after all, is what spelling is for -- far more complicated. Certainly it would slow our reading down.

There's overlap and similarities among these renditions, but I can't see how it helps us out with communicating easily and effectively.

If I've misunderstood, my apologies. Perhaps you're suggesting that opposite: that we each pronounce one spelling in our various ways.

But isn't that precisely what we do now?

---

I think this post qualifies as the best example of putting an issue to bed that I have seen on the Ship. AFAIAC, it completely debunks phonetic spelling reform, and the case for the maintenance of the status quo is unanswerable.

---

And yet - and yet - some languages, with as much diversity in pronunciation as English, do manage to have a far more phonetic spelling system.

It is true that a one to one grapheme to sound relationship that holds for all accents is likely to be impossible. However, a consistent grapheme to phoneme system is possible, and exists in a number of languages.

This is because whilst pronunciation of phonemes vary between accents, in the main they do so in a regular manner. Take for example the short 'u' in English. In the South this represents two different phonemes - the sound in "put", and the sound in "up". In the North this represents a single phoneme as the sound in southern "up" doesn't exist and the "put" sound is used in all positions.

Now if you try to base a reformed spelling system based solely on Northern English, you're going to have a problem. However, you could introduce two symbols to represent the two sounds; in some accents they'd be pronounced differently, in others the same, but the relationship would be consistent and the symbol would always carry the same sound for a particular speaker. It would not always be possible to predict spelling from the sound, if one's own accent doesn't differentiate, but it would always be possible to predict pronunciation (in one's accent) from spelling.

Similarly, it would be perfectly possible to always render the vowel phoneme in "write", "height" and "sigh", because regardless of how that vowel is realised in a particular accent, these words all contain the same sound within that accent. A west countryman doesn't need to respell it "oi", even if he pronounces it that way (to an RP ear), because the phoneme is always realised as that sound in his accent. So we could standardise and spell these words as "wreit", "heit" and "sei" (or whatever grapheme we choose) without having a problem with different accents. It can't be done naively, but English spelling certainly could be simplified. The status quo isn't the only option other than anarchy. It'd still be a standardised spelling, but it'd be a lot more logical and easy to learn that the current system, such as it is.

It works in Welsh, Spanish, Italian, Russian...
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
Changing the standard could work. Eliminating the standard, which is what the OP discusses, is madness.
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
Standard spelling has to be based on a standard accent. And I want it to be mine of course.


Also we run out of vowels. English accents have anything from about 14 to about 28 vowels. We only have 5-8 letters to represent them. So either we invent a whole new alphabet or else set up loads of double-character symbols for vowels. Which means using 3 or 4 for diphthongs.

(5-8 because R, W, and Y often represent vowels. In my accent anyway. If they don't in yours, that just highlights the problem )
 

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Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
It works in Welsh, Spanish, Italian, Russian...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:
Standard spelling has to be based on a standard accent. And I want it to be mine of course.

---

• KIT - ship, rip, dim, spirit
• DRESS - step, ebb, hem, terror
• TRAP - bad, cab, ham, arrow
• LOT - stop, rob, swan
• STRUT - cub, rub, hum
• FOOT - full, look, could
• BATH - staff, clasp, dance
• CLOTH - cough, long, laurel, origin
• NURSE - hurt, term, work, bird
• FLEECE - seed, key, seize
• FACE - weight, rein, steak
• PALM - calm, bra, father
• THOUGHT - taut, hawk, broad
• GOAT - soap, soul, home
• GOOSE - who, group, few
• PRICE - ripe, tribe, aisle, choir
• CHOICE - boy, void, coin
• MOUTH - pouch, noun, crowd, flower
• NEAR - beer, pier, fierce, serious
• SQUARE - care, air, wear, Mary
• START - far, sharp, farm, safari
• NORTH - war, storm, for, aural
• FORCE - or, floor, coarse, ore, oral
• CURE - poor, tour, fury
• happY - (silly, Tony, merry)
• lettER - (beggar, martyr, visor)
• commA - (China, sofa)

• KIT = I
• DRESS = E
• TRAP = A
• LOT = O
• STRUT = U
• FOOT = UU
• BATH = AA
• CLOTH = O
• NURSE = YY
• FLEECE = EE
• FACE = EI
• PALM = AA
• THOUGHT = AW
• GOAT = OE
• GOOSE = OO
• PRICE = AI
• CHOICE = OI
• MOUTH = OW
• NEAR = IY
• SQUARE = EY
• START = AA
• NORTH = AW
• FORCE = AW
• CURE = UE
• schwa = Y
• happY = I/EE (depending on how stressed it is)
• lettER = Y/YY (ditto)
• commA = Y/A(ditto)

• F,V
• K,G
• L
• M
• N
• P,B
• R
• S,Z
• T,D
• W

• C,J
• H,X
• Q
• SH,ZH
• TH,DH

Oh, and we need a glottal stop. "'" is traditional, but I don't want to use that, because it makes all the worlds look like bad namers from Anne McCaffrey books. So recruit Q.

So "A pint of bitter please" -> "Y paint yv bity pleez" in RP but "Y painq yv biqy pleez" in mine North Americans mileage may vary.


[Edited - minor fix to code that was bugging me - Eliab]

[ 13. February 2014, 22:29: Message edited by: Eliab ]
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
There is no AA here up north.

Bath and cat rhyme
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Boogie:
There is no AA here up north.

Bath and cat rhyme

---

quote:

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All I want is a place somewhere,
Far away from the cold night air,
With one enormous chair.
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?

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quote:

---

Awl Ai wonq iz y pleis sumweyy,
Faa ywei from dhy coed nait eyy,
Wiv wun eenawmus ceyy.
Oe, wuudn iq bee luvyylee?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:
So either we invent a whole new alphabet...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eliab:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Personally, I'll call a place whatever I damn well like. So for me that's Bombay, Peking (in Finnish it is still called Peking), Constantinople and Bonkersland for America.

---

Ad Orientem, a thread on spelling seems an odd place to want to display an inability to read for comprehension, but as you were clearly asked by a host not to post anything that looked like an attempt to start a pond war, it seems that is what you are doing.

This is a violation of commandment 1 (trying to disrupt a thread with deliberately provocative comments) and commandment 6 (doing that after a host asks you to stop). Do not do this again.

Eutychus has already warned you that you were at risk of attracting adminly attention - I would suggest you heed that warning.


Eliab
Purgatory host

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
I can’t quite see how to spell the “wh” sound in “where.” I know many people now say these words as though there were no “h” there, but many others expel a little breath when saying the “w” sound, so “where” sounds different from “wear.”

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
I can’t quite see how to spell the “wh” sound in “where.” I know many people now say these words as though there were no “h” there, but many others expel a little breath when saying the “w” sound, so “where” sounds different from “wear.”

---

Phonetically, the sound is [hw].

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Local listings may vary.
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
Ken - I think the problem is that you're still aiming at a phonetic spelling system, rather than a phonemic spelling system. Moreover, as I said earlier, it's probably impossible to create a perfectly phonemic system as well, but I can see why folk might want something a bit less problematic (it's not problematic for me because my brain seems to be wired the right way, but it's definitely problematic for a lot of people) than what we have at the moment.

Even Gaelic has a better grapheme/phoneme correspondence than English
 

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Posted by shadeson (# 17132) on :
 
We seem to be forgetting that words are primarily used to convey ideas not the sound. Ancient scripts made no attempt to convey the sound of a word.
True, it helps to know how the word sounds to interpret it.
However, if I see 'bath' and pronounce it 'barth' and a northern person makes it rhyme with cat we accept that as an accent difference and soon get to understand.
That might seem like a good reason for leaving the spelling of 'light' as it is. But children have to learn to read. A vast number of ghastly exceptions and rules could (or ought)to be swept aside to make this task easier even if it was limited only to the first thousand most commonly used words in the English language.
Since it was the ignorant that first defined the spelling of words a few simple revisions by the moderately literate would help a hell of a lot.
The professors of language worry about a method of defining pronounciation - it can't be done.
 

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Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:

The professors of language worry about a method of defining pronounciation - it can't be done.

---

quote:

---

.. why can we not also say that a) standardised spelling is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they spell words..?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by shadeson:
Because unlike a spoken word, a written word cannot be enlarged upon by the speaker to convey what they mean.
So if someone cannot convey what they mean, in writing, we deem them as unable to write. This in commerce is a totally different catagory to accent which, by and large, is accepted

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quote:

---

And one can write using standard spelling whilst being impossible to understand.

---

An art in itself!
 

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Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
At the moment, one can read most things published in the last 400 years. There have been a few gradual changes but they don't cause too much of a problem. Words like 'public' no longer end with a 'k'. There will probably be others in the future. Will 'light' become 'lite' or will there still be two spellings, one for when it means an illumination, or 'not heavy' and the other for 'simplified but a bit facile', like at the moment? Will 'doughnut' become 'donut' which conceals its meaning, unless 'dough' becomes 'do' which would be spelt the same way as a word pronounced differently? Or perhaps 'do'nut'?

Don't both 'lite' and 'donut' get some of their verbal force precisely from the fact that they aren't the correct spelling and most people know that? 'Lite' means a lite version of light. 'Donut' is meant to convey that the product is a whizzo, fun sort of doughnut.

Suddenly changing spelling to Ken's model, which I don't think Ken really believes in, would cut everyone hereafter from all that has gone before. So I'd be against it.

[ 14. February 2014, 11:46: Message edited by: Enoch ]
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
OK, so if we're agreed that a) standardised pronounciation is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they pronounce words..

... why can we not also say that a) standardised spelling is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they spell words..?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
... why can we not also say that a) standardised spelling is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they spell words..?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
OK, so if we're agreed that a) standardised pronounciation is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they pronounce words..

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
... why can we not also say that a) standardised spelling is not practicable and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they spell words..?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by pydseybare:
OK, so if we're agreed that a) standardised pronounciation is not practicable

---

quote:

---

and b) one should not infer anything about an individual by the way that they pronounce words..

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
In fact, I'd argue that, within the U.S., pronunciation is becoming more standardized all the time.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
In fact, I'd argue that, within the U.S., pronunciation is becoming more standardized all the time.

---

The Northern Cities Vowel Shift proves this wrong, at least as an absolute.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
Doesn't this phenomenon rather prove the opposite? That a swathe of the population which originally sported different short a sounds now pronounce said vowel similarly, i.e. are developing a "standardized" accent?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
. . . I read it as a vowel shift. A real change from the way the vowels were pronounced 50-100 years ago, but which the vast majority of the nation's population is not falling in line with.

---

. . . yet.
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
I see this is an evidence-free argument zone.
 

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Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :
 
Well, it is if you're not going to accept your own evidence. What does your link show? That people who once spoke differently from one another began to speak like one another, apparently as the result of speaking together more often than they used to. If that's not the development of a new standard for pronunciation for those particular people, what is it?
 

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