from my inbox

[Andrea Morrow]

Snopes.com also has some interesting links tracing the history and
development of this email:
http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/cambridge.asp.  I first saw it in
late 2003, and every year since then, at least one of my students
"rediscovers" it and sends it to me.  Not to mention friends and family who
do the same.
Andrea

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 5:49 AM, Lynne Murphy <m.l.murphy at sussex.ac.uk>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Lynne Murphy <m.l.murphy at SUSSEX.AC.UK>
> Subject:      Re: from my inbox
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Since I'm on the digest, it's possible that this has already been pointed
> out by someone who's not digesting, but this "Cambridge University study"
> is an urban myth.  There's a Cambridge University site debunking it:
>
> <http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/>
>
> The site is not very user-friendly in its organization, but it contains
> lots of useful information, such as:
>
> "This is clearly wrong. For instance, compare the following three
> sentences:
>
> 1) A vheclie epxledod at a plocie cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in
> Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober and an Irqai polcie offceir
>
> 2) Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay
> pneosenirs
>
> 3) A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who
> deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur
>
> All three sentences were randomised according to the "rules" described in
> the meme. The first and last letters have stayed in the same place and all
> the other letters have been moved. However, I suspect that your experience
> is the same as mine, which is that the texts get progressively more
> difficult to read. If you get stuck, the sentences are linked to the
> original unscrambled texts.
>
> Hopefully, these demonstrations will have convinced you that in some cases
> it can be very difficult to make sense of sentences with jumbled up words.
> Clearly, the first and last letter is not the only thing that you use when
> reading text. If this really was the case, how would you tell the
> difference between pairs of words like "salt" and "slat"? "
> ...
>
> I get this e-mail from students at least once a year, and try to use it as
> a Teaching Moment, but, oh, it's getting repetitive.
>
> L
>
> --On 17 September 2008 18:30 -0700 "JAMES A. LANDAU Netscape. Just the Net
> You Need." <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM> wrote:
>
> >> fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
> >>
> >> Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
> >>
> >> i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.
> >> The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at
> >> Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a
> >> wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be
> >> in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed
> >> it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey
> >> lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I
> >> awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it
> >>
> >> Barry Auger
> >> Hoe! Hoe! Hoe! Gardening Services Ltd
> >> Email barry at hoehoehoe.ca>
> >
> >
> >
> > _____________________________________________________________
> > Netscape.  Just the Net You Need.
>
>
>
> Dr M Lynne Murphy
> Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language
> Arts B135
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QN
>
> phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
> http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org