AP: Spelling Bee protesters

[Paul Johnston]

Does anybody know what the French think about their spelling system?
They are even farther away from  "phonetic" spelling than we are. I
tell my HEL students that English spelling is pretty good (not
perfect), for determining words' pronunciation in about 1400-1450,
but for French, you have to go back to late OF/early MF--say about
1100 or so.  ((And it's not perfect either.)  Are there any French
TZ's out there-- or are they too cowed by the Academie Francaise?
And do THEY have spelling bees?

Paul Johnston
On Jun 4, 2010, at 1:56 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: AP: Spelling Bee protesters
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> And then there's the always-overlooked question as to which idiolect
> is to be used as the basis of the new "phonetic" spelling-system.
> Needless to say, were the choice mine, I'd pick my own idiolect. Why
> should I have to be the one to have to bend his personal phonetic
> system to the new "standard," which wouldn't last a generation longer
> than it took to learn it and then to learn to teach it? Let others do
> it. Of course, even my own brothers would have to learn the new way,
> since each of us uses a different idiolect. But, since *I* wouldn't,
> why should I care? And then there's the question of what system of
> phonetic symbols to use. I see no reason why the ADS-L system can't be
> used. It can't be more of a pain in the ass to learn to use, for the
> linguistically untrained, than the API system or even Truspel. That
> is, if U.S. QWERTY is going to be made the standard keyboard for
> world-English, of course.
>
> Or is it going to be the case that each speaker of English will be
> allowed to use his personal interpretation of the phonetic system of
> English? That certainly eliminates the problem of upon whose idiolect
> to base the phonetic spelling. Would it be any more difficult to learn
> thousands of idiolectal spellings than it is to learn thousands of
> idiolectal pronunciations?
>
> Well, in context, at least. Labov once demonstrated, during a lecture
> at the 1973 Michigan LSA summer school, that it can be impossible to
> tell that what you're hearing is a local variety American English and
> not some foreign language, if the individual pronunciations are taken
> out of context.
>
> Gnome sane?
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net>
> wrote:
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: AP: Spelling Bee protesters
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>> ----------
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>> At 6/4/2010 11:15 AM, Rick Barr wrote:
>>>  did say something relevant to this discussion, and it is that
>>> English
>>> takes longer to read than other European languages, precisely
>>> because of its
>>> hectic spelling. Of course, it is unthinkable to carry through an
>>> overhaul
>>> of English spelling. But the price paid in readability is
>>> something to take
>>> into account.
>>
>> What about the allegation that it takes fewer words (and presumably
>> letters) to write something in English than in other European
>> languages?  My sampling is admittedly small, being limited to subway
>> warning signs in English and Spanish.
>>
>> Joel
>>
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>
> --
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> –Mark Twain
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