LL-L "Orthography" 2002.04.26 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

> From: kcaldwell31 at comcast.net
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2002.04.22 (04) [E]
>
> I've heard, in some old movies, "protein" pronounced as three syllables:
> PRO-tee-in.  Does anyone still pronounce it this way?

Kevin, I think the word you heard was "protean", not "protein".

> I wouldn't say that.  I had a class on etymology as an English elective
> in high school over 20 years ago (the school I attended required juniors
> and seniors to take a different English elective each quarter, rather
> than having one English class all year long).

Yes, in high school, and elective. But if etymology were
necessary to spelling it would have to be taught as part
of spelling (ie in elementary school, and compulsory).

> > These projects seem to have had no impact on British spellings
> > of English. Spelling reforms in the US, by contrast, are much
> > less heavy-handed (in fact "reform" is probably too strong a
> > word to describe American spelling simplifications) and yet
> > much more successful. In the US, optional spelling simplifications
> > are recommended,
>
> by whom?

These particular recommendations are supposedly Noah
Webster's, but I suspect they are a synthesis of his
most favoured recommendations by later purveyors of
the dictionary.

> > 7. use "-or" for "-er" where done so in
> > Latin, e.g. "instructor," "visitor"
>
> But "advisor" seems to lose out to "adviser" most of the time.

This is strange, because although I have always used British
spellings, I would only ever write "advisor"!

> > 9. use single "f" at end of words like "pontif," "plaintif"
>
> I've never heard of this one either.  It's always "pontiff,"
> "plaintiff," bailiff," and "sheriff."

Again, I've always used a single "f" here. It might be
interesting to compare what the British and the Americans
really write these days.

> You forgot the dropping of "-ue" from words like "catalog" and "dialog",
> although we tend to keep it in "monologue", "prologue" and "epilogue."
> This one is more widely perceived as optional.

These are from a different list - I think the Chicago Tribune
introduced this sort of spelling.

> From: "Ian James Parsley" <parsleyij at yahoo.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2002.04.23 (02) [E]
>
> > 5. use single "l" in inflected forms, e.g.
> "traveled"
>
> Actually I like this one - but be careful what the
> rule is. If the final syllable is stressed, it is
> doubled (eg 'rebelled'). The same 'rule' applies with
> <r>, also in British English, thus 'remembering' vs.
> 'occurring'. This is why I would like to see
> consistency with the same rule applied to <l>. (I'm
> also all for shorter spellings where possible.)

But there are different ways of being consistent. You could
consistently show stress with double letters (except in
English you can't, because the "magic E" mucks it all up),
or you could simply consistently avoid double letters and
not bother to show stress, which seems to make a lot more
sense to me. I think this is a very important general point
about orthographic reform - people who are interested in
writing systems often know lot more about it than anyone
_needs_ to know in order to be able to read and write.
Thus, rules are derived to explain letter doubling and
suchlike that can be quite subtle, and that in English at
least almost always have lots of exceptions (for example,
what about the stressed syllables is "necessary",
"competitive" &c?).

It would be a lot better to remember that there are only
about 40 phonemes in English and anything much beyond that
many graphemes is just "cleverness".

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
                          - C.W.Wade,
                    'The Adventures o McNab'

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