Abstract / Concrete
Donald M Lance
lancedm at MISSOURI.EDU
Mon Jul 1 13:42:14 UTC 2002
on 6/30/02 4:12 PM, Thomas Paikeday at t.paikeday at SYMPATICO.CA wrote:
> To answer a couple of questions raised by Mark and Dennis:
>
> Mark: "How is this set of rules, abstracted and *regularized* from
> English
> orthography, not also a "key" to be learned?"
>
> Good question. Answer: A literate person is
> supposed to have already learned the common English spellings.
Not true for speakers of Spanish, Russian, Chinese pinyin, etc.
(snip)
> TOM PAIKEDAY (pointing to the spelling of his name, the first syllable
> of which is not good orthography, but I didn't do it! Anyone who cares
> please say PYE- not PAY-).
PYE- as in Pierre?
Sorry, Tom. I don't buy your rebuttal as stated. The orthographic
representations you prefer may be more accessible to better-than-moderately
literate speakers of English, but they're still abstract. They're concrete
only as marks on paper. You're overstating your case.
DMLance
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