Chinglish

[Benjamin Barrett]

I can't believe TZ has done it again. This is trollish behavior to get
people who really agree with each other to disagree by distorting and
taking out of context.

From
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1032102
-----
A classic troll tries to make us believe that he is a skeptic. He is
divisive and argumentative with need-to-be-right attitude, "searching
for the truth", flaming discussion, and sometimes insulting people or
provoking people to insult him. A troll is usually an expert in
reusing the same words of its opponents and in turning it against them.

He (and in at least 90% of cases it is he) tries to start arguments
and upset people.

Sometimes, he is skeptical, trying to scare people, trying to plant
fear in their hearts. Sometimes, Internet troll is trying to spin
conflicting information, is questioning in an insincere manner,
flaming discussion, insulting people, turning people against each
other, harassing forum members, ignoring warnings from forum moderators.

Trolling is a form of harassment that can take over a discussion. Well
meaning defenders can create chaos by responding to trolls.
-----
This page also has a short bit about the subcategory of sophist trolls.

In this case, everyone agrees that the alphabetic principle is an
approximation of sounds put into practice more successfully in some
languages like Spanish and less in others like English.

RB was discussing TZ's sophist troll arguments about how English
speakers are "refusing" to use the correct pronunciations of words, ad
naseum. He wasn't claiming that we don't use letters as a means to
unify the representations of sounds.

What the guides to trolls on the Net agree on is that ignoring trolls
is the best way of dealing with them. BB

On Aug 29, 2008, at 9:35 AM, LanDi Liu wrote:

> Ron, before you put words in other people's mouths and start screaming
> in all caps, maybe you should read this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetic_principle
>
> Most writing systems that I'm familiar with use the alphabetic
> principle, including English.  In modern English the letter
> combination "igh" normally represents [ai].  It's not a 1:1
> relationship, and even in Tom's truespel, there is not a 1:1
> relationship for every letter/sound combination.  Only IPA boasts
> that, and that gets broken here and there by the best of them.
>
> "Alphabetical writing systems APPROXIMATE pronunciations."  Yeah,
> that's kinda the whole point of the alphabetic principle.
>
> The alphabetic principle is important especially to kids learning how
> to read.  If there was no such principle in English then kids would
> have to memorize the spellings of tens of thousands of words
> independently of each other.  To beginning readers, especially kids,
> that would be basically impossible.
>
> I think a lot of people on this list need to get laid more often.
>
> Randy
>
> On Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 12:09 AM,  <RonButters at aol.com> wrote:
>> In a message dated 8/29/08 11:58:21 AM, truespel at HOTMAIL.COM writes:
>>> The alphabetical principle is that letters stand for sounds.
>>>
>> There IS NO such "alphabetical principle" that any competent
>> linguist or
>> phoneticial would subscribe to. What this really means is that YOU
>> believe that,
>> in writing English, letters SHOULD stand for sounds in some kind of
>> 1:1
>> relationship as determined largely by your ear and prejudices. The
>> fact is that in
>> the history of alphabetical writing systems--and certainly for a
>> language as
>> complicated socially and geographically as English--this has NEVER
>> been the case.
>> Alphabetical writing systems APPROXIMATE pronunciations. When I
>> write "high,"
>> do you see a word that ends in an aspirated [g] sound? When i write
>> "high,"
>> do you hear a vowel that ends in an offglide or is simply a
>> lengthened [a]? Or
>> is it the stressed vowel of "machine"? Enough!
>>
>>

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