Chinglish and childishness

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

I used caps to emphasize THREE words. E-mail does not allow for italics or 
boldface, so upper-casing them is an acceptable method of highlighting them. 
Only someone who was bent on misinterpreting the intent of the writer would have 
characterized that usage as "screaming." Could we please keep the level of 
discourse here to that of adults? Ditto for the puerile comment about the 
imagined sex lives of list-serv participants.

As for the description of "the alphabetic principle" as discussed on 
wikipedia [!], this is a common-sense description that bears little resemblance to the 
use of "the alphabetic principle" as enunciated by the truespel guy. In 
particular, the wiki article writes, "All alphabetic writing systems are 
imperfectly phonological and diverge from that ideal to a greater or lesser extent." The 
truespel guy's "alphabetic principle" more or less requires everyone to make 
the same 1:1 correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. Think, for 
example, of his ridiculous position on the merger of "ah" and "aw".

Oh, and how can someone living in China really believe that it is 
"impossible" for younmg people to memorize huge numbers of nonalphabetic symbols in order 
to make use of a writing system.

> From: LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> 
> Date:         Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:35:34
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] Chinglish
> 
> 
> What the hell?
> 
> 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!
> >
> >
> > **************
> > It's only a deal
> > if it's where you want to go. Find your travel deal here.
> >
> > (http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Jilin City, China
> My Manchu studies blog:
> http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 
> 




**************
It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel 
deal here.
      
(http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)

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