AP: Spelling Bee protesters

[Wilson Gray]

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:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: AP: Spelling Bee protesters
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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