LL-L "Orthography" 2003.02.19 (04) [E]

Wed Feb 19 15:33:40 UTC 2003

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2003.02.14 (10) [E]
Ian wrote:

"Not sure I was explaining myself properly! The fact remains, indisputably,
that
_judgment_/_judgement_, _queuing_/_queueing_,
_realise_/_realize_ etc are all valid alternatives in
Standard British English, regardless of which may be
predominant."

No - you explained yourself properly. I just disagreed with you. (These
things happen.)

What's more, I still believe your assertion is fundamentally flawed.
Shifting terminology descriptions away from "correct" (ugh) or "appropriate"
word options in non-US English to descriptions of the same as "valid
alternatives" is just a game of catch-me-if-you-can. "Judgment" isn't a
valid alternative to "judgement" in Non-US English, unless you are quoting a
US English speaker - and dictionaries merely display both so-called options
because Non US-English speakers have to be advised of the US English
equivalent even if, in nearly all circumstances, the US word would be
"corrected". This is especially true in Australian and (I suspect) Canadian
dictionaries.

If you really believe that "judgment", "queuing" and other such forms are
"valid alternatives" (like "labor", "color", "defense" I presume?), write
letters using them to as many British journals, newspapers, etc., as you can
and see how many are published unaltered. Seeing the film title "Terminator
2: Judgment Day" a lot doesn't mean that the spelling "judgment" has any
whatsoever in Non US-English, for example.

They may be valid alternatives in theory, but that doesn't make them valid
in fact. That's not a case of predominance (although it might once have
been) - it's just a case of conditioned usage.

Go raibh maith agat

Criostóir.

----------

From: John M. Tait <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2003.02.15 (02) [E]

Sandy wrote:
>
>I think this is touching upon why orthographic issues
>can be so detrimental to progress in the Scots language
>movement - there are so many people who _won't_ accept
>a system with established variations as a standard. John
>Magnus has sometimes quoted the example of a Scots writer
>who, in a Scots spelling committee meeting, had a hissy
>fit over whether 'bield' should be spelled that way or as
>'bield' (whereas it should actually be spelled 'beeld',
>and anyone who thinks otherwise can step outside... :)

Did you mean 'bield' and 'beild'? Whatever it is, I've forgotten all about
it...

However, you have to distinguish here between a matter of personal
preference (the spellings 'beild' and 'bield' reflect the positions of the
RWS and Scotscrieve schools of thought respectively) and one where these two
spellings  are used in the system for different phonemes. If you use 'ei'
for words like 'heid', 'deid', 'deif', etc, it doesn't make sense to use it
in words like 'bield' and 'leet', 'meenister', because these belong do a
different historical, and so diaphonological, class.
>
>Recently I think we've seen that there are also people
>who are prepared to use orthographic arguments as a
>weapon. In the recent translation effort for the Scottish
>Parliament, for example, one group set up such things as
>the fact that 'meinister' &c should be spelled 'minister'
>as an argument against the rival translation. They seemed
>happy to change it to 'meinister' in their own translation
>once a certain milestone in their progress had been achieved,
>however. I think the important thing to learn from this is
>that once we've agreed to use a traditional spelling system
>there has to be some tolerance about orthography or else it
>just gives some people a way of kicking up a trivial argument
>whenever things aren't going their way.

I don't see that tolerance in orthography is going to alleviate this
situation, because however tolerant I am, somebody else can always be
intolerant, and use this attitude to achieve the result you describe above.
In other words, the intolerants can always complain about the spelling of
the tolerant, and use this to establish their own spelling. It wouldn't have
mattered how tolerant the writers of the first translation thought
themselves to be, they were still vulnerable to the same attack, in that
however they spelt a certain word, somebody else could always pick on that
as a way of supplanting them. You might reply that it would be necessary
only for the 'tolerants' to agree to adapt, but as you know, the real
purpose of this exercise was not adaptation but takeover, and nothing less
would have satisfied the political exigencies involved.

What makes the example above particularly ironic is that those who did the
complaining came from a school of thought which has always ostensibly
regarded spelling as irrelevant. This means that, by refusing to engage in
any debate about spelling, you can be as intolerant about it as suits your
ends at any particular time. This is amply illustrated by the former SNDA.

John M. Tait.

http://www.wirhoose.co.uk

----------

From: Thomas <t.mcrae at uq.net.au>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2003.02.14 (04) [E]

on 19/2/03 1:25, Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
> As I had seen "Australian Labor Party"
> plastered everywhere, I naively presumed the convention was to drop the
/u/
> in "colour" et al and proceeded to "correct" the spelling of about thirty
> essays so. My wife, when she discovered what I had done, laughed her head
> off and then groaned.
Wee bitty oaff key here Mate. The word 'Labor' is actually more correct than
your English 'Labour' and in fact predates your title by many years. The
Queensland Labor Party, first in the world,  was founded long before the
British equivalent. 'Labor' was derived from the Latin verb
"Laboro-Laborare" To Work.
I have read claims that the British use of '....our' was a pandering to
French at the time of Johnson's 'Lexicon'. While I use the 'ou (eg colour)'
as routine and will continue to do so the American '...or' (eg Color) may
well be more akin with Latin endings.
I shall now duck from incoming missiles. :-)
Regards
Tom
Tom Mc Rae PSOC
Brisbane Australia
"The masonnis suld mak housis stark and rude,
To keep the pepill frome the stormes strang,
And he that fals, the craft it gois all wrang."
>From 15th century Scots Poem 'The Buke of the Chess'

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