LL-L "Orthography" 2003.09.22 (10) [E]

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From: kcaldwell31 at comcast.net <kcaldwell31 at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2003.09.22 (01) [E]

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> 'read' (past participle of 'read', another anomaly) rhymes
> with 'red', while the infinitive 'to read' rhymes with 'mead' and (the
verb)
> 'lead', the past participle of which, 'led' rhymes with 'dead'.

I see more and more instances of people writing the past tense of 'lead'
as 'lead'.

> 'School'
> might be from Greek via Latin, but English has received it from its

> Anglo-Saxon ancestor, and it starts with the curious combination sch-
> (virtually limited to Latin loanwords) and rhymes with (Romance) 'rule'

I can think of plenty of Yiddish loanwords that start with sch-, although
the
pronunciation of sch- in those words differs from its pronunciation in
'school'.

> Why should 'right' be spelled as it is when we have the word
> 'write'

Not to mention the word 'rite'.

> I suppose one fairly gentle step we could take in the UK (and in Australia
> and New Zealand where spelling is almost identical to ours) would be to
> follow the lead of the Americans and adopt their simplified spellings:
> aging, ardor, harbor, armor, behavior, defense, fiber, maneuver, meter,
> pediatric and so on. There might be a few instances where they could adopt
> our spellings (English 'gram' where the US has 'gramme'),

'Gramme' is not an American spelling.  I've always thought of it as a
British
spelling.  The same goes for 'program' (US) vs. 'programme' (UK).

> Usage of the apostrophe 's' has in
> fact been changing since the beginning of the last century, and much
former
> pedantry has been abandoned, but this has left a muddle behind it. The
main
> problem, of course, is where we are dealing with a word, especially a
proper
> noun, in '-s': at one time it was considered proper to write _Jesus'_
> meaning 'of Jesus', while pronouncing the word with two syllables,
identical
> in pronunciation to its nominative form; I can only think of one person on
> television who still does that, and it sounds very odd. Since the rest of
us
> now say _Jesuses_, would it not make sense to write the word thus, or, if
we
> are overly sentimental about the retention of the apostrophe, _Jesus's_?

Interesting.  Most people I know don't say _Jesuses_ (in fact, I don't think
I've ever heard it).  It's still two syllables in the possessive form here
in
the US.  At my church we always end prayers with "in Jesus' name," not "in
Jesus's name," and so on.

[Kevin Caldwell]

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography

Grretings, Lowlanders, one and all!

Sandy wrote:

" o   books have fewer spelling mistakes than weekly magazines, which
have fewer than dailies;
   o   older books have fewer spelling mistakes than modern books."

Yes, I think you are right on both points, and I think the reson for the
second point IS the decline in good education.

"...though the real evidence suggests to me that it's much better than in
the "good old
days."

Here we are looking at a trees and roundabout situation! Some aspects of
education have improved, but others have been all but abandoned. Simple
arithmetic, for instance, has deteriorated dramatically, and this is
partially again down to the widespread use of calculators. I think too,
though, and I have been avoiding saying this so far so as not to appear
fawning (!), education in Scotland is still superior to that in England. Of
course I am not talking about ??lite institutions, but even young people
from comprehensives in Glasgow seem better educated than their peers from
the comprehensives of the North of England or Central London.

"But I think the cost was much too high in human terms. When I was at
school,people who couldn't spell were "thick" and less was expected of them
except possibly in sport and woodwork. Nowadays we know about dyslexia and
don't write people off so easily."

It is laudable that the 'system' has got round to accepting that certain
students have needs over and above those of their fellow pupils. Provisions
should be made for the dyslexic and those with similar problems, but I am
really not sure that the resources are being provided to tend to the needs
of all students, despite many imprssive claims. I am sorry to be so
critical, but I think the dedication of the teaching profession has been
systematically eroded as a result of a number of factors, and 'problem
children' in particular are being left to their own devices.

"The real educational challenge may lie in, on the one hand, giving proper
attention to
children with real, built-in spelling problems, and on the other hand,
teaching children to care about their results."

Perhaps you have hit the nail on the head here. I find a real lack of
self-worth in the children and young people from what are now
euphemistically known as the 'inner cities'. If you value yourself and the
opinion the world at large has of you, you will make an effort to get your
presentation right. Many of these young people, unfortunately, are only
concerned with gaining the respect of a small clique of their peers, for
whom literacy holds no importance whatsoever. This does not, however, really
answer the question why newspapers and official letters should be so full of
bad spelling and grammar.

I suspect that, as you have pointed out, the transition from typesetting to
automatic systems, and the relative unreliablilty of spellchecks might have
a lot to do with this. I once had to correct a book being typeset (in
English) in Ankara; the printers knew no English whatsoever, and I can't
describe how difficult and laborious the process was reading the words
backwards and correcting them!

"Is your French and Italian equivalent to your English in terms of reading
experience?"

You have phrased this question in a very precise way. I would say that I am
as fluent in French as in English, and maybe slightly less so in Italian,
but if I reply to the exact question: English is such an all-pervasive
language with such a massive literatature of all kinds that there is no way
that my 'reading experience' in any other language I know could equal what I
have acquired in English. Having said this, however, I am sure that I would
spot a spelling-mistake in either French or Italian just as quickly as I
would in English.

In reply to my assertion that learning so many eccentric spellings iss like
memorizing large numbers of visual forms and hence analogous to Chinese
children learning large numbers of characters, Sandy stated:

"True! I can't remember any of this being a problem at school though!"

Neither can I; perhaps that is actually the way most of us learn to read and
write. Many chidrens' brains are so fresh and efficient that few learning
feats are too much for them.

"But not all "American" spellings are used consistently across the USA."

Maybe not - I really don't know the precise details - but most "American"
spelling seem to be used and taught consistently throughout the states, all
the well-known ones. They do seem to follow the conventions of Noah
Webster's dictionary, just as we in the UK are almost certainly following
those of James Murray.

"I also think it would be helpful to abolish capital letters."

A lot of my childhood was spent living in Germany, being taught in German,
and as a result I have always been rather partial to the idea of writing
nouns - proper or otherwise -
with an initial capital letter! I can see, however, that a good case can be
made for writing everything in small letters : anyone with any sense would
after all know when the word 'turkey' denoted a bird and when it was the
name of a country; they would know that 'a balaclava' was different from
'balaclava', the place. As long as punctuation is retained, everyone would
know the beginning of a sentence from the middle of it without a capital
letter. I already see a tendency (perhaps a legacy of text-messaging and
e-mails) to dispense with capitals, especially in the word 'I', so who knows
what the future holds for capitalization?

About Welsh Orthography Sandy wrote:

"I think <u> is still pronounced differently in the north, but I'm not
familiar with northern dialects of Welsh."

It is not pronounced as a lip-rounded [u] in North Wales, it si pronounced
as a high mid [i]-sound, represented in IPA as an [i] with a bar through it,
and similar to Russian ??. In North Welsh it is the same sound that is
represented by the grapheme <y> (when it is not non-stressed and sound as
schewa).In South Wales, for many speaker, the graphemes <y>, <u> and <i> are
often homophonic. In the North, <i> is still distinct from the other two.

Regards,

John
Preston, UK.

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography

Ron wrote:

"TurkiC languages. "Turkish" is only for Turkish (of Turkey, Cyprus, Greece,
Germany,
etc.)."

Apologies, I did mean TurkiC, it must have been a typo because I am just as
pedantic about it as you!

"All Modern Turkic languages have some very innovative features, and
virtually each one has conservative features of its own, so that
reconstructions (beyond knowledge from ancient documents) requires a
comparative approach."

They may have some innovative features, and outliers such as Chuvash and
Yakut are quite divergent, but when you bear in mind the territory they
cover, and the number of years they have been separated from each other,
surely you would agree that they are very conservative. Most of them have
been influenced by other languages, which makes the sound system of Uzbek,
for instance, slightly divergent.I know I am addressing my argument here to
an expert on Turkic, and especially on Uyghur, but I wonder if you slightly
misunderstand what I mean by 'conservative'? The language of the Turkic
Runic inscriptions seems easy to understand without too much specialized
knowledge, as does that of the kudatku bilig.

"Turkish is particularly innovative (regularizing) with regard to
morphology, though, yes, it is fairly conservative phonologically."

Which is why I decided to give it as an example, and when I spoke of
'conservative' I did mean with regard to phonology, because that was the
most relevant factor when discussing orthography.

Getting back to English Orthography, Ron went on to say:

"Isn't this due to being a highly historic system?  Or are these words
spelled in a truly excentric, unpredictable way?"

The system must have been somewhat haphazard when it was first set down. The
addition of elements from such a wide variety of languages, while attempting
to preserve the orthographic conventions of each language just added to the
mess. I see your point when you compare the age of English orthography to
that of Tibetan and the older Mongolian script: written Tibetan might
actually have more silent letters than English, and the older Mongolian does
contain historical spellings; Tibetan particularly has many Sanskrit
loanwords, but notwithstanding all this I still think English spelling is
more confusing and mixed up. However, it has served us all well for many
years and I dare say that in spite of all my rantings, I would be just as
unhappy to see it go as anyone else!

Regards,

John
Preston, UK.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Orthography

Kevin (above):

> I can think of plenty of Yiddish loanwords that start with sch-, although
the
> pronunciation of sch- in those words differs from its pronunciation in
'school'.

In which case the spelling with <sch> is outmoded.  These days, German-type
orthographic devices are not used for Yiddish outside the German language
area.  Thus, you are supposed to right _shul_ (~ _shool_) instead of _schul_
for 'synagogue', _shtetl_ instead of _schtet(e)l_ or _schtättel_ for 'Jewish
quarter', 'ghetto', _shmir_ or _shmeer_ instead of _schmier_ or _schmeer_
for 'to smear', 'to spread', etc. (I'm leaving out some not so polite ones,
given that today I already got two rejection notices from someone's
naughtiness filter.)

John on Turkic above:

> They may have some innovative features, and outliers such as Chuvash and
Yakut are
> quite divergent, but when you bear in mind the territory they cover, and
the number of
> years they have been separated from each other, surely you would agree
that they are
> very conservative. Most of them have been influenced by other languages,
which makes
> the sound system of Uzbek, for instance, slightly divergent.I know I am
addressing my
> argument here to an expert on Turkic, and especially on Uyghur, but I
wonder if you
> slightly misunderstand what I mean by 'conservative'? The language of the
Turkic
> Runic inscriptions seems easy to understand without too much specialized
> knowledge, as does that of the kudatku bilig.

You are absolutely right, John.  Despite orthographic flaws and foreign
influences (Uzbek having a substantial Iranian, i.e., Tajik, substrate),
Turkic languages are a very cohesive group, and among them mutual
comprehension over vast geographic areas is anywhere between moderate to
excellent.  (Chuvash doesn't really count, is by many seen as representing a
separate, parallel branch, usually known as "Bolghar.")  This is what makes
this group of languages a joy when it comes to reconstruction and to
following the development of semi-free morphemes via enclitics all the way
to harmonic suffixes.  But, alas, this lies outside the Lowlands area.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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