LL-L "Orthography" 2003.09.24 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

======================================================================
L O W L A N D S - L * 24.SEP.2003 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
http://www.lowlands-l.net * lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
Rules & Guidelines: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules
Posting Address: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org
Server Manual: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html
Archives: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8) [Please switch your view mode to it.]
=======================================================================
You have received this because you have been subscribed upon request.
To unsubscribe, please send the command "signoff lowlands-l" as message
text from the same account to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or
sign off at http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================
A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
=======================================================================

From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> Actually, I think the problem with English Orthography is its internal
> chaos. To make things worse 400 of our most common words are spelled
> eccentrically! Many languages have more internally consistent systems that

This is an example of one of those statistical results which, while perhaps
completely accurate as pure statistics, gives a completely false impression
when put into words. To state the truth about this it's not enough to give a
one-sentence summary (with unexplained terms like "spelled eccentrically"),
you have to show just what the spelling problems are.

One spelling which is considered eccentric in this 400 is "the". Now, if I
were asked to spell this phonemically, I would write "thi", while other
people would write "thee". I don't think that these are any more helpful
than the "eccentric" spelling.

The statement also seems to imply that somehow it's a bad thing that the
most common words in the language don't have regular spellings. In fact this
matters less than with the most common words, as people are so familiar with
common words that it doesn't much matter if they're spelled irregularly.
Common words also tend to be small words, so that the irregularities can
only be slight.

Some more examples of eccentric spellings of common words are "be", "we",
"he", "she" and "me", which spelled regularly should be "bee", "wee", "hee",
"shee" and  "mee". The scribe's idea here is that since they're very common
words you're better off keeping them short. Other words like this are "to"
and "do".

In some of these, orthographic revision may be desirable, eg, "walk", talk",
"would", "could", "one", "two", "were". Others might make the English look
odd (which isn't a problem in itself, if everyone is open-minded enough
(which they aren't, alas!)), eg, "of", "is", "was", "as", "are", "have".

But I think it would be wrong to say that such words are problematic, or
"make things worse", as you say. Such common words are used so often they
become completely familiar to all readers.

As usual there are genuine problem areas, eg, confusion of "they're",
"their" and "there", but this, being homophone confusion, is a different
thing.

There may be 400 irregularly spelled common words, but this doesn't mean
there are 400 problematically spelled common words.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

> 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.

Your reasons being what? You haven't addressed the point I made about
faster-turnaround publications being more poorly spelled both now and in the
past.

> 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,

I don't think there's much point in putting children through the old
continuous drilling in multiplication and division and so forth. These days
it's enough to understand what arithmetical operations mean, and to be able
to do them in their less time-consuming forms.

> 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.

Hmmm... well, I don't know what you do, so I really need an explanation of
where you get the opportunity to judge educational standards on a wide
enough basis to compare the two countries.

To stick with my own academic subject, higher education in mathematics in
Scotland is often said to be better than in England because the mathematics
is built up on theoretical foundations that prepare the way for advanced
mathematical research. I did run into this at my Scottish university, where
in first-year tutorials the English students were so backward on
fundamentals that a lot of time had to be spent just getting them up to
speed. However, the university monitored these problems and it was
discovered that in second year, the English mathematics students did better
than the Scots. I think this may have been because the English students
learned more mathematics at school than the Scots did, even if they did skip
the theoretical foundations. Then by third year so much mathematics had been
learned in the two previous years that any differences due to the two
educational systems were insignificant. In other words English students were
disadvantages (at first) not so much by their primary/secondary schooling as
simply the fact that they were in a foreign country and had to do things
differently from what they were used to.

I think the English system has definite advantages however. English
secondary mathematics seems to me much more useful for engineering,
accountancy and other more practical applications, and after all, most
schoolchildren won't be going on to do research in mathematics. It might be
better if some of the fundementals taught in Scotland were better left to
the universities. Perhaps the best path for a mathematician would be to go
to school in England and university in Scotland (and do their postgrad work
in the US :)!

As for standards of English, it may be possible that since many of Scots
children go to school speaking Scots and actually have to be taught English,
their English may seem better, or at least more "schooled", but I can't see
how this effect could occur in Glasgow, where children already all speak
English.

> 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.

What do you mean by imprssve? I don't understand this word, it's not in my
dictionary. Have you been reading The Times again?  :)

I think you're setting up a straw man here, however. My argument was that
education is better nowadays, and you've replied that it's still not as good
as it could be. This doesn't change the fact that it's still better.

> 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.

Well, since you keep labouring this point, could you substantiate this also?
Has anything been done to measure the frequency of different types of errors
in publications in various languages? I'm sure The Times isn't "so full" of
such stuff that people stop buying it or have trouble understanding it.

I also think you've completely bypassed my point that everyone makes
(including yourself, I've just noticed :) spelling mistakes no matter what
their education, it's more a question of whether they care to spend enough
time in eradicating them all.

> "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.

The differences between American and English spelling don't originate with
Noah Webster, who completely revised English orthography for his origianl
dictionary. He learned 26 languages, living and dead, that he felt would
help him to cast light on how English should really be spelled, and when his
dictionary was published, no one was interested. Merriam bought the rights
and re-published it in more or less British spelling. The bulk of
differences between British and American spellings originate, as I said,
with the Chicago Tribune.

> '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?

soz, bt i thk ftr lies w txtg! ol nglsh b wrtn lk ths wthr u lk it or nt!
wot foolsh we shl fl wn we look bk @ orthargs n c hw mch tm we wstd argg abt
smthg now cmplty obslt! thr shl b no fll stps or cmmas jst xclmn mrks!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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


Kevin wrote:

"'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)."

No, <gram> is the English spelling favoured by the Oxford English
Dictionary, with <gramme. mentioned as an alternative. You are right though,
the Merriem-Webster Dictionary gives <gram>. as the standard American usage,
and considers <gramme> to be British. I should have realized because I knew
about <program> (US) versus <programme>.

"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."

This is interesting, because  pronouncing <Jesus'> as only two syllables is
very uncommon in the UK. You may have noted that Sandy also mentions that he
does not pronounce two syllables in his Scots dialect.
H.W Fowler in his 'A Dictionary of Modern Usage' (1926) writes under the
heading of 'Possessive Puzzles':

"1. Septimus's, Achiles's. It was formerly customary, when a word ended
in -s to write its possessive with an apostrophe but no additional s, e.g.
Mars' Hill, Venus' Bath, Achilles' thews. In verse, & in poetic or
reverential contexts, this custom is retained, & the number of syllables is
the same as in the subjective case, e.g. Achilles' has three, not four:
Jesus' or of Jesus, not Jesus's. But elsewhere we now add the s & the
syllable, Charles's Wain, St. James's not St. James', Jones's children, the
Rev. Septimus's surplice, Pythagoras's doctrines."

The spelling of <Jesus'> appears to have been considered an exception; in
'Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford'
(15th ed., 1904) we find the following: "...and Jesus' is a well-known
liturgical archaism." The 'New English Bible' of the 1960s, however, writes
<Jesus's> which definitely indicates a pronunciation of three syllables.

I surfed through a number of US grammar websites and it is intersting to
note that the rules about adding just an apostrophe or an apostrophe and s
to nouns ending in s seem to be more rigorously prescribed over there. These
days in the UK it is more or less left to the writer to decide whether to
add an apostrophe or apostrophe plus s, and there is a definite trend
towards the former. In the US the rule seems to be to add both apostrophe
and s hence adding the extra syllable, unless adding the extra syllable
seems awkward, thus it would be correct to write < Jesus' > and < Moses' >,
and both words would have two syllables whether nominative or genitive.

One point that I have just realized is that getting rid of the apostrophe s
(in a spelling reform) would be perfectly tenable except in one case: where
you have a plural genitive / possessive of a word ending in -s. When we
write <the brother's sons>, we are referring to the two or more sons of one
brother; when we write <the brothers' sons> we are speaking of the two or
more sons of two or more brothers! I am not quite sure how we could solve
that without killing the construction altogether (and writing <the sons of
the brothers>).

Regards,

John
Preston, UK.

----------

From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2003.09.21 (02) [E]

John Duckworth wrote:

"Foreigners whose native language is not English often
have (understandable) problems with our spelling, but
are often flawless in their grammar."

Grammar? One of the strengths of English worldwide is
that it has a fairly malleable grammar - one can move
things around in a sentence and still be understand,
whereas in other languages (I'm thinking of the Celtic
languages in particular here) you might completely
alter the meaning of your sentence. For example, as a
native Nottingham English speaker, I always have
difficulty with constructions like John's "stirring up
a hornet's nest" - is it "stirring up a hornet's nest"
or "stirring a hornet's nest up"? (I'd say the
latter.) I've been pulled on on this on a number of
occasions by snobbish types accusing me of the "wrong"
grammar. Invariably I felt like shit afterward.

Essentially arguments about "flawless" this and
"flawed" that in language are snobbish. If someone
says "ain't" or "int" as opposed to "is not" they are
not being "flawed" in their usage, and it really
doesn't help to promote the idea of "good" and "bad"
language usage which is more often than not
sociological rather than linguistic in origin and
intent.

If a speaker cannot be understood that is another
matter, but a socialised standard of spoken (as
opposed to written) grammar has plagued English for
hundred of years.

Criostóir.

----------

From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2003.09.22 (07) [E]

All this talk of the accuracy of orthography has led
me to remind you of the 'Gaelic Problem'.

Until the 1920s, Irish and Scottish Gaelic shared a
single long-established orthography but their sounds
had slowly been evolving away from each other. In 1922
the Government of the Irish Free State instigated a
spelling reform (completed in the 1960s I believe) so
that Irish could be 'better rendered' in Latin - as
opposed to Gaelic - script.

Many long-established words were abbreviated so that
their orthography matched their phonetics more
closely, e.g., ceathramha > ceathrú 'a quarter', nuadh
> nua 'new', although many others were left as they
were even though their spelling was now completely
misleading, e.g. uisce 'water' [iSk@], tusa 'you,
emph.' [tos@], tabhair 'give' [to:r], agus 'and'
[@g at s], etc.

The consequence is that Irish spelling still isn't
accurate, but that Irish speakers find Scottish Gaelic
full of pointless consonants that they no longer know
how to pronounce - a wedge between two thirds of the
Gaelic world. (Scottish Gaelic poetry is published in
Irish language journals such as Comhar and An tUltach
but it is always accompanied with a lengthy glossary
rendering the exercise somewhat futile.)

Manx Gaelic uses a modified English orthography, and
whether that should transfer to a more recognisably
Gaelic one is another debate altogether - Irish and
Scottish Gaelic can only really read Manx with
practice (e.g., Ir. and Sc. neamh 'heaven' is niau in
Manx, the definite article a' or an is y, 'but', ach,
is agh, 'give' (déanamh) is jannoo in Manx, and so
on), and the effect has been to sever Manx from the
Irish and Scottish Gaelic literati.

The Gaelic Problem typifies the outrageous misfortunes
languages can suffer due to unnecessary and necessary
orthographical tampering.

Criostóir.

================================END===================================
* Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
* Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.
* Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
* Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l") are
  to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at
  http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================