LL-L "Orthography" 2006.01.07 (02) [E]

Sat Jan 7 22:34:01 UTC 2006

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 07 January 2006 * Volume 02
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2005.12.27 (01) [E]

>From: "Dave Singleton" <davidsin at pt.lu>
>Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2005.12.26 (04) [E]
>
>I am glad that someone finally accepts that "would of" is in fact dialect
>
I didn't say that at all.

>From: "Global Moose Translations" <globalmoose at t-online.de>
>Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2005.12.26 (04) [E]
>
>Sandy wrote:
>
>>At the same time, I think it's a mistake to treat the usual written
>>forms of the language as sacrosanct or "standard", because there are
>>often gross inconsistencies and inefficiencies in them due to the
>>difficulty in persuading people to allow them to evolve. The problems in
>>English orthography are particularly bad.
>
>Quoting http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxwhat04.html:
>
>What is "ghoti"?
>by Jim Scobbie
>
>It's an alternative spelling of "chestnut". :-)  O.K., it's
>"fish", re-spelled by a Victorian spelling-reform advocate to
>demonstrate the inconsistency of English spelling:  "gh" as in
>"cough", "o" as in "women", "ti" as in "nation".
>  
Don't imagine my mention of inconsistencies and inefficiencies in 
English orthography is anything to do with ghoti arguments!

I think spellings like <-tion> in English make sense. OK, it's 
irregular, but it's so very frequently used that nobody has any trouble 
with it, because everyone's so familiar with it. It also uses the same 
spelling as the original Latin, as does French, so preserves a genuine 
and easily recognisable link with the romance languages which makes it 
easier for English speakers to make a start on learning other romance 
languages and vice versa. While preserving links with other languages is 
probably not one of the aims of a good spelling system, if it does no 
harm for a spelling to be irregular, it might as well be irregular in a 
useful way! I think Shaw (or whoever thought of it) is perhaps being 
overly passionate in their arguments for extreme spelling reform.

I think the "ghoti" people are arguing from the position that a good 
spelling system is merely a matter of phonemics: the closer the spelling 
comes to the sound of the language, the better. But I think there are 
many examples in real languages that show that less phonemic, more 
grammatically-derived features often make sense, as long as it doesn't 
get too complicated. For example, the way aspirations are spelled in 
Gaelic isn't phonemic (two different spellings can correspond to one 
sound) and yet makes more sense than a phonemic approach, but in Welsh 
the aspiration (or mutation) system is more complex so a grammatical 
approach would make for complicated spelling rules and a purely phonemic 
system is used instead.

An example from English is the spelling of plurals, where <s> is written 
for both /s/ and /z/ without confusion.

Another way for spellings to be irregular in a useful way is to make 
them more economical. For example, in English we write "be", "we", "he" 
"she" rather than the more regular "bee" "wee" "hee" "shee". Again, this 
is acceptable because these words are so common that sheer familiarity 
overcomes any problems. The fact that they're very common words also 
makes it a worthwhile economy!

I also think that irregularities aren't important in rare words. There 
is no point in regularising exotic and unusual borrowings from other 
languages, for example, if most English speakers would be so 
unaccustomed to them that they'd more likely be copying them over from 
somewhere than using them from their active vocabulary.

When I talk about spelling reform in English I'm thinking more about 
regularising the middle ground: words that have spellings that cause 
real difficulties due to a combination of their origins being obscure 
and their usage not being frequent enough for people to quickly get to 
know them like old friends.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2005.12.28 (01) [E]

>From: "heather rendall" <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
>Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2005.12.27 (01) [E]
>
>Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>  
>>But when an enthusiastic convert suggested that 'ghoti'
>>    
>would be a reasonable way to spell 'fish' under the old system
>[...], the subject seemed about to be engulfed in the ridicule from
>which Shaw was determined to save it."  We have not been able to
>trace the name of the "enthusiastic convert". <
>
>I have heard it attributed to Lewis Carroll as one of his spelling riddles
>for children.
>It is the kind of thing that would have delighted him - as it reveals the
>absurdity / inconsistency of English spelling.
>  
But Lewis Carroll is a weird ghoti! He used spellings like "wo'n't" and 
"sha'n't" because it bothered him that in these words one missing letter 
was indicated with an apostrophe but not another.

The trouble with these logicians is that they don't seem to realise that 
a system is only logical if it's logical everywhere. By his logic, ev'ry 
singl' silent let'er wou'd hav' to be sho'n by an apostrophe!

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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