Let pupils abandon spelling rules, says academic

I actually think that they're not that far apart, Merry. [Hope you're completely recovered]

I've kinda lost track of where it's been going, not to demean anyone's arguments, but I don't think there's a snowballs chance in hell of English moving to a phonetic system.

Robert, I applaud you for your open-mindedness and willingness to accept and allow the **** to fly. There are few site owners whose finger sits on the trigger that would do so.

Where the hell is the clap emoticon? Ans why the hell is my computer telling me I mispelled it. Damn prescriptive computer.

I still think Merry has a point and that hurling **** ruins threads. It's something I find frustrating to see good discussions degrade into.

I agree.

No, it isn't a euphemism. Incidents of people coming here to post extravagant religious or political rants are pretty rare. Some members, who for sake of discretion i will not name, who continue to post loony religious or political rants i just eventually ignore. In about 99% of cases in which there is unpleasantness between me and another member, there has been an incident with that member which has lead me to consider that i no longer owe the even ordinary civility.

It is hilarious to me though, that you take a high moral tone with me while essentially doing the same thing you accuse me of doing. There are some fools who i will suffer, and you happen to be one of them. I come to see now that you apparently have a penchant for being a jerk, because this is not the first time that you have attacked me, and in an unwarranted manner. In particular, i recall the incident when you leapt to the defense of a member whom i had criticized because he said another member should not be allowed to reproduce because of her religious convictions. You hauled all sorts of wild and silly accusations out of some obscure closet of yours attempting to discredit me, such as a claim that i have touted myself an expert on the French language, which i have never done. It apparently takes a jerk to know a jerk.



Note the relevant verb, "to think." You appear far less of a jerk when you offer your opinion as opinion, and not an ex cathedra pronouncement. Note that in my statement, which you have referred to as absolutism and bombast i used the verb (and it was intentional) "to believe." Note also that i did so because i understood you to be saying that a lack of phonetic standards in orthography plays a part in the production of divergent dialects (oh do, master, forgive my lack of precision previously--if you can do sarcasm, so can i). I continue to believe that a lack of phonetic standards in orthography cannot reasonably be said to play a part the production of divergent dialects. I would urge you to describe the method by which the maintenance of phonetic standards in orthography would mitigate against dialect--i doubt that you can come up with anything plausible. So your claim that you were showing me that a lack of phonetic standards in orthography plays a part in the production of dialect is false, you have shown me no such thing. At such time as you demonstrate that a lack of phonetic standard in orthography can play a part in the rise of dialect you will have case--so far, you have none.

This is more or less the my argument, except that i have qualified it by pointing out that texting and the internet may eventually have this effect--at least to the extent that those who obsess over text messages and online chat could come to any agreement about what were a phonetic system. I suspect, though, that, for example, the Chavs in England and the "Boyz" on the street in the United States would be as likely to remain incomprehensible to one another in those media as they probably are now in speech.

how did I manage to stay out of this shitfest?

Karma dictates at least some shitstorms happen to other classmates.

Nite Boyz...

Most logic shown so far.

All it takes is for enuf people to stop supporting the error
of the old orthografic paradime in favor of something better,
and BINGO a paradime shift occurs.





David

David, it isn't as simple as you make it out to be. There are things about language that you clearly do not understand.

Yeah, but at times, he's wonderfully entertaining. I never got him to explain how writing "thay" is superior to writing "they."

The fact that even Americans could understand David's post shows how irrelevant the rules of grammar are.

The rules of grammar, the real rules, are highly relevant, FoW, and even David has a firm grasp of them. In fact, as I mentioned, even a fool like H2oman has a firm grasp of the rules of language.

It's the prescriptions, the old wives tales, the canards, ones that David, on occasion brings up, that are totally irrelevant.

Not to resurrect a thread casually, but after reading through all of that I couldn't resist.

After reading through, I was left feeling like you have all made an assumption which I think needs to be challenged. You have assumed that the written language needs to be changed to match the spoken language rather than the other way around. I think that the written language is the more important one, and speech is simply one way of expressing it. Although my day to day job relies on creating things that people have specified in writing, so I may be slightly biased, as I spend most of my time simply trying to get them to clarify exactly what they mean, and record it.

Maybe 30, or even 20, years ago the spoken language was much more important, but in this day and age, the written language is at least as important as the spoken, if not more so. However, as the written language doesn't have the immediacy of the spoken, it needs the complexity to be able to convey meaning correctly.

If I write something, I want to know that the person reading it, understands it in exactly the same way that I intended. The whole purpose of having standardised spelling and grammar, is to enable just that. A simplified, or fully phonetic, language would remove a lot of the tools that allow me to do that, as it is weighted much more towards the spoken word than the written.

A lot of the complexity, and quirks, provide some much needed disambiguation. A relatively simple example of bare and bear, these two different words happen to sound the same, so a phonetic language would have them spelled the same way as well. However, that would make a reader unable to distinguish them. You may be able to infer the meaning from the context, but you would never be sure, one hundred percent, that the person reading it would choose the correct version. Spelling them differently clarifies to the reader which of the two words was intended with no ambiguity whatsoever. If getting it wrong meant the difference between entering a room containing either a naked person, or a wild animal, you would want to be sure they got it right first time!

Spoken English, does not need this as much. Along with being able to gauge an immediate reaction, there are many ways of conveying additional meaning such as tone, emphasis, pauses, even facial expressions or hand gestures can be used for clarity. All of these things need to be conveyed, somehow, in the written form of the language. This makes it, necessarily, more complex than the spoken.

An example was given earlier about the possibility of a great writer who has never written due to not being certain of the language, however, a great writer may never have their work spoken aloud. It's written to be read, not necessarily spoken. Also if each reader interpreted the text in a different way to that which the original author intended, as the language was too simple to express their meanings clearly, the chances of them becoming a great author would be slim.

I reject conventional spelling because it is defective to the extent that it is not fonetic.
We need to improve it to render it fonetic and teach it that way
in schools, as the Spanish do, but I accept and practice most of
the rules of grammar because most of them r logical.

That does not include the rule against splitting infinitives,
because we r speaking ENGLISH, not Latin. Hence, I have no respect for that rule.





David

David, you keep forgetting that many of us are used to different accents than yours. We are speaking English, but since it doesn't necessarily sound the same your approach to phonetics doesn't make your posts any more readable. In fact, as I've told you before, there are times I can't make sense of your posts because of your use of phonetic spelling.

Watch a Britcom sometime, or a Bollywood movie - transcribe the dialogue phonetically - see what happens.

Don't take this the wrong way, but you're a confused chickenshit, David. You didn't spell phonetically when you practiced law.

Of course you accept and practice most, probably much closer to almost all of the rules of grammar. if you didn't, you be a gibbering idiot. But I think that you're mistakenly thinking of a number of prescriptions as rules of grammar. They aren't.

I certainly have never suggested that either the written language or the spoken language have to be changed to approximate or match the other, Sooty.

But that has been one of the central and terribly confused notions of prescriptivists for centuries.

Both are important, both have their place. Neither should be measured against the other.

Understood.

I believe that in time,
all English will be spoken like Tom Brokaw (or me)
because of electronic communications; we shall see.

ANYWAY, there can be no logical justification for
adding the letters UGH to the word tho,
nor to spell the word enuf as : enough.

Most respectfully, I must believe that u can and do
know what I mean when I write u instead of you or r instead of are.
I am 100% confident that your intelligence is far above
the level that it needs to be to understand that, regardless of those accents that u mentioned.





David

Not a snowball's chance in hell, David.