rvpalliende (12/04/82)
The MAD Programmer (alias Curtis Jackson) says
2) if you [alice!danny] are, (as i assume you are), trying to credit the English
language with some form of consistency, I strongly suggest that you
move to a country speaking Spanish or some other HALFWAY sane language.
You will have to accept English primarily as it is, or you will be
changing the whole thing to NEWSPEAK. Witness these pronunciations:
(All with the root "ough")
cough cof
bough bow /* sorry that i don't have characters to
rough ruf show pronunciation correctly, use your
thorough therO imagination. */
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A language and its spelling are independent things. Will ever people
realize that? You can have a nice spelling for an awful language and vice
versa. What if danny moved to a country where Spanish were spoken but most of
its population were illiterate? Then the "sanity" of Spanish spelling would
be of no use. Before the infamous Dr. Samuel Johnson, English had the
spellings "det", "iland", "forein". When he suggested using "debt", "island"
and "foreign" the language didn't become more insane, only the spelling did.
danny is not suggesting that English has some consistency. He only says
that the speakers assume the consistency. This has always been true, and many
inconsistencies are now regularized. Long ago the accepted plural of "book" was
"beek". Even today we have the possibility of saying "spelled" or "spelt".
BTW, Spanish spelling is more "sane" than in other languages because usage
has always supported the view that pronunciation is the overriding criterion
for spelling, requiring small changes to the spelling of some words from time
to time. In Spanish the move was from "dubda" to "duda", whereas in English
(thanks to Dr. Johnson) it was backwards from "dout" to "doubt". But don't
believe that Spanish spelling is perfect. You almost always can read aloud new
words (not so in English), but when you hear a new word you can't always tell
its spelling. This implies that the average Spanish speller does make spelling
mistakes, (although not as many as the average English speller).
Pablo Alliende.danny (12/06/82)
Well said, Pablo. But make spelling errors in Spanish!? !No es berdad! No ay posivilida'. ?Como ce podria aserlo?
rhm (12/07/82)
Enough, please, of well-known (but erroneous facts about English). Every claim about the English language that Senhor Alliende made seems to be incorrect. 1. The spellings "debt" and "doubt" were essentially universal by 1600 and appear in Shakespeare and the King James Bible, three generations before Samuel Johnson. 2. The spelling "foreign" with a "g" occurs commonly in Shakespeare. 3. According to the O.E.D., the spelling "island" was the customary spelling beore 1700. (Johnson was born in 1709). 4. The plural of "book" was never "beek". Try any Old English Grammar.