rvpalliende (07/22/82)
Why do so many people believe that spelling is the same as language? As my Anth103 prof remarked in the first class, the course (The Nature Of Language) would only deal with spoken language, because spelling is only a representation ov language. Moreover there is at least one language with two completely different spellings. Serbo-Croatian may be spelled either in Roman or Cyrillic(sp?) characters, but the language continues to be the same. English spelling is human indeed, being unpredictable and static. Spelling island with an "s" is simply repeating an error forever. Is that really necessary? What I resent the most is the judging ov a person by his/her/its/their spelling as if there weren't more important things in life. (Ov course, that last comment isn't language related, but culture related.)
dssg (07/22/82)
'Spelling island with an "s" is simply repeating an error forever.' What a crock! Spelling island without an "s" (iland? ailand? eyelund? ilnd?) is the error! Have you ever seen a phonetic alphabet or language? Next you'll be criticising the structure of the grammar, and we will have another die-hard Loglan advocate on our hands. I suppose that before I get right into this I should give a couple of caveats: I have no idea what (if anything) originally spawned rpvalliende's message; and I am the first to admit that English spelling is at times far from logical. Read on at your own peril. In the first place, spelling has nothing to do with the spoken language. It has to do with the written language. Anyone who feels that the language; it is the written language. Rarely are the two the same, and for that matter it would be a great loss if they were. Anyone who feels that the two are or should be is the same kind of person whose news articles are filled with small i's standing alone, and uncapitalised first words of sentences, and numerous random punctuation marks like '...', and apostrophe-less contractions, and so on. Every time I see such a mess, my eyes wince in pain and my brain strains to seek out the true meaning. Surely there can be nothing more dignified than the honest effort to transmit information from one soul to another, except maybe the elevation of that effort to the point of making it via a permanent record, to be standardised and respected as a mode of communication. It is, after all, the written language that raises us above the level of savages, and makes civilisation possible; to bastardise such a tradition with vagrancies of the moment and laziness of finger seems like vandalism to me. Then there is pronunciation. If anyone feels that a written word (no matter how phonetically spelt) can have only one pronunciation, I invite him to visit the Ottawa Valley, New Jersey, Alabama, and Texas, to name a few. Far more important, however, than person or place, is the time. Evolution of the spoken language is at once the most subtle and the largest factor in affecting pronunciation; it is far-reaching and unpredictable. Ancient English was spoken in a manner far different than today, even more so than the spelling may indicate. Vowel sounds are particularly hard to fix and/or categorise, and what I think of as naturally being an 'ai' sound can easily be interpreted by others as 'e', 'i', 'a', or various double-vowel constructs to numerous to mention. Twenty or even ten years from now the spoken language may have evolved into a form that differs from today's in many ways, but hopefully no moron will have made phonetic spelling the rule and what I write now will still be understood. True, nothing can be permanent, and any Shakespeare fan will admit to the difficulty; but think of trying to understand phonetic Shakespeare! In the third place, to me it is a point of honour to correctly spell every word I write. This is not my language, and if I randomly decide how words I think are peculiar should be spelt, I have descended to the level of the man who scrawls an 'X' for his signature. Okay, so upward compatibility may not be an all-encompassing rule. But even given the chance to alter every person on the globe's idea of what correct English spelling is, I don't think enough would be gained, and far too much would be lost. The 'peculiar' spelling of some words is more often than not a hint as to the origin of the word -- if dictionaries are used as sources of information rather than as the slap of the teacher's rule, insights into meaning can leap from the page. I really didn't mean this article to be as hot as it may sound, but working in this field has put me in far too much contact with disrespect for the written language. Respectfully yours, Mark Ingram CCNG (Distributed Systems)
rodolf (07/24/82)
I think what is just as important to remember, however, is that if a language is to be represented (i.e., spelling) there must be an agreed-upon convention, namely, that a specific idea be represented in a specific manner (spelling). To flout these conventions invites criticism. To stifle the argument concerning color and colour, humor and humour that I know will be forthcoming, I point out that already in many European countries there are two forms of "English": English English and American English. If you are trying to form an alternate language, you may try, but I suggest a little more backing might be in order. Rick Lindsley uwvax!rodolf