tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post6044358808926425364..comments2024-03-16T00:21:43.240+00:00Comments on Separated by a Common Language: -og and -ogue lynneguisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comBlogger104125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-37056875773306974722019-06-08T11:41:33.792+01:002019-06-08T11:41:33.792+01:00BreE, Scot, mid 60s. To me, lager IS pronounced “l...BreE, Scot, mid 60s. To me, lager IS pronounced “lagger”. In my dialect, TRAP, PALM and BATH are all the same vowel. However, for me, die and dice are different, and quite distinct, vowel sounds. It’s difficult to describe, but the die vowel is a bit like ah-y said quickly, while the dice vowel is more like ih-y, wher is represents the vowel in BIT.Shy-replyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01891566073375322808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-67994287310824905342015-01-24T22:32:15.252+00:002015-01-24T22:32:15.252+00:00I stumbl'd back over this today and see that I...I stumbl'd back over this today and see that I hadn't checkt back to see the answers.<br /><br />@Daved Crosbe … both <i>acer</i> and <i>æcer</i> are found in OE tho <i>æcer</i> is the more common one. In ME we find both acre and aker: <i>In al this londe On aker lond ther nes yfounde</i><br /><br />You're basing all your pronunciations of OE on the LWS (Late West Saxon) dialect as we <i>think</i> they said the words. But as you likely well know, there were many other dialects. In the end, any way you look at it, the 'c' in OE <i>acer, æcer; æce, ace, ece</i> comes out today as hard. In ME the 'ch' is ambiguous … could be 'ch' like in 'loch' or 'ch' as in church. Indeed, OE <i>circ</i> is the root of both today's <i>church</i> and <i>kirk</i>.<br /><br />As for the French influence on spelling such <i>wundor</i> to <i>wonder</i> that was owing to their orthography! There is truly no nay about that. They noted the Carolina script which is described as a more "delicate" script. There could be great confusion with the minims when a 'u' was written next to an 'n', 'm', and 'u' (v). Thus, we now spell words like monk (OE <i>munuc</i>), wonder, love, and so forth with an 'o' rather than 'u'. There are many others like this but slapping French orthography onto Saxon words still haunts us.<br /><br />BTW, <i>thru</i> has been noted formally in the US for over 100 years. See http://anwulf.blogspot.com.ar/2014/08/thru-agin-through-warning-simplified.htmlAnWulfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14561827352709157334noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-16671724125150029382013-06-21T19:06:51.757+01:002013-06-21T19:06:51.757+01:00This is a great blogue.This is a great blogue.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-23207166490067487582013-06-11T14:34:52.132+01:002013-06-11T14:34:52.132+01:00This is a very interesting post! I always thought ...This is a very interesting post! I always thought I should use the -og ending since I'm learning American English, but I will stop. :)Emilie Chevalierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01744557036589323657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-88658992734404434392013-05-16T20:48:54.322+01:002013-05-16T20:48:54.322+01:00Enjoying this comment thread immensely.
Being fro...Enjoying this comment thread immensely.<br /><br />Being from Western Pennsylvania originally: Yes, Pittsburgh is pronounced with a hard "g" at the end. But originally, in the 1700s -- because many of the early settlers were of Scottish origin -- it was pronounced and even spelled something like "Pittsborough" (to rhyme with Edinburgh, Scotland). A few other burghs managed to keep or restore their h's too, such as Plattsburgh, NY. But most did not, even historic ones like Gettysburg, which was "Gettysburgh" 150 years ago, at the time of the battle and Lincoln's famous Address.<br /><br />During the spelling simplification at the turn of the last century, most towns that had the "borough" ending to their name were changed to "boro", such the town (and college, now university there) of Edinboro, Pa. And all of the class of towns in Pennsylvania called "boroughs" began to use the spelling "boro" in some instances such as referring to themselves as "Trafford Boro" (Trafford is the town near which I grew up).<br /><br />As I recall in the 1950s when I was first learning to read, "cigarette" was much more common that "cigaret", and yes, "brunet" was sometimes seen but usually referring to men (like "blond" vs. "blonde"). <br /><br />And yes, we librarians still cling to "catalog" and "cataloging" and "cataloger", one of the last vestiges of Melvil Dui's spelling reform. Yes, he even reformed his own name! I once read the original simplified-spelling version of his introduction to his Classification system. It was not easy, so I started to read it aloud and suddenly realized I was reading in a New England accent -- he was from Massachusetts and that showed in his simplifications. It was much different from my native Pittburghese. No wonder it didn't catch on nationwide.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06889005058758782988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-89935439277879200792013-05-02T18:46:55.750+01:002013-05-02T18:46:55.750+01:00This has always confused me! I have European famil...This has always confused me! I have European family, but I live in America, so I never know which spelling to use! I still get stuck on color vs. colour sometimes as well...<br />Chishttp://www.languageapproach.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-39584128611298736632013-04-22T17:47:00.196+01:002013-04-22T17:47:00.196+01:00Having looked up Middle English spellings for acre...Having looked up Middle English spellings for <i>acre</i> etc today and for <i>dog, log</i> last week, I thought i might as well look up Lynne's words in the OP: <i>catalogue, dialogue, epilogue, monologue, pedagogue, prologue, analogue.</i><br /><br />As far as I can tell, it was pretty chaotic with most words showing a preference for <i>oge</i> except for <i>dialogue</i>. But <i>oge</i> is a very unsatisfactory spelling for anything other than OHDGE. So the <i>ogue</i> spelling preferred by <i>dialogue</i> won out. <br /><br />Yes, there were odd occasional spellings with <i>og</i>, but they are not the direct source of <b>modern</b> <i>og</i> spellings.<br /><br />I'm assuming that the words were all pronounced with a 'hard G'. But maybe they weren't.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-57035467441396171282013-04-22T14:00:11.193+01:002013-04-22T14:00:11.193+01:00AnWulf
He would wonder why you spell 'wundor&...AnWulf<br /><br /><i>He would wonder why you spell 'wundor' so oddly. (That happen'd owing to the spelling rules of the French scribes that first came over with the Normans.)</i><br /><br />The Norman simply wrote what they heard. Besides, not every native scribe followed all of their Frenchified Middle English spellings, and yet none of them wrote <i>wundor</i>.<br /><br />The canon Orm, who was fanatically dedicated to reproducing his pronunciation, spelled the word <i>wunnderr</i>.<br /><br />The substitution of <i>o</i> for <i>u</i> was a device to make writing more legible. The shape of the original was V. Different shapes for U and V came much later. And the way that scribes wrote letters like X,V, M, N was alway causing confusion. The sequence WVN was an extreme instance of potential trouble.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-51824620033897079132013-04-22T13:43:10.103+01:002013-04-22T13:43:10.103+01:00Anwulf
He would change your 'odd' spellin...Anwulf<br /><br /><i>He would change your 'odd' spelling of 'ache' back to 'æce' (later ake) ... That was another academic mistake thinking that the word was rooted in Greek and the 'k' was chang'd to 'ch'.</i><br /><br />Another poor example. The spelling is based on the pronunciation. In Old English, this was something like ATCH-eh. <br /><br />The first vowel letter was <i>æ</i> or <i>e</i>, never <i>a</i> because of the way the language had developed. The consonant was represented by <i>cc</i> or <i>c</i> — neither of which represented a K sound.<br /><br />In Middle English scribes generally adopted the French spelling CH (which did't then have its Modern French value). Later, when the sound changed, some scribes used K, but most just stuck with what was familiar. <br /><br />Indeed, some of the weird regional spelling suggest that the sound of the consonant changed in different places at different times. So it was useful to have a conventional spelling which speakers of all dialects could recognise.<br /><br />There's no need whatsoever to invent a scholarly confusion with Greek.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-82885835121508040952013-04-22T13:00:14.932+01:002013-04-22T13:00:14.932+01:00If you could talk to an Old English scribe he'...<i> If you could talk to an Old English scribe he'd want to "correct" your spelling of 'acre' to the original way it was spell'd ... acer.</i><br /><br />A terrible example.<br /><br /><i>Acer</i> was one of many spellings, and not a typical one. In most parts of England, scribes would spell the first vowel as <i>æ</i>. <i>Ae</i> was also used an <i>e</i> was common enough. <br /><br />All forms other than the subject form ('nominative singular) were pronounced and therefore spelled with an R-sound following a K sound so many scribes were happy to spell the rest of the word <i>-cer</i>. But that was an anomaly. Normally, the spelling <i>ce</i> would have a completely different value — very often a CH sound.<br /><br />[Come to think of it, it might be the other way round. Perhaps the 'nominative' form was pronounced the way the spelling suggests. That pronunciation would have been dropped in favour of the that of the other'cases'.]<br /><br />Some scribes avoided the <i>ce</i> spelling by writing <i>cc</i> (the earliest known spelling) or <i>k</i>. [The latter suggests that some scribes at least pronounced the word with a K-sound.]<br /><br />The second vowel was spelled with a wide variety of vowels <i>e, y, i, æ, o, u,</i> even <i>a</i>, but only by a Welshman.<br /><br />So, no. That Old English scribe would not have 'righted' the spelling <i>acre</i>. He might have conclude that you lived in a different part of England to him. If he was <b>very</b> picky, he might have said it was in the wrong case.<br /><br />Consider then what happened when Normans took over the business of writing. <i>Acer</i> would have been a grossly confusing spelling. The simplest solution was to spell it the French way. Alternatives were to use <i>k</i> or <i>ck</i> or else alter the following vowel to <i>acar</i>. The spelling <i>aker</i> was used, but not very often, to judge from surviving documents. Among the specifically American spellings (Colonial and US regional) recorded are <i>accer, acor, achor, ackre, acrre,</i> and <i>acar</i>. <br /><br />Some of this variation is due to regional and historical differences in pronunciation. Most of it is due to the fact that the letter sequence CE has always been a problem from the dawn of English spelling.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-41584599966079444682013-04-22T12:07:29.042+01:002013-04-22T12:07:29.042+01:00Grham
Some things I missed in your earlier post …...Grham<br /><br />Some things I missed in your earlier post …<br /><br /><i> and yet everybody commenting here seems to think spelling reform is a good idea. Why?</i><br /><br />I'm baffled. Scarcely anybody commenting here is in favour of spelling reform.<br /><br />Some people are pleased that Webster's reforms were successful in the US. Some are pleased that <b>regularisations</b> such as <i>catalog</i> have become quite generally accepted — especially in the US.<br /><br /><i>Is David Crosbie really implying that he thinks people can only learn and use a written word if they have previously (either directly or by proxy) heard that word spoken?</i><br /><br />Yes. <br /><br />Of course, it can be <b>extremely</b> indirectly.<br /><br />Just consider the lexical items invented first from a collection of letters <b>as written words</b>. (We recognise them as words because there are solaces before and after them.) We either turn them into words like <b>NAY-TOE</b> or we combine the letter names as in our nation states <b>YOU-ESS-AY</b> and <b>YOU-KAY</b> (sometimes known as <b>JEE-BEE</b>. Sometimes we slip a little sound in to make it easier to say as a word. Sometimes the acronym comes before the term. The term is chosen to have suitable initials for a punchy acronym.<br /><br />Yes, spoken forms attached to words are different for different people. I don't see what difference that makes to my argument. You have a point that <b>regularisation</b> according to the accent of one set of speakers may have the unintended consequence of greater <b>irregularity</b> for speakers with another accent. But that doesn't mean that spellings are in any way <b>prior</b> to the spoken substance. The spoken forms are the basic elements. In the cases that you cite, written forms may serve as a sort of glue, uniting disparate spoken forms and camouflaging their diversity.<br /><br />Chinese is a very different communication system, which invites a totally different analysis. But even Chinese writing is partly grounded in spoken form. One sub-system of character formation is based on the sounds of Mandarin — an extra learning load for speakers of other varieties of Chinese.<br /><br />Deaf people are marginalised. This may be a terrible injustice, but it is a fact. One consequence of this marginalisation is that they are not key players in the evolution of a language. They have created a rich alternative to speech, which the rest of generally underestimate. But their written system of communication is the speech-based alphabetic orthography that the mainstream has evolved.<br /><br />Yes, some people enjoy reading the literature of a culture without any appreciation of how that culture pronounces or pronounced its language. Nevertheless the writers, readers and listening audiences of those literatures are/were entirely aware of the pronunciation. The sound of words is even more important to literature than to other modes of communication.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-83413686320744282082013-04-22T11:07:50.461+01:002013-04-22T11:07:50.461+01:00Dru, Anwolf
"no teacher could take off for ...Dru, Anwolf<br /><br /><i> "no teacher could take off for noting them" which I assume means 'tell me off' </i><br /><br />And I though it meant 'penalise me' (by deducting marks).David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-61795348641324220972013-04-20T21:52:27.164+01:002013-04-20T21:52:27.164+01:00Grhm you said, "My contention, with which nob...Grhm you said, "My contention, with which nobody has agreed, was that spelling reform is bad because it interferes with intelligibility by people who pronounce words differently from the people who devised the new spellings."<br /><br />I thought you were saying that people should be made to pronounce words as they are written, i.e. spelling should prevail over speech and that we should pronounce breakfast 'break-fast'. Incidentally, the person who did had quite a pronounced Yorkshire accent. So I suspect he would not pronounce it the same way as you would anyway. <br /><br />AnWulf, bearing in mind that you're arguing that more 'fonetik' spelling would be easier to read, you may be quite surprised if I tell you that there are two idiomatic expressions in your post that may be familiar to you, but are unintelligible to me, another English speaker. <br /><br />One I think I can work out by guesswork. The other I remain unable to understand. They are "no teacher could take off for noting them" which I assume means 'tell me off' and the other is "costs to inhold financial" which is completely unintelligible. I can't even work out whether that is just an expression I don't know, or an attempt to render an expression I don't know phonetically.<br /><br />So it isn't just having a standard spelling that assists communication between people who speak different dialects of the same language.Drunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-88167972770319975542013-04-19T01:32:03.863+01:002013-04-19T01:32:03.863+01:00I'm working on another long, opinionated post ...I'm working on another long, opinionated post for you all to skim-read and/or ignore, but I was startled by Dick Hartzell's comment and I can't let it pass.<br /><br /><i>"the claim that proper spelling (and proofreading) are important "even on the internet" is risible"</i> <br /><br />Whaaat?<br /><br />Does "important" mean something subtly different in American English? Or is "risible" not such a strong word?<br /><br />Or was the inclusion of that sentence a mistake, which he didn't pick up because he doesn't think proof reading is necessary and he laughs dismissively in the face of those of us who do?Grhmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-72947339988394696342013-04-19T00:17:11.888+01:002013-04-19T00:17:11.888+01:00Dick Hartzell
the claim that proper spelling (and...Dick Hartzell<br /><br /><i>the claim that proper spelling (and proofreading) are important "even on the internet" is risible.</i><br /><br />If I were to see clumsy spelling mistakes on a site purporting to belong to my bank, I wouldn't be laughing.<br /><br />OK, there aren't many sites where erratic spelling would suggest something fraudulent. But they do exist, and they are important.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-14433239606173061102013-04-18T14:17:25.561+01:002013-04-18T14:17:25.561+01:00...people are wary of doing business with organisa...<i>...people are wary of doing business with organisations that don't proof-read their documents. This is true even on the internet. We don't care how individual spell, but alarm bells ring when we see typos on a commercial site.</i><br /><br />I have no interest in entering this interminable argument, but the claim that proper spelling (and proofreading) are important "even on the internet" is risible.<br /><br />Indeed, I run across misspellings (and here I'm not including broken sentences in news stories that illustrate the haste with which they're composed and posted) so often I've long since stopped being shocked by them.<br /><br />Back in 2011, when I was more amused than outraged by the problem, I wrote about it on my then-new blog in a piece I entitled <a rel="nofollow">"Proofreaders Need Not Apply"</a>. (My title plays on the wording of placards that commonly appeared in the windows of 19th-century American businesses at the height of emigration from Ireland: Irish Need Not Apply.)<br /><br />Quite seriously: typographical errors are rampant on the Internet (and off it, too).Dick Hartzellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07065924271517452841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-75972502743973917942013-04-18T14:15:51.873+01:002013-04-18T14:15:51.873+01:00Mrs Redboots
I have enormous trouble reading Fren...Mrs Redboots<br /><br /><i>I have enormous trouble reading French "text speak"</i><br /><br />David Crystal in his boot <b>txtng the gr8 db8</b> includes some pages of French terms and references to <a href="http://french.about.com/library/writing/bl-texting.htm" rel="nofollow">French Texting - Les Textos Français</a> and a 2007 book <i>Le language sms</i> published by Presse universitaire de Louvain.<br /><br />My favourite is <i>6né</i> which depends on knowing the French spelling and pronunciation of <i>6</i>.<br /><br />There's even a short section (with example texts) in <i>A Reference Grammar of French</i> by Batchelor & Chebli-Saadi (CUP).David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-87255919378706551082013-04-18T13:05:19.280+01:002013-04-18T13:05:19.280+01:00AnWulf
There's a huge difference between the ...AnWulf<br /><br />There's a huge difference between the practice of a whole society and the practice of individuals communicating with their peers.<br /><br />The insistence that individuals should observe 'correct' spelling hasn't gone away, but it belongs to another age,<br /><br />For the first centuries of free public mass education, elementary schools produced the clerks that wrote the documents that were their employers' interface with the public. With this in mind, huge emphasis was placed on teaching children to spell 'correctly'.<br /><br />To this day, people are wary of doing business with organisations that don't proof-read their documents. This is true even on the internet. We don't care how individual spell, but alarm bells ring when we see typos on a commercial site.<br /><br />Between strangers, if a reader has no strong motivation to stick with a text, he or she is more likely to exaggerate the difficulties posed by irregular spellings. They may not be an objective barrier to communication, but they can be a subjective barrier to acquiescence in communication. <br /><br />Some irregularities constitute a tiny, momentary interruption of smooth reading. Others are simple an annoyance. The reader, consciously or unconsciously, feels that the writer is not according due respect — or is simply the sort of person that he or she doesn't care to know about. <br /><br />You may counter that this reaction to irregular spelling is unjustified and irrational. But so what? if writers want to get their message across, they just have to accommodate.<br /><br />There's also the problem I touched on in my first reply to Grhm. Even if everybody changes a spelling to something more rational <b>from this minute on</b>, there are millions and millions of examples of the old spellings in every home, library, website etc where English is used. So everybody needs to know two spellings — if only for recognition.<br /><br />So yes, a society can live with a small number of words with two spellings in public written discourse among strangers. But radical, wholesale, consistent spelling reform is an unachievable dream. The most successful wide scale reform — that of Noah Webster — affected relatively few words and struck a politically attractive chord with what was still a small nation. If it hadn't already succeeded I seriously wonder whether it could succeed today.<br /><br />George Bernard Shaw spent much of his life arguing for rational spelling reform, but destroyed his case in a little joke. He insisted that <i>Ireland</i> should be re-spelled <i>Awlint</i>.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-11767779861832697492013-04-18T11:55:39.957+01:002013-04-18T11:55:39.957+01:00Grhm
While writing about what happened to the sou...Grhm<br /><br />While writing about what happened to the sounds that letter-A has had to represent, I foolishly neglected yet another important group of words, the so-called commA group. Letter-A often represents this little grunt sound, not because of some spelling reform but because at some point in history the sound changed and the spelling didn't.<br /><br />I suppose what I should have written about is the spelling <i>-ogue</i>...<br /><br />It's no use saying that the spelling reformers should have left these letters alone. Way back in Old English, the letter G was left representing a bewildering range of sounds. And across the channel letter G represented two sounds in French (and different pairs in italian, Spanish etc).<br /><br />For a time English had (at least) two distinct letters, but the other one (yogh) eventually failed to catch on. Meanwhile, the Norman took over and used G with French values. Just as well, for otherwise <i>catalog</i> might be pronounced KAT-uh-LOY or KAT-uh-LUFF or who knows what. The spelling <i>cataloge</i> would represent a word with a 'long' O (nowadays so-called GOAT vowel) followed by a 'soft' G (i.e. J-sound) and, so that won't do.<br /><br />The native English wys of marking a 'short' O would have given <i>catalogge</i>, but that wouldn't show that the G is 'hard'.<br /><br />French-style <i>-ogue</i> remained the best spelling available until eventually <i>-og</i> lost its ambiguity. So the change from <i>-ogue</i> to <i>-og</i> was an act of spelling reform — the very thing you were complaining about.<br /><br />Even the word <i>dog</i> was spelled <i>doggue</i> in the fifteenth century. Individual writers experimented — that is to say performed individual spelling reforms — for a century or so with <i>doge</i> and <i>dogge</i> and <i>dogg</i>. Somebody hit on <i>dog</i> in the sixteenth century, but it still had to contend with <i>dogue, dogg, doggge</i> and <i>dogg</i> until the early eighteenth century.<br /><br />(Information from the OED online.)<br /><br />Of course, you can complain that the spelling reform that gave us <i>dog</i> should have been extended to all the words that rhyme with it. But that's an argument for <b>more</b> spelling reform, not <b>less</b>.<br /><br />The other obvious analogy is <i>log</i>. This was a latecomer to English in the fifteenth century, from which the only surviving spelling is <i>logge</i>. Later spelling were <i>logg</i> and <i>log</i>. Spelling reform insured that only the latter survived.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-25015407590073308472013-04-18T11:23:34.076+01:002013-04-18T11:23:34.076+01:00To bring this back on thread, In 1876, the America...To bring this back on thread, In 1876, the American Philological Association adopted 11 new spellings, and began promoting their noting: ar, catalog, definit, gard, giv, hav, infinit, liv, tho, thru, and wisht … By 1886, the list had grown to 3500 words.<br /><br />In 1879, the British Spelling Reform Association was founded.<br /><br />In 1898, the (American) National Education Association began promoting a list of 12 spellings: tho, altho, thru, thruout, thoro, thoroly, thorofare, program, prolog, catalog, decalog, and pedagog … all of which are still found today. These were in my pocket wordbook so no teacher could take off for noting them. <br /><br />As someone who helps a lot of foreigners learn English, I am always writing words out fonetically to help them say the words. I know many folks who hav study'd English for four or five years, but won't speak to me in English because they are so unsure about how to say the word ... others giv up on English altogether unless they hav a need for it.<br /><br />And it's not limited to foreigners. Many English speakers hav lots of problems with spelling and there is are costs to inhold financial. It slows down learning and hinders communications.<br /><br />I can't speak to French text speak but there is little Spanish text speak since Spanish is already much more fonetic. They do note 'k' for 'que' and a few others. Maybe it's time for the French to reform their spelling as well ... Heck, at least half of English problem words are owing to noting French orthography in English.<br /><br />There are more non-nativ speakers of English than nativ speakers. If we don't reform it, they will. If you want to see something that hurts your eyes, here is "reform" from an international vote: http://freespeling.com/new-simpler-spelings/AnWulfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14561827352709157334noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-38658153948360709202013-04-18T00:51:58.766+01:002013-04-18T00:51:58.766+01:00Grhm
owing to the fact that Iceland has never be...Grhm<br /><br /><i> owing to the fact that Iceland has never been afflicted by this weird craze for spelling reform.</i><br /><br />No, that's not the reason at all. By far the biggest difference between English and Icelandic is that spoken English has changed radically and often, and spoken Icelandic hasn't.<br /><br />The most radical change of all started happening just after the advent of printing imposed a more or less standard spelling system. So the same vowel letters came to represent the new sounds in the old words, and also the sounds of words imported from other languages where the sound hadn't changed.<br /><br />So, for example, letter A in its most basic uses corresponds to the vowel in three sets of words known as TRAP, FACE and PALM. In the set known as BATH, the value varies with geography. This, and many other anomalies, came about because there was no attempt to reform the spelling. It wasn't any <b>action</b> that did the damage, it was the <b>inaction</b>.<br /><br />Not that spelling reform would have succeeded. All the tinkerings done with English spelling by French scribes, Dutch printers and writers who knew Latin...these and many other bright ideas imposed some regularity on a small range of words. But these localised regularities never spread throughout the spelling system, and sometimes extended to very small sets of words. An overlarge number of regularities is of little help — and a positive hindrance when the regularities are in conflict.<br /><br />Spelling reform does not merit the energy you put into your hostility. It's almost beneath contempt. It never really succeeded in the past — Webster's reforms being a rare and highly marginal exception. It stands no chance whatsoever in the future. The cost of rewriting everything recently written in English would be prohibitive. The cost of rewriting everything written in the last three or four centuries would be unimaginable, and the effort unfeasible.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-7260207843581948952013-04-17T22:06:44.061+01:002013-04-17T22:06:44.061+01:00Correct spelling renders communication far easier ...<i>Correct spelling renders communication far easier ...</i><br /><br />Of course, if someone belongs to a social group that follows its own rules on correct spelling -- and they differ from yours -- the opaqueness of what they're writing is sometimes the point.<br /><br />Adolescents are notorious for inventing their own linguistic variations to signal their independence from adults. My teenager daughter sometimes indulges in "K" as a reply -- short for OK. "No problem" -- a phrase young people in the US seem to have universally adopted in place of "You're welcome" or "My pleasure" when they've done you a trivial favor -- I now hear shortened to "No probs".<br /><br />(This bizarre habit of shortening words goes back a couple of decades, at least here in the US. An office colleague well over 20 years ago introduced me to the wordlet "cazh" -- short for "casual", e.g., "I thought I'd go cazh today."<br /><br />So if you're feeling excluded by the texting habits of some of your French Facebook friends, Mrs Redboots, it's entirely possible their response would be, "C'est pour ça que je le fait!"Dick Hartzellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07065924271517452841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-11749321570980764852013-04-17T18:32:00.457+01:002013-04-17T18:32:00.457+01:00"Correct" spelling is like beauty ... It...<i>"Correct" spelling is like beauty ... It's in the eye of the beholder</i><br />I rather think most teachers and university professors would disagree with you there. Correct spelling renders communication far easier - I don't mean, necessarily, the minor differences of spelling that separate us, but, for instance, I have enormous trouble reading French "text speak" and would rather my French Facebook friends used correct French to update their status. The same is probably true of them when they read their English-speaking friends' Facebook statuses - using "txt spk" can be very confusing. Mrs Redboots (Annabel Smyth)https://www.blogger.com/profile/11270027663691257254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-55256357367152488562013-04-17T17:23:22.048+01:002013-04-17T17:23:22.048+01:00@Grhm, while you see American use of dumb to mean ...@Grhm, while you see American use of <i>dumb</i> to mean 'stupid' to be "offensive", from an American perspective it is offensive to use <i>dumb</i> to mean 'mute'. <br /><br />(Breaking my own rule about going off-topic in comments, but thought it worth pointing out. Maybe I'll blog about it someday...)lynneguisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-55662817191064289022013-04-17T08:27:01.465+01:002013-04-17T08:27:01.465+01:00@Mrs Redboots ... What is likely the strongest spe...@Mrs Redboots ... What is likely the strongest spelling reform organization is based in the UK:<br /><br />http://www.spellingsociety.org<br /><br />"Correct" spelling is like beauty ... It's in the eye of the beholder. If you could talk to an Old English scribe he'd want to "correct" your spelling of 'acre' to the original way it was spell'd ... acer. (Truthfully, he would 'right' your spelling since correct had yet to slither into Engish). In ME and later still when the colonies in America were first founded, it was aker. He would change your 'odd' spelling of 'ache' back to 'æce' (later ake) ... That was another academic mistake thinking that the word was rooted in Greek and the 'k' was chang'd to 'ch'. He would wonder why you spell 'wundor' so oddly. (That happen'd owing to the spelling rules of the French scribes that first came over with the Normans.) So you see, there hav been many changes in spelling and not all for the good.AnWulfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14561827352709157334noreply@blogger.com