I've seen this in a number of places (the quote comes from an article about spelling)) but to me it has the flavour of myth about it. Does anyone know if it's true?

quote:

The first English printing press, in the 15th century, was operated by Belgians who didn’t know the language and made numerous spelling errors (such as "busy" in place of "bisy"). And because they were paid by the line, they sometimes padded words with extra letters; "frend," for example, became "friend."

Incidentally there is so much wrong with the article that it's hard to know where to begin.

For example

"there’s no systematic way to learn to read or write modern English—people have to memorize the spelling of thousands of individual words, file them away in their mental databases, and retrieve them when needed"

But in Chinese people have to memorise a different character for every word. So what? What does either of those things say about the difficulties of learning to read and write? Nothing at all, I'd venture.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

English, for all its quirks, seems to be the language most people from elsewhere learn as a second language, so it can't be all that hard. I think the author is applying too much prefrontal cortex and not enough amygdala; i.e. she "thinks too much!"

Is what actually true?

There seems to be some of my post missing...

Careless editing, I'll go back and fix it

I'm skeptical. The OED says that the spelling "busy" probably reflects a West Saxon pronunciation.

There is nothing about this in "A History of English Spelling" by Upward and Davidson. The H in "ghost" is because of Flemish influence, but that's it.

Yes goofy, I'm skeptical too. Nothing I've read, other than various sites on the internet that repeat it more or less word for word, indicates this to be the case.

I, too, am skeptical. He doesn't seem to give other languages credit for their complexity. For example, in Korean, there is the formal and informal way of saying most words - you need to know your context and then of course each word. I suppose, in some ways, we have that ("howdy" versus "hello" or "how do you do?"), but it isn't built into the language. Secondly, we don't have the feminine/masculine variation in words.

As Geoff says, if it is so complex, why then is it the second language in many countries?

Specifically I'm skeptical about that claim about Belgians

I'm generally skeptical.