You might enjoy this item from today's Chicago Tribune. Any thoughts on English spelling?

Lerning to spel is crewshul
Tho we don't ofen speek ov it anymor, for many years reeders ov the Tribune wuld regularly be amused, enlitened, anoyed or simply befudled by the paper's campane to promote logical, simplified spelings. Begining in 1934, the paper dished out a series ov werds that it decreed wuld theretofor be speled as they sounded, including "tho" for though, "thoro" for thorough, "iland" for island, and many others, including hocky, fantom, calk, burocrat, derth, yern, jaz.

This was a crusade by then-Tribune Publisher Robert R. McCormick, who even sined one ov his colums Micormak--befor his wife reportedly put the kibosh on that simplification.

The grand experiment ended in 1975. The paper abandoned simplified speling with an editorial headlined "Thru is Through and So is Though." By then, the Tribune had absorbed its share ov ribing and had even ben acused ov confusing children with its simplified spelings.

All ov this was stirred up recently by a bevy ov protesters at the 77th anual National Spelling Bee in Washington. The protesters picketed the bee, complaining that English speling is ilogical and that the national bee only reinforces the spelings that they said leed to dyslexia, hi iliteracy and harder lives for imigrants, the Associated Press reported. "We advocate the modernization of English spelling," said Pete Boardman, 58, a Cornell University bus driver who admited to being a terible speler.

The protesters, members ov the American Literacy Society, are part ov a grand simplified speling movement in American society, reeching bak to the 1700s, and including such luminaries as Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Noah Webster, H.G. Wells and Theodore Roosevelt. They al decried the absurdities ov English speling. In an 1867 monograf, Tribune Editor Joseph Medill wrote: "Lerning tu spel and red the Inglish langwaj is the grat elementary task ov the pupol."

With the advent ov the modern computer spel-cheking program, many, but certenly not all, ov those problems hav been vanquished. Stil, the programs don't recognize sum words and don't no the difference between they're and their, for instance, or defuse and diffuse or where and wear--al ov wich may be speled correctly but obviously cary diferent meanings. And that's just the easy stuf. Without a computer's help, the chalenged speler faces a universe ov questions about silent leters or wether certen words take duble c's or m's, or wen i comes befor e, or any number ov other idiosyncrasies ov the language.

But the view here is that watching those amazing speling bee contestants agonize thru words like serpiginous, sumpsimus and sophrosyne is not a reminder ov the tortur that the language exacts, but ov its brethtaking beauty. Yes, English is perniciously litered with al sorts ov ilogical spelings, from cough to yacht. But that's what makes it fun. English is fed by scors ov tributaries ov wurld languages, living and ded. It's a rich polyglot ov sounds and tangled leters, sometimes as dificult to decode as the entwined duble helix ov the human DNA. May it always be so.

And so, we promise, tomoro it's bak to regulr speling.

Having been in Mexico this week at a conference that is in Spanish with English translation available, I can understand the frustration with English. Comparatively, Spanish is just so logical. Still, it's our language, and we have to put up with it. To change it now is unrealistic, and, to me, the American Literacy Society should be putting their efforts toward something that is more important.

Interestingly one of the most logical things about English (and I am sure one of the reasons for its success) is one that is rarely spoken of and one whose absence still affects most other languages, including Spanish. And that is word gender and its associated agreement problems.

Spanish has two genders and German three - and they are all completely arbitrary and quite pointless. For example, in German there are two words for car - Der Wagen (masculine) and Das Auto (neuter) - both exactly the same objects but requiring different word treatment and different articles. Furthermore, the articles vary according to their case. the the definite article could be der, die, das, dem and so on (a total of 16 possible variations). In English "the" does for all circumstances.

spanish is only a little better: el gafio (masculine) the hook and la garfa (feminine) the claw.

Quite illogical and the source of much difficulty that the genderless English manages almost completely to avoid

Lerning to spell may be important, but getting the reesons rite is too. Changing dubble consonants to single is agenst the logic of English spelling, and makes things worse, not better. English coud be vastly improoved by a few regularizations of holely unnecessary spellings:

- eliminate GH (lite, rite, enuf, laf, plow, tho, borro, cof, aut, caut)

- eliminate EA (bred, led, helth, speek, teech, eer, bair)

- eliminate some of the more striking silent letters (colum, forin, tarmigan, iland)

If there isn't a redily available respelling, or it woud be confusing to bring in at an erly stage, leeve it alone. We lern the commonest words most eesily. So 'kno', not 'no', and don't change the hily recognizable 'of' to 'ov' just for the sake of a phonetic principle that can't be implemented across the bord.

Richard, you might be right in attributing a language's "success" to its use of grammatical gender and articles. Mandarin Chinese, spoken by more than one billion people, has no articles and no gender.

Please click HERE for more.

When a infant is shopping around for a first language, we doubt that his choice depends on articles and gender. A wild guess says the determining factor is more likely to be what language his parents speak.

* ** *** ***** ******** ************* ******** ***** *** ** *

Little-known fact about Spanish word gender: As Richard has written, Spanish has both masculine and feminine genders but there is one case where there are three!

La pez is the live fish swimming.

El pez is the caught fish.

... ¿Y López? He's the fisherman.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jerry thomas,

I think that a language's success has less to do with some sort of inner logical cohesion, and more to do with economic and political factors. Russian has gender and no articles (like Latin), neither of which hindered its adaptation across a large swathe of Eurasia. English got rid of its gender system a while ago, but it also has one of the toughest paraphrastic verbal systems I've run across (that is to learn as a second language). Some languages like Chinese, Russian, and Hebrew have no tense in their verbal systems. They get by with aspect (whether some action is finished or continuing). You want logic, adapt Esperanto, which is one of the ugliest languages I've run across.

There's just no reason for saddling English with an unneccessarily difficult and arbitrary writing system. The arguments you hear against it are curiously similar to the ones that the Chinese use in defense of their extraordinaily cubersome writing system.

As I've said many times, I don't think English orthographical reform is going to happen in the forseeable future. Too bad. I guess too many people would miss those annoying spelling bees.

Well, think of the changes that would have to occur if we were to change the system of spelling of English. Has that ever happened in any other mature language?

Quote "...Has that ever happened in any other mature language..."

I understand that Webster managed to change English quite significantly in the USA, although not 100% successfully.

Having said which, spelling change is an ongoing part of language change, especially where new words and applications occur. For example, in the UK "program" is now commonly used for a computer-related item whereas "programme" is used for all other kinds of programme.

Irish is the only language I can think of where there's been a big reform of the spelling. It's also the only other language as hard to spell as English. Here are some pre/post 1948 pairs:

aimhdheoin -> ainneoin
aoinfheacht -> éneacht
claoidhim -> cloím
comhnaidhe -> cónaí
laetheamhail -> laethúil
tosnughadh -> tosnú

Reforms in other languages, such as Portuguese and German, have been fairly minor polishing in comparison.

Click Languages and Linguistics for many useful links.

Here's a course of study in Writing Systems of the World that might be of interest here.

By the way, what's a mature language? Does anyone have a definition, or a list of criteria for judging such a thing?

Not sure about mature language (anyway don't we call them PG languages these days?), but Danish went through a major reform. The Chinese writing system went through a big change post-WW2 during the Mao years: lots of complicated characters were simplified. Means you have to learn two sets of symbols, one for PRC and th'other for ROC.

Chinese writing system: Personally I prefer the "old" system that's still in use in the Republic of China (Taiwan) because it retains all those "radicals" that give clues as to meaning and (sometimes) pronunciation.

On the other hand, the simplified system is simpler.

One rather remarkable thing about Chinese writing is that its readability crosses dialect lines. Spoken dialects that are mutually incomprensible still use the same written characters.

So in Taiwan, the live TV always has "subtitles" for the benefit of those who don't understand the Taiwanese or Mandarin that's being spoken.

What are usually refered to as dialects of Chinese are in fact what most linguists would call languages. Though Cantonese is written with the same characters as Mandarin, most Mandarin speakers can tell that a text was written by a Cantonese speaker (if that person only speaks Cantonese).

OTOH, what are referred to as languages in three of the Nordic countries, i.e., Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, are in fact what many linguists would consider dialects.

A famous linguist, Max Weinreich, once said: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." In fact, he got it from an unnamed person in the audience at one of his public lectures. And the original maxim is in Yiddish.

a shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot.

While many Taiwanese can read the simplified characters, not all mainland Chinese can read the older more complicated ones.

jheem: what are referred to as languages in three of the Nordic countries, i.e., Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, are in fact what many linguists would consider dialects.

I recall reading that Norwegian wasn't considered a separate language until Norway obtained its independence from Denmark -- oops, from Sweden. And something similar with Swedish, I believe.

Instead of replacing illogical (but fabulous!)spelling with a simpler version, why not just get rid of the Roman alphabet and replace it with the phonetic one?

But then, Cat, whose pronunciation should we represent with the spelling? Brit (and which dialect?) or US (which dialect?), etc.? Can you imagine the disputes?

Dear God! We could all end up sounding like Scots!

In'sted @v rI'pleIsIN I'lQdZIk@l (b@t 'fæbj@l@s!) 'spelIN wIð @ 'sImpl@ 'v3:Z@n, waI nQt dZast get rId @v ð@ *'r@Um@n 'ælf@bet @nd rI'pleIs It wIð ð@ f@'netIk wan?

Well for one thing it'd look like that.

Lol, aput and wordnerd! Not quite like that though...

I really don't mind the look of phonetic symbols (although some phonemes have more than one symbol depending on which dictionary you have - most irritating), and you get used to it surprisingly quickly. When I was at university, it didn't take me very long to learn to read passages in the phonetic alphabet about as quickly as in the Roman one. Can't do it now, mind - I forget vey easily that which I don't practise every day

Of course, the big problem, as wordnerd pointed out, is that of variations in pronunciation - although that would also be the case if spellings, rather than letters, were changed. Past or parst? Buruh/bur@ or buro? We'd never agree! But then, maybe we wouldn't have to if we all wrote in phonetics: each person could use their own pronunciation when writing, so spelling itself could become a more personal, fluid thing; as long as the right symbols were used to trigger the desired pronunciation (and most people can remember one symbol=one sound), the 'spelling' would be correct for that person in that context. And we'd all probably get used to it quickly enough that we'd be able to recognise a pronunciation different to ours (say, when reading aloud), and be able to change it to our own if we wanted to (I for one sound odd when using the RP elongated 'a').

Another advantage is that it would put an end to the dreadful "'Ere, 'oo was 'er?" style that so many authors use to denote (mainly) working class accents, but which only occasionally bears any resemblence to any one regional accent. It might even add to a work's authenticity if the IPA gave us a real idea of how certain characters speak.

Or it might complicate matters further.

I am, of course, not exactly serious, but having reflected on it a bit more I think it makes for a fascinating debate. At least by changing an alphabet we'd only have to change one thing - albeit a rather big one - to another that already exists, and wrong spelling would become less of a problem for most native and non-native speakers. Spelling would just become less uniform, which to some perhaps isn't a bad thing...

Incidentally, I do actually love the English language and its idiosyncracies and I'd hate to lose them, but I also appreciate that I'm in the relatively privileged position of a) being a non-dyslexic native speaker and b) having an affinity for language, particularly my own - so I can empathise with how frustrating it must be for some people (like me with techy stuff ).

Earlier aput suggested changing "right" to "rite."
Such a change would further obfuscate the homophone. Why not do some linguistic regression and readopt the guttaral sound of "gh" into English? Right now, when I go into a "Rite Aid" pharmacy, I expect to find altars and incense and religious texts instead of an apocethary. Ah, but of course, as customs have changed, the apothecary has ceased to be associated with religion and magic, and is now the pawn of drug companies. Now I can't tell Rite form Rong!

Another question: Languages seem to evolve according to what Chomsky calls, "deep grammar," an innate sense of linguistic order. Might one not examine a language acording to its intuitive sense of order in assessing its communicative competency, and isn't that the whole point of language?

What's seldom properly appreciated is the difference between reformed spelling and phonetic spelling. Reform is almost always in the direction of phonetic regularity, but can't go all the way if we want to preserve a unified written English.

We want to keep caught and court as different words, and caught and cot, though many speakers pronounce one or the other pairs the same. In my dialect a purely phonetic rendition would be koot for the verb and the building and kot for the bed; but this is against the familiar look of English, and doesn't accommodate other dialects.

Whereas reforming their spelling to caut, cort, and cot preserves their Englishness, preserves the dialectal differences, and makes learning so much easier. In my dialect I apply a rule that says au and or are pronounced the same, and I still need to learn separate spellings for identical pronunciations, but it's a reform: it does away with the most confusing superfluities.

So, some dialects would pronounce "cot" and "court" the same? Interesting! We have had a British guest in our home, and I have decided that part of the difference between U.S. and British pronunciations is that the Brits put words together more than we in the U.S. do...or maybe they just talk faster. I can't think of an example right now, but there have been many.

I know that Spanish is very phonetically logical. Are most languages (now, generalizations are dangerous, I know!) more like Spanish or like English when it comes to phonetics? Or, are they all over the place?

I do think children learn to read much more easily and quickly when they learn to use phonics, even though there are so many variances. However, in our kids' elementary school they taught the children to write phonetically, and it drove all the parents nuts! It was a rude awakening when the kids got to junior high and actually had to spell correctly!

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

Kalleh,

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part of the difference between U.S. and British pronunciations is that the Brits put words together more than we in the U.S. do...or maybe they just talk faster

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That may be true of your friend's dialect of English, but is unlikely to be true of the English as a whole.

In another post you described his accent and it looks rather like he's a Cockney, or perhaps from my own neck of the woods, sarf Lunnon. Those particular dialects do indeed tend to run words together so that a whole sentence can sometimes come out sounding like one long word.

I know that Spanish is very phonetically logical. Are most languages (now, generalizations are dangerous, I know!) more like Spanish or like English when it comes to phonetics? Or, are they all over the place?

Well, it depends. If you're talking about the phonology of Spanish, then it's pretty much the same as the phonology of English, i.e., it's a system of sounds. If you're talking about Spanish vs English orthographies (i.e., spelling rules) then, yes, to an extent, Spanish is more logical but not entirely so. For example some sounds have more than one grapheme reqpresenting them: e.g., {b} and {v} tend to represent a voiced bilabial fricative /β/ which is different from our English {v} which is a voiced labio-dental fricative (top lip touching the bottom row of teeth). About the only "spelling" I've seen in Mexico involved the confusion of these two graphemes (e.g., deber ~ dever).

The big problem with English orthography is that owing to years of accumlated cruft the mapping between a word's spelling and its pronunciation is nearly arbitrary or less than logical. (Of course, you can say that every single word in English has its unique spelling rule.)

More languages have orthographies that are closer to their phonologies than English's. Some that are worse: Chinese, Tibetan, Gaelic. Some that are close: French, Hebrew (doesn't represent vowels).

Cot/Caught/Court:

No, I meant other pairs: cot/caught are the same in about half of US accents, and court is different. Caught/court are the same in southern English, Australasian etc, and cot is different. There's no accent that has all three the same. There are some that have all three different.

A different situation is bin/been/bean. No-one has all three different, or all three the same. Everyone pronounces 'been' either like their 'bin' or like their 'bean', but not both.

Spelling doesn't have to worry about the phonetic details about how I say cat vs how you say cat, unless you get systematically different structures like this.

The vowel in caught is also the vowel in ought, nought, sought, taught, taut, for all of us (I think). The vowel in court is also the vowel in sort, tort, torte, short for all of us (I think). We can capture these regularities in spelling. But we have to trade off the fact that in my dialect the caught-type is the same as the court-type but in your dialect they're different, against the fact that representing that in spelling breaks its usefulness for othe dialects. But at least we could ensure that caught/sought/taut all used the same spelling, without damage.

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Originally posted by arnie:
In another post you described his accent and it looks rather like he's a Cockney, or perhaps from my own neck of the woods, sarf Lunnon. Those particular dialects do indeed tend to run words together so that a whole sentence can sometimes come out sounding like one long word.

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Actually no. He's a mate of mine, West Midlands born and bred with the accent to go with it. He did however spend a few years living in Portsmouth which may have influenced his speech patterns (though I'd have thought it would slow them down rather than speed them up.)

And, BTW, I have been desperately trying to get him on this board. He is leaving today, and I hope by next week he will have joined us. We have had some fabulous word discussions, and he'd be great here.

Bob, I would think "mate" is more of an Australian word than an English one.

Spanish is more logical but not entirely so. For example some sounds have more than one grapheme reqpresenting them: e.g., {b} and {v} tend to represent a voiced bilabial fricative /β/ which is different from our English {v} which is a voiced labio-dental fricative (top lip touching the bottom row of teeth).

jheem, that explains why my phrase book said to pronounce "por favor" as "por fabor." I had taken Spanish and never remembered being taught that.

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I would think "mate" is more of an Australian word than an English one

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It's a commonly used word here. It certainly isn't Australian in origin.

Thanks, arnie. What about "bloke?" I consider that Australian, too. We don't use either, though I suppose "mate" could be used referring to someone on a ship.

I have remembered one of the phrases that our British friend definitely rolls into one word:

"Atall" I say "At all"

I know there were others.

Yep, "bloke" is British, too, although Michael Quinion says it turns up slightly earlier in Australia: World Wide Words