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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!minya!jc
From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.cog-eng,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Spelling and Perceptual Mode (was: Effects of poor writing?)
Message-ID: <131@minya.UUCP>
Date: 8 May 89 02:47:28 GMT
References: <39131@bbn.COM> <1982@trantor.harris-atd.com> <187@intek01.UUCP> <2670@puff.cs.wisc.edu>
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In article <2670@puff.cs.wisc.edu>, brian@cat59.CS.WISC.EDU (Brian Miller) writes:
> In article <187@intek01.UUCP> mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) writes:
> >
> >My gut feeling is to go with Mr. Musciano on spelling, but I've run across
> >too many brilliant people who couldn't spell a lick to totally discount
> >spelling-deficient prose.  A resume is another matter, though ...
> >
> 
> Spelling rules, like all other grammatical conventions, define the language.
> Break them too many times and more regular folks may have a tough time
> absorbing the message.  I'd assume that the reason some rules (of English) are
> so difficult to learn/remember is because they are so unnatural.  If we were willing
> to hand our precious pile of >****< to the linguists and psycholinguists for a time,
> I'm sure that they'd return a more naturally regulated language.  Why study and compare
> all sorts of existing and dead lang's and pursue linguistics if one cannot apply one's
> conclusions for the better?  (A challenge to linguists, folks.)

Not really; it's not much of a challenge at all.  In at least three of 
the linguistics classes that I took, there were assignments to produce
phonemic representations of English.  I did it rather differently each
time.  Occasionally, I still write notes to myself using my spelling
system based on classical Hebrew writing.

If you were to get together a team of linguists to "solve" the problems
of English spelling, they'd mostly get involved in a raging debate due
to the fact that there are so many easy ways to do it, and no good way
to select one.  If, by some fluke, they came up with a proposal, it
would probably be so abstruse that nobody else could make head nor tail
of it.

In any case, nobody is going to phonemicize English spelling.  Well,
actually, someone might.  I've done it three times.  But it's moot,
because the English-writing population will simply ignore it and
continue to spell things "correctly".  

Recall that the second Roosevelt administration tried to impose a set
of spelling reforms on the American public.  For the most part, the
American public simply ignored the effort, and continued to use the
traditional spelling.  There are a few cases ("jail" instead of "gaol")
that caught on.  But it was a wasted effort.

Similarly, the USA recently had a big non-celebration of the centennial
of our becoming officially a metric nation.  Lotta good it did us.

-- 
John Chambers <{adelie,ima,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)

[Any errors in the above are due to failures in the logic of the keyboard,
not in the fingers that did the typing.]