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Author Topic: The Associated Press reaches a new low?
Architraz Warden
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Or at least one of their writers does. Or maybe it's a good article, and it is the principle that is completely killing me.

Read Here

Having fought to learn and use correct spelling my entire life, I can understand the desire for a simplified system. But the way it is presented in this article... well, it makes me want to jump off a cliff. It smacks of laziness and a complete disregard for both history and what can't be a small group of people. Plus, I dislike the idea that in order to help one group of people spell better, they're going to take a step that would completely kill the pleasure I take in reading.

Honestly, if this is a problem of such importance I'd rather keep the written English language as is, and change the verbal pronunciations than completely butcher what I find to be the more appealing part of the language. There's also the problem with whose pronunciation would you use to dictate the spelling, since accents could vary the spelling wildly. Or hey, since spelling is apparently not that important, maybe we could just spell it anyway we want and leave it up to the poor sap who is going to read it to decide what the word actually is.

Alright, ranting off. Any other opinions on this? Yea or nay to the idea in general?

Feyd Baron, DoC

EDIT: To remove poetic justice

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GodSpoken
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/shudder

It's kind of nice to have some standards to use and deviate from, even on the days you can't remember the correct spelling and punctuation you're sure you once knew.

I still can't stand southspeak and ebonics, although some find them art, so I will join the staid and narrow faction.

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erosomniac
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That article made me want to stab something. The way it was written made it impossible for me to focus on what was being said.

My gut reaction is: hell no. I'm almost never in favor of ideas that push for lowering the bar to accomodate the lowest common denominator. Further, I don't see how this simplifies things. For example: what would happen if "their," "there" and "they're" were all spelled the same way? I would be confused.

On the other hand, the English language is undeniably one of the most perplexing when it comes to rules of spelling and pronunciation. Changing the spelling of words with the intention of helping promote standardized rules for how to sound words out could conceivably make learning the language and learning to spell properly easier.

I also haven't given the issue much thought, so I don't really have a terribly firm (or well informed) opinion on the matter.

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Gwen
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Well, it doesn't help that even the article's attempts at simplified spelling didn't match pronounciation.
"Th cuntry's larjest teecherz uennyon, wuns a suporter, aulso objects."
Shouldn't that be something like "Thu kuntree'z larjest teecherz' yoonyin, wunce a suporter, olsoe ubjex?"
We'd have to use a new alphabet to be able to fit all the sounds. For instance, the difference between the "th" in "they" versus "bath" would have to be represented by two different symbols.
It would certainly be nice if English had a spelling system even more standardized than it is now. (I'm thinking standardized by sound, rather than by word; although the latter would be nice if it were more regularly adhered to--cheque or check? chorus or choir? standardized or standardised? And curses upon all those idiots who insist that "town" has an e on the end because it's cute or something. That's almost as bad as those signs that say "Ye Olde" whatever...don't they know that the first word was just a stylized version of "The"?)
The initial teaching alphabet hasn't hurt anyone's reading or writing skills that I've heard of. In fact, I thought I'd read something about how people who learned to read with i/t/a were better at reading than those who had learned with the traditional alphabet, just like people who study Esperanto for two years and then French for two years do better at French than those who study French for four years.
And we should all switch to Dvorak. I know I'm going to as soon as I get a week free to learn it. (They say you shouldn't learn it if you have to do a lot of typing during the time period that you're studying.)

A problem with it: what pronounciation will people use to write? I don't want to have to translate when people with accents I don't recognize write. (It was hard enough having to keep repeating what the characters in the Pride and Prejudice movie said to each other for Mom because she couldn't understand it; and I often have a problem understanding speakers who are accented in a way I don't recognize.)
It's an interesting issue, all the more so because other languages have a phonetic spelling system. (I thanked my blessings every day for Spanish's spelling system in my 101 class. I'm not sure I could learn English as a second language.)

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Uprooted
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The writer made her point in the third paragraph--it was incredibly annoying to read the rest of the "simplified" spellings throughout the article. Language and spelling changes are a natural thing and they have been happening over the years, and at an accelarated rate with the advent of text messaging and internet communication. But I hate the idea of an enforced massive overhaul of the spelling of English and I can't see it ever happening. Yuck. Or shud I sae "yuk"?
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HollowEarth
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Didn't Germany just have spelling reform 5-10 years ago? Which was largely ignored just like this would be. I'd like to see the school that thinks they could get away with something like this without being sued. I sure would raise a fuss if it was my kid.
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Synesthesia
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Arg! It looks so stupid! It wood just confoose peepol...

Plus there is symplified Chinese characters to consider. [Mad]
So irratating.

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Bob_Scopatz
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Publishers wuld luv it. They culd ishew nue virzuns uv old classik novls undur nue copyrites.

"It wuz the best of times..."

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Teshi
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Actually, that spelling makes far less sense than ordinary spelling to me, mostly because of this:

There is a major flaw in the logic. Sure, it's okay if you're all speaking with exactly the same accent, but does this mean we end up with different spelling from country and even across countries. Southerners would spell differently from Northerners, English people from Americans and Australians and Nigerians... especially on the vowel sounds but also on consonants.

It would be madness.

Better to stick with what we have and not worry exactly about how to pronounce it.

EDIT: Oh, you just set my mind right then, Bob. I am never putting up with "It wuz the best of tyms...

EDIT #2:
quote:
confoose peepol
That's an example. To me, this would be spelt:

Confuez peepl.

I meen, wii not jest go ryt bak to not caering how things ahr spelt?

EDIT #3: The third reason is that many apparantly wacky spellings have their roots in historical (Latin, Greek, Germanic, French) adotions and adaptations of words. When you learn about these, it makes a whole lot more sense and you feel and uncontrollable urge to pronounce the ght in "right".

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Synesthesia
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Or we could go back to old english spelling.
That woulde be funnye

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Carrie
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I also have to join the staid faction. It hurt my eyes to see the horrible spellings in that article, and when I tried to sound them out to see what they said - I got nothing. It took far too long.

Besides, I already get enough weird looks from my British spellings (I include the "u" in colour, etc.).

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JennaDean
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To me, the biggest problem with it is that it would divide us, rather than bring us together. It would divide the children who are learning to read and spell the new way from the adults who already know how and don't have any desire to re-learn. Are we going to insist that everyone re-take English? And to brains that have been wired to read this kind of English for so many years, is it fair to ask them to learn a "new" language to be able to communicate?

I had this same conversation with hubby about the different musical notations for different instruments - "Why isn't a C a C for all instruments?" "Because {some historical reason blah blah blah}." "Well, why don't we just change it since it doesn't apply anymore?" "Because everyone who already knows how to read music for their instrument would have to re-learn, and all the music written in the past would have to be re-written if anyone was going to be able to play it. A lot of it would just be lost."

The same would happen in English - we'd have to re-teach everyone, not just the school kids; and we'd have to re-write everything that we wanted people to be able to read, and a lot of historical stuff would just be lost. Soon no one would be able to read it.

Yes, simpler and more consistent rules would make the language much easier to learn. I've always been envious of how easy it is to read Spanish. But to re-make our own language would be very divisive, and we would lose too much.

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Lisa
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There's another issue as well. My partner pronounces "drawing" as "drawring". So how do we write it? I pronounce the "h" in "humor" and "huge", but I have friends who say them as though they start with a "y". How do we write so that we know what we're talking about?

I know immediately that "write" means what it does and "right" means what it does and "rite" means what it does. If they were all spelled "riet" or "rit" or whatever, how would I know?

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James Tiberius Kirk
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quote:
They even picket the national spelling bee finals, held every year in Washington, costumed as bumble bees and hoisting signs that say "Enuf is enuf but enough is too much" or "I'm thru with through."
*facepalms*

--j_k

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Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy
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quote:
Sure, it's okay if you're all speaking with exactly the same accent, but does this mean we end up with different spelling from country and even across countries.
Across countries? Try across cities. In Manhattan, people walk their dogs. In Brooklyn, people wak their dawgs.
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Vasslia Cora
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[Mad] I cannot even believe somebody would ever suggest this horrible idea.
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pH
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quote:
Originally posted by Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy:
quote:
Sure, it's okay if you're all speaking with exactly the same accent, but does this mean we end up with different spelling from country and even across countries.
Across countries? Try across cities. In Manhattan, people walk their dogs. In Brooklyn, people wak their dawgs.
Yeah. There are different accents all over the place!

If this (God forbid) ever were to happen, I'd end up one of those bitter cat ladies with a cane like, "You kids get off my lawn! Why, when I was your age, we still spelled 'thru' the REAL way! You whippersnappers have it easy nowadays. I used to have to walk uphill both ways in the snow to the library to check spellings in the dictionary when I wrote my book reports!"

-pH

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katharina
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Daniel Webster proposed the same thing 150 years ago. I imagine this push will end the same way.

We did drop the extra "u"s in honor and color, so that was something.

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Lisa
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One positive thing about this is that it's so wacky that lesser reforms might go through.

I have no problem getting rid of some of the more nutty spellings. I'd be happy to use "thru" instead of "through". "Cough" can be "coff". I wouldn't even mind if we normalized some weird exceptions. Kids use "buyed" and "bringed" and "fighted" and "thinked" and "catched" instead of "bought" and "brought" and "fought" and "thought" and "caught", because it makes sense. Why not announce that those are valid? Don't replace the old ones; they'll fall away within a generation if kids are allowed to use the new ones without getting red-penned by their teachers.

Everyone knows what I mean if I say "I brang something" or "I bringed something" instead of "I brought something". It just sounds childish, because we're used to only children who haven't had it pummeled out of them yet talking that way. It wouldn't sound childish if it became a standard. And all it would take is just letting kids speak naturally.

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mr_porteiro_head
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I think you guys are overstating the problem with multiple accents.

If such a spelling system were implemented, it would conform to some accent, probably "Standard American". In order to write Common, you'd need to know A) the spelling rules and B) the standard accent.

That's a lot easier to learn than having to know how to spell every. single. word. in the English language.

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KarlEd
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But you don't have to "know how to spell every. single. word. in the English language" as it is. The VAST majority of English words do follow pretty standard rules. Sure there are numerous exceptions, but it's not like you have to memorize a Chinese pictogram for each syllable. [Roll Eyes]
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Noemon
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Or we could just go back to the Elizabethan convention of spelling everything however we damned well pleased. Shakespeare wasn't even particularly consistent in the spelling of his own name.
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Stasia
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
I think you guys are overstating the problem with multiple accents.

If such a spelling system were implemented, it would conform to some accent, probably "Standard American". In order to write Common, you'd need to know A) the spelling rules and B) the standard accent.

That's a lot easier to learn than having to know how to spell every. single. word. in the English language.

Wouldn't that defeat the purpose? Instead of being forced to spell words one way (current proper English), people would be forced to spell words another way (Standard Common--that may or may not be spelled the way it sounds in their particular accent).

I don't care if they decide to allow things like thru, tho, and lite because I'm used to those. I hate them, but I'm used to them. But that article was horrible! I had to actually say the sentences out loud to understand what some of them meant.

The first thing I wondered was how will deaf people read and understand the written word if everybody spells words the way they sound? How could they tell that cud, cood, cued, and could all represent the same idea if they've never heard the spoken word?

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Katarain
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I can't even express how much I hate this idea. The article made me angry because I started to feel illiterate. I don't sound words out anymore. I'm past that. I see the word as a whole, and phonetically spelled words don't make any sense to me.

It wasn't THAT hard to learn to read, and kids will continue to learn our crazy spelling and not be traumatized over it. If they don't learn to read, I would venture that the problem has nothing to do with the way words are spelled in the English language. (I understand that it is hard for some people to learn to read, especially if they have learning disabilities--but I fail to see how that would be remedied with this stupid spelling system.)

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TrapperKeeper
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That really pissed me off when I read it. First, it was damn hard to read, second its whole idea behind it is flawed.

Not everyone who speaks english sounds the same. Speak to someone from New York, then someone from Texas and you can usually understand them both fine, but under this system you would not write the words the same.

Second, I would imagine that they way people speak changes over time, so you would continously have to update the spellings of words based on the changing phonetics of how they sound.

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Xavier
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I am in favor of strongly enouraging that people use the metric system.

I am even in favor of everyone using a metric clock, and a metric calendar.

I am in favor of using just about any system which is intuitive, over ones which aren't.
The English language is terribly counter-intuitive when it comes to spelling. Try writing a program which figures out how to spell a word from the way it sounds. Good luck with that.
So while I couldn't endorse the ideas that the article mentioned without more analysis, I am at least in favor of them in spirit.

I myself couldn't be bothered to memorize the correct spelling of every word that I use. During the writing of this post, I probably will google several of the words I use for spelling, and then will still undoubtedly misspell several of them.


Spelling in the english language sucks, and it makes absolutely no sense.

I would be in favor of pretty much any measure which allows it to make more sense, though I recognize the futility of these gestures.

People resist pretty much any change, and this is a very fundamental one. I'd imagine that it has about the same likelihood of being implemented as my metric clock idea: zilch.

I've talked to a few people about the idea of a metric clock (and calendar), both here and in real life, and pretty much everyone sees the merit in such a system. It’s clearly the more intuitive, simple, and logical way to record time. But it will never be implemented, because people get stuck in their ways.

For the sake of example, I have so far corrected the spelling of "calender", “merrit”, and “likelyhood”. I got "misspell" correct the first time, but still had to check.
I am a person of above-average intelligence, who has learned English as my first language. I still misspell probably one word out of every one hundred.
Out of the ones I got wrong, “calender”, “merrit”, are actually are the more logical ways of spelling the word, in my opinion. I’d say the same about “likelyhood”, but there is the existing English way of joining words which turns y’s into i’s.

I think you guys are overestimating the problem accents would pose. You’d still have one standard spelling, which would mean there would then be one standard pronunciation.

In certain cases, there would be a fair amount of wrangling over what that standard pronunciation would be, but after that, I see having a standard pronunciation to be a good thing.

Are regional accents so important that we need to do our best to preserve them? Perhaps my indifference to them is because I’ve always lived in “accentless” places (Syracuse NY, San Diego CA, Omaha NE), but I see them as more of an obstacle than as good thing to preserve.

With one standard pronunciation and spelling, the regional accents would disappear over time.
Of course, try proposing to southerners a system partly intended to remove their dialect, and you better watch out. This would of course be another obstacle in a proposal which already has so many obstacles that it will never be implemented outside of a work of fiction.

Though the obstacle of not being able to tell the difference between “their”, “there” and “they’re” is nearly nonexistent in my opinion. Half the times you see these on the internet they are used incorrectly. How do you know they are used incorrectly? Because of the context. Say we standardized it to “there”. There going over there to get there candy. I’d be hard to find a context where the word would not be easy to figure out from its context. It’s not like we have a hard time with existing ambiguous words. You’d be hard-pressed to find any English word which only has one meaning.

I do see a rather large barrier to this sort of change being that we would have a radically different system of spelling than our fellow English speakers around the world.

We’d never be able to convince other countries to make similar changes, and even if we could, we would have no common pronunciation standards with those who are living in England. We couldn’t expect them to come around to the American pronunciations of words.

So to sum up my post, while I am with them in spirit, I recognize the futility of their efforts.

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BlackBlade
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I couldnt finish that article it made me want to cry blood.

I think we should just continue to let English slowely adapt as it has always done.

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Amilia
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Obligatory link to Mark Twain's thoughts on the subject.

Incidentally, Melville Dewey, of Dewey Decimal fame, was in favor of spelling reform. He took to spelling his name Melvil Dui.

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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Amilia:
Obligatory link to Mark Twain's thoughts on the subject.

Incidentally, Melville Dewey, of Dewey Decimal fame, was in favor of spelling reform. He took to spelling his name Melvil Dui.

Ah, yes. The inventor of the DUI.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Xavier:
I’d say the same about “likelyhood”, but there is the existing English way of joining words which turns y’s into i’s.

He said, dryly.
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erosomniac
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quote:
Originally posted by starLisa:
quote:
Originally posted by Xavier:
I’d say the same about “likelyhood”, but there is the existing English way of joining words which turns y’s into i’s.

He said, dryly.
You mean drily? [Wink]

Both are valid.

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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
I couldnt finish that article it made me want to cry blood.

I think we should just continue to let English slowely adapt as it has always done.

The problem is that things are different now than they've ever been. The existence of mass media and printing has made it more difficult for English to adapt than it used to be in the past.

That was my point in my previous post. If English was really adapting, children wouldn't be slapped down for saying "I goed to the store". Maybe "went" would still be a preferred form, but "goed" would be acceptable as well, and I can pretty much guarantee you that "goed" would win out in the end.

That's how a language would adapt naturally. But we unnaturally prevent it from adapting by setting up booby-trapped obstacle courses in every English classroom. End a sentence with a preposition, and people scream. Split an infinitive, and unless you're William Shatner, everyone gets on your case.

Spelling isn't the big issue. Archaic spellings preserve word meaning in many cases. Knight and night are different for a reason. The latter could easily be spelled "nite", but the former never will be. The thing that should be changed is loosening up on the dumb rules and allowing English to morph and mutate naturally.

And I ain't kidding.

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Gwen
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quote:
quote:
confoose peepol
That's an example. To me, this would be spelt:

Confuez peepl.

See, I would spell it "kunfyooz peepl." But that's trying to figure out how to spell words using the spelling system we now have, which has twenty-six letters. If we were to switch to a phonetic alphabet, which would have about forty-three letters, it would be easier. I've sometimes used a phonetic alphabet I made up in middle school, mostly based on the alphabet we already have. Most people can't read it until I explain it to them. It takes longer for me to read it, because I'm not used to it. On the other hand, one girl who saw me writing in it read it without any explanation; it was easy for her.

There are already phonetic alphabets out there...the Deseret alphabet, the initial teaching alphabet. One invented by George Bernard Shaw. Most of them are fairly readable. One alphabet I saw--I don't think it was phonetic, but it was memorable--eliminated capital letters and made all letters the same size. They're out there.

I think that we'll become more phonetic over the years, but it won't happen all at once. Language change is hard to legislate; the United States of America's founders discovered that when they were bandying the idea around of having German the official language of the United States. I am definitely in favor of intuitive systems--an interface which causes the least surprise, if you will. I just don't think it'll happen very quickly. (For all that science and mathematics classes have done their best to hammer the metric system into me, I don't have a very intuitive grasp on how far a kilometer is; I kinda know how long a meter is, but I have to think a second to get even a rough estimate of kilograms.)

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Jon Boy
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quote:
Originally posted by Noemon:
Or we could just go back to the Elizabethan convention of spelling everything however we damned well pleased.

I thought that's what the internet was all about.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Xavier:
I am in favor of strongly enouraging that people use the metric system.

I am even in favor of everyone using a metric clock, and a metric calendar.

Why? Base 10 sucks. Base 12, on the other hand, is great. Check out the conversion charts at the end of the Conrad Stargard books. It could be done practically. And 12 divides up a lot more nicely than 10.
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Architraz Warden
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quote:
Originally posted by starLisa:
quote:
Originally posted by Xavier:
I am in favor of strongly enouraging that people use the metric system.

I am even in favor of everyone using a metric clock, and a metric calendar.

Why? Base 10 sucks. Base 12, on the other hand, is great. Check out the conversion charts at the end of the Conrad Stargard books. It could be done practically. And 12 divides up a lot more nicely than 10.
I noticed this the other day, when I thought how nice of a number 60 actually is, as it is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5 and 6. Twelve plays a big part in that niceness I'm sure.

For the record, and my likely source of bias, is that I've always been a very visual person. If someone tries to tell me that the only way something can be learned is through phonics, I have three standard responses: sleep, roll my eyes, or struggle with the desire to throttle them. This article prompts the last of those.

That being said, I do have a fondness for the Metric system. But I find that it's logic and pragmatics come from being a simplification of numbers and math. Languages are something else entirely. I'd honestly rather see the English language outlawed, and an alternate foreign language introduced than see the butchering present in that article. Linguistics and Etymology shouldn't be thrown out the window to cater to a particular troubled group, the past should be treated with a little more respect at least.

Feyd Baron, DoC

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Teshi
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What Jon Boy/Noemon said.

But really, I find the language we use today really quite beautiful. I've been trying to beautify this sentence and I can't. Not only aesthetically, although that's part of it; there's a certain beauty to complexity.

Also, it would completely nullify the idea of spelling bees. How would children rise to become the stars of their schools without spelling bees?

On the subject of the Metric system. I find 10 very easy to deal with. 10, 100, 1000. Dec, Cent, Kilo. It makes sense. 12 is not hard for someone who 'gets' math, but isn't nearly as neat. 12, 144, 1728.

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Gwen
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quote:
Also, it would completely nullify the idea of spelling bees. How would children rise to become the stars of their schools without spelling bees?
That is the idea.

Why are Arabic numberals an improvement over Roman ones? What kind of math will people learn in the universities if multiplication and division become so much easier?

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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Teshi:
On the subject of the Metric system. I find 10 very easy to deal with. 10, 100, 1000. Dec, Cent, Kilo. It makes sense. 12 is not hard for someone who 'gets' math, but isn't nearly as neat. 12, 144, 1728.

You know, if you switch to base 12, those last three numbers are written 10, 100, 1000. Pretty neat, actually.
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Puppy
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I don't know; I kind of like that you can see the history of our words in the words themselves. If we arbitrarily changed them all, I'd feel like we had lost something.

Though if I had it all to do over from scratch for some reason, I'd use a system very much like Twain's [Smile] Which would be great until a few hundred years went by and everything was pronounced differently.

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Lalo
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quote:
Originally posted by Architraz Warden:
I'd honestly rather see the English language outlawed, and an alternate foreign language introduced than see the butchering present in that article. Linguistics and Etymology shouldn't be thrown out the window to cater to a particular troubled group, the past should be treated with a little more respect at least.

Feyd Baron, DoC

Werd. I read once that were aliens ever to come to this planet, the first language we'd teach them is Spanish -- it's the most intuitive and the most consistent, even if most of the common words have irregular uses.

I'd like to throw my weight behind the death penalty for peepull hoo want to boocher the Inglish langoouje to ukomadate ideeosee lik this, btw. Also, for those who support teaching eubonics in schools. And for clowns -- but then, that's only natural.

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Synesthesia
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Sounds too much like 1984 for me...
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Jon Boy
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quote:
Originally posted by Lalo:
Werd. I read once that were aliens ever to come to this planet, the first language we'd teach them is Spanish -- it's the most intuitive and the most consistent, even if most of the common words have irregular uses.

That's a load of hooey. Everyone thinks that their own language is special in some way. And anyway, how are we to know what language would be most intuitive to an alien?
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Lalo
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quote:
Originally posted by Jon Boy:
quote:
Originally posted by Lalo:
Werd. I read once that were aliens ever to come to this planet, the first language we'd teach them is Spanish -- it's the most intuitive and the most consistent, even if most of the common words have irregular uses.

That's a load of hooey. Everyone thinks that their own language is special in some way. And anyway, how are we to know what language would be most intuitive to an alien?
Uh, for the record, Spanish isn't my language. I speak it, but not well, and I feel a slight tinge of guilt every time I put down "bilingual" on resumes.

I don't advocate it because it's somehow mine, but because it's apparently the simplest language -- English is a complicated bastard of Latin and Germanic roots, and the other Latin languages are each more complex than the last. Chinese isn't even consistent in less than seven forms across the country, and the other Asian languages are scarcely simpler. Plus, Spanish is widely spoken across the world -- common everywhere but Asia and Africa -- making it a good common tongue.

Spanish is laughably simple, just a root and a modifier tacked on, with consistent form and origin almost throughout the language. Can you think of a language easier to teach a foreigner with no existing Earthly bias?

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Jon Boy
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My mistake. I thought you were fluent in Spanish, either as a native language or a second language.

What I'm trying to say is that no language is objectively simpler than another, or that it's impossible to prove on any sort of universal scale. A language that is simple in one way (syntax, for example) will almost certainly be complex in other ways (like morphology or phonology).

And the problem is that it's all relative. Spanish is easy for English speakers to learn because it's similar to English in many ways, but it might be a very challenging language for people from other language families. But if you want a language with less bias, there are artificial language like Esperanto, though I suppose that even Esperanto is still very biased.

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