[CLUE-Talk] Looks like our brains match \w+

[Timothy C. Klein]

* Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier (jzb at dissociatedpress.net) wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 14:19, Timothy C. Klein wrote:
> > * Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier (jzb at dissociatedpress.net) wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 08:51, Jef Barnhart wrote:
> > > > Teh one thing that I have been getting used to id the misspelling of
> > > > teh.
> > > 
> > > I was somewhat discouraged to see this study -- it just provides one
> > > more excuse for people who don't bother to spellcheck. 
> > 
> > Don't get discouraged -- before the printing press, there was no notion
> > of standardized spelling in English.  Chaucer has no sense of consistent
> > spelling -- if you read _The Canterbury Tales_, you can find the same word
> > spelled differently in the same tale.
> > 
> > Chaucer did fine -- so will we.
> 
> Hey, when Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales there was no notion of
> personal hygiene or indoor plumbing as we know it today either... I'm in
> no hurry to revisit those conditions. 

:-)

> The difference here is that we *do* have a standardized system. There's
> a reason why we have standardized spelling and rules for punctuation and
> grammar... I don't think it's a good thing to have a casual attitude
> towards the degradation of the language. 
> 
> If you're willing to settle for rudimentary communication, perhaps
> you're right -- but I think we can aim higher than that. 

False choice.  That's not what I meant, see below.

> > This is actually a cultural thing -- it has nothing to do with how well
> > written English communicates.  We see misspelling as a sign of lack of
> > intelligence, lack of seriousness, lack of education, even lack of
> > culture.  But that can change, and it won't harm the communicative
> > ability of English at all.
> 
> I disagree - sometimes you can get by with poor spelling and not change
> the meaning of a sentence or paragraph or whatever. On other occasions,
> a misspelled word can mean a world of difference. 
> 
> I don't see an occasional misspelling as a lack of intelligence or as
> laziness -- but I do see consistent grammatical errors, faulty
> punctuation and poor spelling as a sign of laziness or stupidity (or
> both). Typos are one thing - a refusal to learn or follow the rules of
> your native language are another. 

I generally do to, but it depends upon what we are talking about.
Someone who can't spell anything right is probably less educated, or
didn't care about what they wrote.  But maybe not.  Take the three
versions of the word: there | their | they're.  I am complete snob about
those things.  But the reality is that having three versions in written
English stupid and pointless.  Think about it:  there is only one
version in spoken English, and your mind had to figure it out there.
There is not reason it should not be the same in written English.  The
fact that people always make mistakes with those is a sign of a problem,
and it also means that in 500 years there very well could only be one
version of the word there.  This is not a sign of any problem.

> It *does* harm the communicative ability of English. Think about people
> that speak English as a second (or third, fourth, fifth...) language --
> a sentence that contains one or more misspelled words can be quite a
> hassle for them. If you're writing for an audience, you shouldn't assume
> that all of the readers will be native English speakers. 
> 
> Here's an example -- if I write "My friend and I went buy the store
> today" instead of "My friend and I went by the store today" -- you'll
> parse that just fine. However, a person who is not a native speaker may
> be thrown by that. Did the writer mean that he and his friend *bought*
> the store? I see people using "buy" to mean "by" all the time, but I'm
> sure there are better examples. 
> 
> I don't think I even need to explain the need for precision in language
> when writing technical materials, instructional guides, medical
> directions and so on. 

English does not have any idea of precision language.  That is the
primary feature of natural language -- it is not precise.  It is
ambiguous.  Context and interpretation always play a role.  And this is
a good thing.  It is what makes human language so expressive.  The need
to try and remove semantic ambiguity does not have any real bearing on
what we talking about, wrt to technical writing.  It is a separate
issue, really.

> I dearly hope that people continue to see poor spelling and grammar as a
> fault rather than simply accepting lower standards. There's simply no
> excuse for anyone with a high school education to be unable or unwilling
> to use the language properly. 

I generally feel the way you do -- but our feelings are out of touch
with reality. Language is a completely arbitrary construct. It is also
a construct that evolves. The reason we have trouble with spelling
in English is because our alphabet has 26 characters, but we have
considerably more morphemes in the English language (something like 40,
or it might be around 100 if you add different stresses on vowels, longs
a shorts, etc.) Thus the reason we see major problems with spelling
is because it is inefficient and horrid in English. The many errors
are evolutionary pressures telling us that our spelling system really
needs to evolve. The fact that 'by' and 'buy' say the exact same thing
is a prime example -- there is absolutely no point for it. The foreign
speaker has to distinguish those from context in spoken language, as
they are same there. They should, therefore, have the same skill to
disambiguate that in written English. If they don't, they need to
develop it, there is no way around it. More importantly, there is no
logical reason for the two words to be spelled differently.  In your
construct, the incorrect conjugation of the word buy should be enough
clue to alert the reader to the error.

And really, it doesn't harm the communicative ability of English. I
think it was Spencer, in the 1700s, who wrote a lengthy treatise on
the degeneration of the English language. His thesis was that in a
hundred years, no one would be able to communicate in English. He
was completely, 100% wrong. It seems like you are making a similar
argument. I would suggest studying the history of the English language
-- it is very fun, and it will allay your fears. Trust me, they are
completely unfounded.

Errors that harm communication *will* not make it into the English
language, except in very rare circumstances.  English is going to
change, and it will do just fine.  It is a natural fact of life and
language evolution.

Tim
--
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== Timothy Klein || teece at silver_NO-UCE_klein.net   ==
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== Hello_World.c: 17 Errors, 31 Warnings...         ==
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