On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 19:57:09 -0400, Mark E. Shoulson <mark@...> wrote:

> In Geoffrey Sampson's book _Writing Systems_, he explores the concept of
> considering English spelling as partway to logographs, like CJK. So
> yes, our words may be viewed as complicated logographs with perhaps some
> phonetic "hinting". Nothing necessarily wrong with that view, and it
> does provide some excuse for the horrendously inconsistent spelling of
> English.

Ouch, partly. I'm really reluctant to deprecate the phonetic underpinnings.

On further thought, perhaps when learning to read and write, unconsciously
I developed something like logographic recognition in combination with
phonetic, and might be using it more than I consciously realize. Some
misspelled words look so dramatically wrong to me that I regard them as I
would a simple line sketch of a human face with too many or too few eyes,
or lips beside each other.

I'ts not my intention to boast, but I have had indecently little trouble
with spelling, and never understood why. Perhaps it's a visual memory
(typeface-independent! Unicode in my head! :) )

> (I remember having a discussion like this once upon a time with Sami
> Laitala; at one point he refused even to dignify the subject of the
> conversation by referring to it as "the English spelling system," on the
> grounds that it was in no wise a "system"!)

Fairly recently, I saw for the first time a statement that Irish Gaelic
has spelling rules at least in part to represent more than five vowel
sounds, but that the rules are different from those for English. Assuming
that to be true, it was really helpful.

I suspect that the consistent basis for regular English spelling is not
taught much, making spellings seem much more arbitrary than they really
are. Until that revelation about Gaelic, its spelling looked to me the way
English might well look to Sami L. (I haven't learned Gaelic spelling,
however.)

One presumed authority stated that English spelling is about 87% regular,
which does leave many problems for those who are learning the language.
However, as a native speaker, I would be quite unhappy to see embedded
historic "artifacts" and the like removed, although I wouldn't greatly
miss "ough" forms. (Were they from Dr. Johnson? Noah Webster?)

Regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
"choose" and "chose" are swapping places for some people.
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