Nicholas Bodley wrote:

>
> 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.

"Whole word" "vs." "phonics." Both, of course, are necessary, with the
emphasis on phonics, since it gives you 87% (whence the figure?) of the
language and 100% of the uncommon vocabulary.

> 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?)

They're from the history of English.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...