Re: Generalizations about English spelling

Hi Steve,

If I may speak as a teacher -

> Ten Axioms on English Spelling
> Edited and expanded by Chris Upward
>
>
>
> 1. Alphabets provide the simplest way to write most languages.
>
> SB: syllabaries are strong contenders when there are less than 5
>vowels.
> ref: www.omniglot.com, www.wikipedia.com keyword:
>syllabary

Definitely, this statement is meaningless without definitions, as
Mr. Daniels has said.

However, children do go through a morphemic/syllabic stage of
spelling before the alphabetic stage.

I visited a kindergarten in HK last year where children were
learning early writing in Chinese. (No Pinyin only Han characters.)
They were going through similar but not identical stages as children
writing in English.

>
> 2. The alphabet works by the principle that letters represent
>speech sounds.
>
> SB: Most writing systems contain more than just sound signs.
> They also include a few meaning signs (semagrams, word-
>signs, logograms).

I am afraid speech sounds doesn't mean much. Most writing systems
are discussed based on the type of phonology that is represented.

All writing represents speech sounds but of what type: consonants
and vowels, consonants, aksara, onset and rime, syllabics and
finals, syllables, morae, features?

After that, logography is is discussed as a different dimension -
but I could go on and on.

>
> 3. Literacy is easily acquired if the spelling tells readers the
>pronunciation, and the pronunciation tells writers the spelling.

I hate to do this but yes, define literacy.

In various highly publicized international literacy studies
Finland, Scotland and Japan have all done well - all different
types of writing systems. The highest correlation is usually
considered to be between "economic support of education
infrastructure" and "level of literacy". You want to do a lot of
research to make a statement about this one way or another.

One Study comparing English and German children showed that in grade
3 German children were ahead of English children, but in grade 6
they could all read at the same level of competency. The head-start
did not alter the end product.

I think the consensus is that anyone can learn to read any writing
system, but some writing systems are harder to spell. I teach
dyslexics so I don't say this lightly.

Personally, I am waiting for a better spell-checker - one that will
accept 'wut' for 'what'

Anyway, you get the picture.

> SB: Literacy is more easily acquired under these conditions. In
>fact illiterates can learn highly phonemic writing systems in 3
>months or less. Laubach (1960) said that 3 months was the average
>for 95% of the 300 languages his organization developed literacy
>materials for. Swadesh and Pike (1939) claimed to have taught
>illiterate Indians in rural Mexico how to read and write their own
>language and Spanish in two months.
>
> Kalmar says that a hybrid Tarascan /tə'raas kən /
>alphabet had been devised in 1939 by Swadesh, Lathrop, and Pike, as
>part of the Tarascan Project. (p.108) "The Tarascan Project became
>the showpiece of adult biliteracy campaigns ... elevated [by
>UNESCO, 1948] to paradigmatic status as a model for how to conduct
>adult biliteracy campaigns in third world countries .... The
>Tarascan Project established once and for all that indios -
>illiterate indigenous monolingual adults - could learn to read and
>write both their own language and the metropolitan language in less
>than a month or two - provided both languages were systematically
>coded in a single alphabet deliberately designed to be as hybrid as
>possible, on the principle of one letter, one hybrid phoneme."

The problem with these studies is that they are using a completely
different, if valid in its own way, definition of literacy.

Suzanne