Re: Children's spelling --> words

{Delayed reply; sorry}

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 19:01:21 -0400, suzmccarth <suzmccarth@...>
wrote:

> I have seen children put down a letter for a 2 syllable word and I then
> I wait for the next syllable but they continue with the next word - also
> few grammatical endings or function words depending on how significant
> it is.

When my "kid sister" (6 years younger) was learning the language, quite
early she labeled part of a figure sketch "LBO".

I now understand somewhat better why one sees adults omit whole middle
syllables ("nutrious"; "incandent") from words. A current thread on a
Linux list must have 30 or 40 Subject lines, uncorrected, that contain
just the word "installion". A gentle reference to a horse that I made
seems to have been ignored. "Sorry for the inconvience" is epidemic.

I see, as well, a dropping of plurals, as well as dropping of the final
"s" in "...ists" words such as "scientists"; also dropping of endings on
status words -- test results that say "PASS" instead of "PASSED", and
several other similar ones in computer and technical usage. Some, such as
"The install went well" seem essentially unambiguous, and concise, if
non-standard.

The inability of native speakers to get "woman/women" correct seems to
stem from something else.

I'm still utterly baffled why scrambling the sequence of all but the first
and last letters of words (written in context) doesn't seriously affect
some people's ability to read the text.

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass. (Not "MA")
The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath
Hope for these times: Paul Rogat Loeb's book --
"The Impossible Will Take a Little While:..."