What flame wars did the Bolsheviks settle? Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: [email protected] SIPR: [email protected] (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: [email protected] (send NIPR reminder)
On Feb 24, 2014, at 10:11 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Ray, > > And Russia under the Bolshevik’s, right? > > N > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > From: Parks, Raymond [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 9:30 AM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Cc: Nick Thompson > Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: [FRIAM] Spelling of Spanish Surnames > > Nick needs to switch to Lojban - http://www.lojban.org/ - then his written > language will perfectly match his spoken language and he will be > unintelligible to all but a small fraction of the human race. The > pronunciation vs. spelling problem is like the QWERTY vs Dvorak problem is > like the 120Hz vs DC is like US vs metric is like…. Humans are lazy - if they > have used something to the point of muscle/nerve/subconscious memory, they > are reluctant to change. The only time such change happens is, > interestingly, associated with Imperial central governments (metric under > Napoleon, Modern German under Wilhelm and Bismarck). > > Ray Parks > Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager > V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 > NIPR: [email protected] > SIPR: [email protected] (send NIPR reminder) > JWICS: [email protected] (send NIPR reminder) > > > > On Feb 24, 2014, at 5:46 AM, <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Nick, > > Don't apologize--take the tack that Wayne O'Neil took in his lexicographic > introduction to (at least the first edition of) the American Heritage > dictionary: > English spelling includes a *lot* of useful information about the history and > otherwise-hidden relationships of our words. (I'd quote some examples but > all > our copies of that dictionary are on another floor and I'm too lazy at the > moment.) > Teach the kids that spelling is a fascinating key to hidden history! I'm sure > they're smart enough to catch on to that, given the hint. Make it a game! > > As to "blatant irrationality": > > English orthography is only "irrational" if (as you, despite my urgings, > appear > to continue to believe) the single measure of "rationality" is "faithfully > reflects > pronunciation"--meaning *your* pronunciation and not necessarily that of the > guys in > the next state, or the previous half-millennium. Think of all those "dropped > Rs" > that most of our fellow Massachusettsians have in their non-rhotic speech: > would > you really want your grandchildren to drop the "r"s from their spelling when > and > if they move to the East Coast? What about the "wh" digraph? In my dialect, > the > first sound in words like "what" and "when" is aspirated (and the written "h" > shows that the dialect of the people who froze English spelling was, in that > respect, like mine--though now that aspiration is quite rare): "what"/"watt" > and > "when"/"wen" are so-called minimal pairs in my speech. Witch side, in your > model of rationality, whins that match? ... And so on for all the many other > examples in all the many other dialects. > > I admit that there are cases where more "phonetic" spelling would elucidate > facts about English grammar that are largely obscure. For instance, there are > *two* verbs "have" in English (historically, of course, they're one verb): > the auxiliary "have" is pronounced either "v" (as in "I've been there") or > "haff" (as in "I have to go now"), while the true verb meaning "possess" is > pronounced "havv" (as in "I havv three copies of the American Heritage > Dictionary"). Similar statements apply to "used" and other auxiliaries. > Would *that* group of spelling reforms make you happier or sadder? > > > Lee, > > I just want to be able to teach my grandchildren to write and spell without > having to apologize every third sentence for the blatant irrationality of > the language they are learning. > > N > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2014 6:57 PM > To: Nick Thompson; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Spelling of Spanish Surnames > > Nick asks: > > How come other people can standardize their spellings and we can't > standardize ours. > > > > Damn! > > Well, in the first place, the case of actual Spanish-as-she-is-spoke, > including all its dialectal differences, isn't quite as clean as the > official Castilian standard that Frank has cited. For instance, Galician is > (I am assured) mutually intelligible with Portuguese (specifically, the > dialect of Portuguese spoken in the nearby parts of Portugal), and > Portuguese is famous for the difficulty of decoding the written language > into (any of the many and various dialects of) the spoken language. > > In the second place, two desiderata are incompatible. It is evidently > desirable to many, including you, Nick, to be able to have a written > language that encodes the spoken language in a faithful manner. But it is > also desirable to many (including, I hope, you) to be able to read texts > written in one's language in earlier periods, when the pronunciation is > *very* likely to have been (often, *very*) different. In one European > country (I forget which one; it was either the Netherlands or one of the > continental Scandinavian countries) a fairly recent spelling reform, > designed to fulfil the first desideratum, reportedly made texts from even a > hundred years ago totally unreadable (in their original form) by modern > schoolchildren. > We can at least recognize Shakespeare--and certainly Dickens!--as writing in > something like our English, even if many of his rhymes and jokes don't work > for us. ("Busy as a bee" was a better joke when "busy" was pronounced as > we'd pronounce "buzzy".) > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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