Glenn Miller wrote:
> On 29 Mar 2002, Garth Wallace was seen to have posted this wee note into
> netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news, to which I have responded as follows:
>
>> And *my* point is that English spelling *does not* reflect the spoken
>> form of the language.
>
> Certainly not these days - due mostly to spelling cops such as yourself!
English, relies on context when spoken mor that it does when written.
Spelling often differentiates homonymns(That has got to be spelled wrong...)
like weight and wait, or eight and ate. When written, you can remove
the reliance in context, buy using the correct spelling, makinging
it easier for *most* readers to understand what you wrote.
It doesn't always work, since some words, while spelled the sme are
pronounced differently, based on context. "read" is a good example
of this. As a present tense verbe it is 'reed' but as a past tense
verb it is 'red'.
Af course in 50 years, that may change. The language is constantly
changing. It's slower that it once was, but it's still going.
Look at all the new words and spellings introduced in new
editions of dictionaries.
As for its and it's, the ' is used in other languages for
contractions as well. Are you going to change them all?
Contractions are a special case, and really should not
be used when writing, other than dialog.
> "gh" used to be a gutteral sound - one which no longer is in spoken
> English, except in remote dialects.
But it retained the spelling. That is likely to change in the future.
>> And English spelling has *never* been
>> phonemic...just look at how Chaucer spelled things.
Again the language has changed a lot since then.
No one really knows how it was pronounced. We were not
there. All we really know is it was written differently.
Now, what should have been a simple comment, on a mistake
in writing, a very common one too, has digressed into insults.
No 'spell check' is going to catch this, since both are
correct, but have different meanings. Nor will it catch the
incorrect usage of to, too, or two. That Requires grammer
checkers, and good AI routines. Most grammer checker tools
will miss these mistakes, or will give constant, anoying
warnings that you *might* have used the wrong word. They quickly
get turned off..
Now, back to software development.
-Thomas
