Spelling is ruining the English language

[Jill]

Seriously? I mean really. When was the last time you read a book or an article where a violist was mentioned and a) there was no context, or b) the story was compromised by the omission of same?

What do you propose calling one who plays the viola that would be different from the word used to describe one who plays the viol? A change that involves spelling one differently from the other, not a whole separate, new word.

Just going along with your complaint here, let's try the words 'read' and 'read'. Let's distinguish them by spelling the first one 'reed' and the second one 'red'. Oops, those are already other words with completely different meanings. Ok, how about 'rede' and 'rehd'. Hmmm, now there are unnecessary silent letters that I'm pretty sure you'd be complaining about. And again, one of them is already a word with a different meaning.

Seems like you're going to have to create a whole new language if you want it to be spelled the way you think it should, based on how it sounds.

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Jill

Seriously? I mean really. When was the last time you read a book or an article where a violist was mentioned and a) there was no context, or b) the story was compromised by the omission of same?

What do you propose calling one who plays the viola that would be different from the word used to describe one who plays the viol? A change that involves spelling one differently from the other, not a whole separate, new word.

The word "viola" (the musical instrument) has two consecutive vowels, ee and oh (long E and long O). In some other words the same sequence of sounds is spelt with eo: Leo, geode, geopolitics, etc. If we spelt to this pattern, the musical instrument would be spelt "veola". There is nothing wrong with this spelling except for tradition dictating that it must be spelt as "viola" exactly as it was spelt in Italian, even though this spelling causes confusion with another English word "viola" (the plant) with different roots (pardon the unintended pun).

If viola (the instrument) was respelt as veola, a player of this instrument could then be a veolist. Of course that would probably be unsatisfactory to those who favor traditional spelling.

Originally Posted by Jill

Just going along with your complaint here, let's try the words 'read' and 'read'. Let's distinguish them by spelling the first one 'reed' and the second one 'red'. Oops, those are already other words with completely different meanings. Ok, how about 'rede' and 'rehd'. Hmmm, now there are unnecessary silent letters that I'm pretty sure you'd be complaining about. And again, one of them is already a word with a different meaning.

The read-read example you cited above is an interesting example that is discussed from time to time among those who favour spelling reform. Despite your assertion to the contrary that this word must be spelt differently from the colour red, spelling the past tense as "red" will not cause issues. The words occupy different part of speech, so context is quite sufficient to convey meaning.

This is nothing new in English. The dictionary has many words with identical spellings and pronunciations but different meanings, derivations and etymologies. These words do not cause problems because they are classified in different parts of speech and cannot be confused. Examples of such words: cuff, list, might, pink, pound, soil, stalk. We also have such words that do occupy the same part of speech but again we can work out the meaning. Examples: graze, light, hard, sole. These words do not cause problems either. Thus, a respelling of the past tense and past participle of the verb "to read" as "red" should not cause comprehension problems and a separate spelling is not necessary to convey meaning.

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Jill

Seriously? I mean really. When was the last time you read a book or an article where a violist was mentioned and a) there was no context, or b) the story was compromised by the omission of same?

Are you serious? Do you really expect to be spoon-fed context every time something is written down just because some words have ambiguous pronunciations?

Suppose you read the following in a book:

"Your friend is putting on

The page happens to end here. Quick, before you turn the page, tell us how "putting" is pronounced?

Did you assume the verb is "put"? Wrong. This person is playing golf:

the first green".

Sure, there's usually context. However, sometimes the context hasn't come up yet, is not sufficient, is missing altogether, or page breaks happen to be placed in inconvenient locations. Context is not the best method of conveying meaning. If the needed context is two lines down, or five pages later, or not supplied at all, what then?

Why is it better to rely on context rather than having words stand on their own?

[Jill]

Originally Posted by Kingswood

Sure, there's usually context. However, sometimes the context hasn't come up yet, is not sufficient, is missing altogether, or page breaks happen to be placed in inconvenient locations. Context is not the best method of conveying meaning. If the needed context is two lines down, or five pages later, or not supplied at all, what then?

OH NO!!! I might have to TURN A PAGE before I get the context in a book? Whatever will I do? Good grief, man, you are really reaching here.

Originally Posted by Kingswood

Why is it better to rely on context rather than having words stand on their own?

Again, I have to know if you're serious. Have you seen a dictionary? Ever?

Tell me something; does the word 'run' "stand on its own"? Do you know what I mean when I yell the following sentence?

"RUN!"

No, you say? How can that be? It's an entire sentence. It's a single word, "standing on its own." It's a pretty straight-forward spelling.

What words would you suggest for the 200+ meanings of 'run', so that they're entirely different, not reliant on different spellings (how many fucking ways could there be to spell 'run' anyway?), without needing context?

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Jill

OH NO!!! I might have to TURN A PAGE before I get the context in a book? Whatever will I do?

This is what you would do if you were reading it out loud: you would sound a bit stupid if you had to correct your pronunciation.

Answer this: Why do the authorities that look after the other major languages of Europe all choose to avoid heterophonic homographs in their orthographies?

And answer this: If you think context is not a problem, can you state the context rules for disambiguating the 500 or so heterophonic homographs in English in such a way that one can use these rules to program a computer to read text out loud flawlessly? If you think this isn't important, ask any blind person about the inadequacies of screen reader software. Good screen readers do get it right most of the time, but some words always cause problems.

Originally Posted by Jill

Good grief, man, you are really reaching here. Again, I have to know if you're serious. Have you seen a dictionary? Ever?

Tell me something; does the word 'run' "stand on its own"? Do you know what I mean when I yell the following sentence?

"RUN!"

No, you say? How can that be? It's an entire sentence. It's a single word, "standing on its own." It's a pretty straight-forward spelling.

What words would you suggest for the 200+ meanings of 'run', so that they're entirely different, not reliant on different spellings (how many fucking ways could there be to spell 'run' anyway?), without needing context?

Now look who's reaching. You're making personal attacks (the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem), and the straw man fallacy.

Why do you make up this shit about my suggesting that the word "run" must have 200 plus different spellings to go with 200 plus different meanings when every one of those meanings has essentially the same pronunciation? I have not said that we need different spellings in this case; in fact I have explicitly said the opposite in an earlier post in this thread.

You have chosen not to answer any of my other questions regarding spellings. I'm not surprised: some of the spellings we must put up with due to the forces of tradition and social conformity are truly indefensible when scrutinized objectively.

Ultimately, the spellings we have in English are nothing more than a tradition. Some traditions don't always stand up to scrutiny. If we always stuck with bad traditions, in the USA only men with land would have the vote.