Article on the English language

[Tetsubo]

Recently there was an article about how the spelling of English words can be changed and yet the reader will still understand them. Can someone point me to that article?

 

[Doppleganger]

The "rumored" article scoop: here
The first thread: here
The second thread: here


(snopes.com is a website that attempts to discuss whether or not any given "urban legend" is true or not, and the rumored "spelling article" is one such item listed -- as "undetermined")

 

[tarchon]

Just to be sure, proficient readers can indeed deal with spelling variations fairly easily as long as the letters aren't too far away from where they're supposed to be and the variant spelling doesn't happen to be too similar to another word.

To which one may comment "Well duh."

 

[Tetsubo]

Thank you.

 

[Green Knight]

Recently there was an article about how the spelling of English words can be changed and yet the reader will still understand them. Can someone point me to that article?

You maen lkie tihs? I remmeebr radnieg taht alritce. It siad taht, so lnog as the wrod bneigs and edns wtih the smae ltteer, glrneealy skneipag, pploee wlil sltil udrtnnesad waht the wrod is.

 

[jpwic]

check out this site http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/cambridge.asp
its undetermined whether it is an urban legend or not..

John

 

[Rashak Mani]

Someone changed this thing to portuguese and reading was still possible even thou portuguese spelling is fonetic.... In the end we are used to reading certain things and we kind of skip along and jump certain words. I dont know speed reading... but thats one of their principles I've heard. You really dont need to READ everything.

 

[tarchon]

Someone changed this thing to portuguese and reading was still possible even thou portuguese spelling is fonetic.... In the end we are used to reading certain things and we kind of skip along and jump certain words. I dont know speed reading... but thats one of their principles I've heard. You really dont need to READ everything.

It's something that happens with proficient readers with all scripts. Because only a small fraction of possible component symbol combinations are used, it's just more efficient to recognize whole words rather than parsing out single letters. This underutilization of the possible symbol combinations is a basic principle used in error-correcting codes, which is really what natural language is. The advantage of phonetic scripts lies mainly in the learning process. If you speak a language already, you can use the phonetic principle to determine the meaning of unfamiliar written words, but once you've achieved a high degree of proficiency, the phonetic principle is no longer needed. This is why scripts that are only weakly phonetic (Chinese, Egyptian hieroglyphics) work just as well as strongly phonetic scripts (Latin, Hangul), but are generally more difficult to learn.
Something to note about the alleged article in question is that the errors in the text are strongly biased towards short-distance permutations of the letters. "Blulhsit" is much easier to recognize than "bislhult," though in this case it's pretty easy to recognize it however it's spelled. ("Chianlteter" might be apt as well.)

 

[alsih2o]

It's something that happens with proficient readers with all scripts. Because only a small fraction of possible component symbol combinations are used, it's just more efficient to recognize whole words rather than parsing out single letters. This underutilization of the possible symbol combinations is a basic principle used in error-correcting codes, which is really what natural language is. The advantage of phonetic scripts lies mainly in the learning process. If you speak a language already, you can use the phonetic principle to determine the meaning of unfamiliar written words, but once you've achieved a high degree of proficiency, the phonetic principle is no longer needed. This is why scripts that are only weakly phonetic (Chinese, Egyptian hieroglyphics) work just as well as strongly phonetic scripts (Latin, Hangul), but are generally more difficult to learn.
Something to note about the alleged article in question is that the errors in the text are strongly biased towards short-distance permutations of the letters. "Blulhsit" is much easier to recognize than "bislhult," though in this case it's pretty easy to recognize it however it's spelled. ("Chianlteter" might be apt as well.)

don't you just love tarchon?

 

[tarchon]

don't you just love tarchon?

I certainly do, or love to see myself type at any rate.