09-01-2003, 01:34 AM | #41 | |
I am Freddie/UNDERCOVER/ Founder of The Great Continent of Entmoot
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Plainsboro, NJ
Posts: 9,431
|
Quote:
__________________
Come back! Come back! To Mordor we will take you! "The only thing better than a great plan is implementing a great plan" - JerseyDevil "If everyone agreed with me all the time, everything would be just fine"- JerseyDevil AboutNewJersey.com New Jersey MessageBoard Another Tolkien Forum Memorial to the Twin Towers New Jersey Map Fellowship of the Messageboard Legend of the Jersey Devil Support New Jersey's Liberty Tower Peacefire.org AboutNewJersey.com - New Jersey Travel and Tourism Guide |
|
09-01-2003, 06:38 AM | #42 | |
Lady of Letters
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Either Oxford or Kent, England
Posts: 2,476
|
Quote:
Also, if we didn't have weird spellings with about ten ways of spelling every sound, we couldn't make puns. A great loss to humankind
__________________
And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand As they have done for centuries, as they will For centuries to come, when not a soul Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks, When England is not England, when mankind Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea, Consolingly disastrous, will return While the strange starfish, hugely magnified, Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool. |
|
09-01-2003, 09:07 AM | #43 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Ilha Formosa
Posts: 2,068
|
As far as I know, English has the worst spelling of any language to use the Latin alphabet, with French a close second.
I've heard that Spanish and Finnish are the best ( written forms corresponding to pronunciation) The Korean Hangul system is also very good, since it was a deliberately created system (Korean, like Japanese and Vietnamese, originally used Chinese characters, with all the distortions that followed) As for preserving the history of English through its spelling, how useful is it to most people to know that the "gh" sound in night and light was once a guttural? As for the Latinisers, a curse on them and their fruits- the "b" in doubt and debt, the "s" in island. As Professor Tolkien once remarked, "an "h" in "Thames" is a folly without warrant." (These guys are also responsible for generations of English teachers telling us "Don't split infinitives" or "Don't end a sentence with a preposition".) The problem with any kind of writing reform is that pronunciation is always changing- unless you want to change the spelling every few years, you're still going to end up with the same problem. Most problems with spelling come out in writing rather than reading. Though we use phonetics when we're first learning words, they're generally stored in our memory as 'whole units'. This is true in the Chinese language reform movement as well- people learn to read the older "more difficult" characters just as easily as the simplified ones, but the latter are much easier to write- in fact most simplified characters come from the use of quick notes, merchant's writing etc- the sort of non-scholarly writing people used in everyday life. Even here in Taiwan where the use of simplified characters is still technically illegal most people recognise the majority of simple characters because they use them in their own writing. As for the 'femininity' of French, sometimes our feelings about other languages are driven by external forces- in the 18th and 19th centuries German was viewed as a very melodious language, suitable for a nation of Romantic dreamers- for those of us raised on WWII movies it has very different associations. Sometimes, though, we derive our feelings from the sounds themselves- Taiwanese is a tonal language with a lot of frequently used descending tones, which in English are used to express anger. I'll often hear my neighbours having what sounds like a horrendous argument to me , only to look over and see them laughing together.
__________________
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill |
09-01-2003, 02:29 PM | #44 | |
Long lost mooter
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Florida
Posts: 3,342
|
Quote:
Re: non-English speakers using their native tongue when people who don't speak it are around: I recently met my neighbors, who are from India, and speak their language at home. I was in their driveway about to leave their house and they were talking to each other about something unrelated to me, but they kept speaking in English. I thought that said something about their character, that they went ahead and spoke English while I was still there because to do otherwise would be rude, although I wasn't part of their conversation. That was very cosiderate (even though I really wouldn't have cared, because I love to hear them speak their own language -- any foreign language sounds pretty to me! ) Later edit: Maybe instead of doing the suggested reforms, we should all just quack like ducks. |
|
09-03-2003, 05:32 PM | #45 | |
protector of orphaned rabbits
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Kalamazoo... yes, its a real place!
Posts: 1,236
|
Quote:
__________________
|
|
09-03-2003, 11:44 PM | #46 | |
The Original Amazonian Coconut
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Answering no questions, telling no lies.
Posts: 753
|
Re: English spelling reform
Quote:
Why fix it if it isn't broken? I understand if you want to be a lazy fool and not learn what needs to be learned. But why change it when it's been working VERY WELL FOR A VERY LONG TIME?!?!?
__________________
Hem, hem Last edited by wahine : 09-03-2003 at 11:45 PM. |
|
09-04-2003, 04:27 AM | #47 | |
im quite stupid
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Cockermouth
Posts: 2,058
|
Re: Re: English spelling reform
Quote:
And dont accuse people of been lazy some of the hardest people i know cannot do English for one reason and another that is a very insultinbg remark (one which i have heard often through my life) just because you do not find something difficult doesnt mean other people dont
__________________
Yeah god hes ok but i would rather be judged by a sheep than that idiot |
|
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
English Paper Help | Lady Ravyn | The Life of J.R.R. Tolkien and his Other Works | 22 | 03-31-2007 12:10 PM |
AP English Exam: Aaaaaaaaaahh! | Shadowfax | General Messages | 9 | 08-08-2003 01:21 PM |
Old English | Gwaimir Windgem | General Messages | 22 | 06-09-2003 06:25 PM |
British/American Adversity to Learning Languages | Case Sensitive | General Messages | 55 | 05-09-2003 10:27 PM |
My English teacher has never read tLotR! | Sakata | Lord of the Rings Books | 75 | 01-01-2002 08:02 PM |