Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Re: Credibility Message-ID: <1610@dciem.UUCP> Date: Mon, 1-Jul-85 14:25:56 EDT Article-I.D.: dciem.1610 Posted: Mon Jul 1 14:25:56 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 1-Jul-85 16:16:32 EDT References: <271@sri-arpa.ARPA>Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada Lines: 66 Summary: >I am constantly finding people who take arms against any change of the >written language. I have always felt that the written language is >primarily a representation of the spoken one. There is an easy test to >tell you how you think about it. Just decide which of the following >sentences is "correct". > > Type a "L". (or) Type an "L". > >I know people who argue strongly for the first form because "L" does >not begin with a vowel. "I have always felt that the written language is primarily a representation of the spoken one." Many respectable authorities would agree, but I think it is a dangerous misconception. Spoken language has primarily evolved in the context of conversation, with frequent opportunities for feedback and error correction, as well as continuous inclusion of out-of-channel signals (e.g. body language). Written language has evolved to handle the storage and transmission of ideas to distant places and times. If one theory of the origin of writing is correct, there was no initial connection with spoken language: writing carried the tallies of goods being transported. The carrier might be able to describe the contents of the wagon by looking at the tokens, but he could equally well do so by looking in the wagon. Would one then say that the wagon contents represented spoken language? Many very long-lived writing systems have only a tenuous connection with the sounds of language. Chinese (~5-6000 yr) and hieroglyphics (~4000 yr) both suggest the sounds of the desired words, sometimes, but they make no provision for computing the sounds of unknown words. One can read aloud texts written in either, but this does not mean that such reading is the primary function of the writing. Quasi-phonetic writing is a relatively new (~2-3000 yr) entry into the field of writing. It is not a "perfection" of writing methods that we can now, in some languages, deduce the sound of an unknown word from its written form. It is a convenience to do so, since we can communicate with someone at a distance and then later talk to them about the same novel topic. The structure of written language differs from that of spoken language in ways that are quite dramatic if you look/listen closely. Listen not to academics, but to everyday conversation (or even televised press conferences). How often do you hear clearly constructed sentences? How often do you hear isolated phrases, or incomplete structures that run into one another for a minute or two without pause? Could you read such stuff? Probably, with difficulty, but in conversation there is no problem because of the out-of-channel information and because of the various opportunities for feedback. Others have commented on the value of spelling homophones differently when the etymology is thereby clarified. As with phonetic spelling it is a convenience, not a necessity. There are doubtless many ways English spelling could be improved, by which I mean made to convey more rapidly and easily the writer's intentions, or to be easy to learn. Phonetization is technically impossible because of horrendous dialect variations, but internal consistency could be improved. I'd hate to try to do it, and I would be very concerned about the problems of reading out-dated materials if many spellings changed. But in the long run it will happen, I suppose, and it will probably be for the good. But don't make the mistake of thinking writing is just a transcription of what might otherwise be speech. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt