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Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>
research.bell-labs.com>I am probably going to get myself into hot water here, but one paragraph in Martin Haspelmath's seems to require some comment: In my view, linguists have indeed failed -- they have not accompanied the reform with a broad public-relations offensive, explaining to the public why certain ways of spelling are better than others, and why the alternative (never changing anything, as in English spelling) would have desastrous effects. Perhaps that's because not all linguists agree that "certain ways of spelling are better than others" much less that complex systems like English spelling have "desastrous [I'm not sure if the spelling error here was intentional or not] effects". There is no question that systems such as English are harder to learn - both from a reader's and a speller's perspective -- than more "regular" systems (e.g. German or, better, Finnish). Systems like Chinese are even worse from a learner's point of view. That much is not in doubt. (It would be a bizarre model of learning that had these two kinds of systems be equally easy.) What is much less clear is whether being forced to spend time learning a complex writing system is detrimental to one's long-term educational well-being, and this seems to be the more important point. (To me, "disastrous" implies a *significant* measurable effect.) Despite the complexity of English writing, I cannot remember learning to read or spell, meaning that the bulk of this was already covered very early on in my education. I've heard similar accounts from native readers of Chinese. To be sure, there are a lot of bad spellers (and bad readers) in English-speaking countries. But this may have more to do with misguided educational theories (particularly in the U.S.) about how to teach kids reading and writing (simplistic "whole word" methods, for instance), than it does with the system itself. What is the real effect of the complexity of English spelling? It is harder to learn, but it is clearly within the range of what kids can handle, given appropriate educational approaches. Some curious cultural institutions like the "spelling bee" are possible (I assume there is no equivalent in, say, Spanish-speaking countries) but, hey, some kids actually get a kick out of those kinds of things. And even adults will occasionally find that they do not know how to spell a word; for instance I discovered only today that I didn't know how to correctly spell "superintendent". But none of these seem like major drawbacks requiring the commentary of professional linguists. (I should add that I'm not afraid of being completely wrong about the things I've said here: if someone has some hard data to show that English spelling, or other complex systems do indeed have measurable detrimental affect on children's education, then I would be very interested to see it.) - Richard Sproat Language Modeling Research Department Multimedia Communications Research Laboratory Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies | tel (908) 582-5296 600 Mountain Avenue, Room 2D-430 | fax (908) 582-3306 Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA | rwsMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
worldnet.att.net>Why should spelling be a matter of legislation? - Peter T. Daniels grammatimMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
email.msn.com>Dear Professor Haspelmath: Personally, I favor phonetic spelling of English so that GHOTI cannot be read as /fish/ as GBS correctly observed it could be. However, I think "disastrous" does not correctly characterize the effects of retaining historical spellings in English. Where is the disaster? Students with normal learning abilities have been mastering it for centuries. Pat PATRICK C. RYAN <PROTO-LANGUAGEMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue