| Doug Everingham wrote:
Pete Boardman rote on Fri, 27 Jul 2001
Subject: Re: [openrite] opinion poll on accepting reforms
...
Doug, yu hav my second for what it may be wurth.
Can yu jennerate many mor kwestshons in a like manner?
My ansers ar: 1. YES 2. YES
3 (a) YES (b) I hav and I wil du so
increasingly.
...
DE: Pollsters hav a device tu produce
the ansers thay want. Start with leeding questions, e.g.
1. Du u think peeple get on in the work force or study better
if they stik tu older dictionary favord spellings or newly recognized
spellings like tho, thru, maneuver, analyze?
2. Do u think this shows that social status is valued mor
by authorities than inovations that help lerners and save time?
3. If educational and commercial spelling standard setters
publicly
recommended tolerating a newer and eezier spelling alongside the
traditional spelling of a werd, would you use the new spellings for
preference
(a) informally
(b) even in formal correspondence
or publishing?
I recommend we start with these. If I hav a seconder, theez ar my
votes tu the abuv:
1. YES 2. YES 3 (a)YES
(b)PROBABLY
-- Doug Everingham
...
I'd vote the same way.
DE: Pete asks for mor such questions. I
think it wont wurk if oanly 2 of us want tu start such a quiz. But heer
ar sum possible added questions in the light of <www.freespeling.com:
4. Do you think dictionaries shood recognize aulternativ
spellings that ar recommended by * a multinational panel and * a government
of an English-speeking country
(a) folloing trends well noen dictionaries
hav alreddy recognized (i)
'propoze' beside 'propose', pleaze/please, thoze/those like
realize/realise, analyze/analyse, fuze/fuse, cozy/cosy, 'sez who/says
who', 'show biz/show business'
(ii) labor/labour, vigour/vigor, honorable/honourable like
laborious, vigorous, honorary, terror, horror
(iii) mountenous/mountainous, curtenty/curtainty, like
maintenance/maintaining
I don't like these (the ous in mountenous & cur in curtenty).
(iv) [has] red/read, spred/spread, dremt/dreamt, lent/leant,
ment/meant,
lept/leapt like [has] led, spent, lent['loaned'], kept, slept,
crept
Some of these are not pronounced so by Americans.
This seems tu me tu bring with it sum of
the advantages of Ron's method -- shoing by example mor than by rule.
What's Ron's method?
If Pete B seconds this, hu'l put in thair
2 bits wurth of debate for or agenst expanding this aproach pleez?
-- Doug Everingham
--
I'll put in 2 cents worth.
Gus
Quijoti Quihoaty or keehhoetee
Can't spell? A new UK-based campaign
wants to free up the rules - and myriad
exceptions - in English language to make
words ezier 2 read and rite.
Ever struggled to remember how many "c's"
there are in "necessary"? Or whether you
"practise" or "practice" football?
Then Richard Wade, a
retired broadcaster,
wants your support in
his attempt to simplify
the way we spell.
After all, about 13% of
English words are not
spelt the way they
sound, according to
language experts.
On his website, Freespeling.com, Mr Wade
suggests simple shortcuts such dropping the
silent "b" in "debt" and replacing the "ph" in
photography with "f".
But he doesn't
advocate the
wholesale adoption of
phonetic spelling. After
all, pronunciation varies
between regions and
countries, and this
would merely cause -
rather than clear up -
confusion.
"We should be working
towards a consensus
to spell for the
comprehension, clarity and comfort of the
reader - not the freespeller," Mr Wade says.
"I'm getting a lot of e-mails where every word
is freespelled - they're impossible to read.
People should only freespell the words they
find tricky or illogical."
Learn from txt msgs
In three months, the site has had 500,000
hits, had visitors from 39 different countries,
and received 50,000 emails from supporters
and detractors alike.
"The internet is the
perfect medium for
effecting this kind of
change. Publicising this
by conventional means
would cost a fortune."
His goal is to put up to
20 words a month on
the site, have visitors
vote on their preferred
spelling, and then
assemble the chosen
versions in an online
dictionary.
Although he sees little chance of a global
agreement on changing the way we spell, Mr
Wade is keen to get the text message
generation on board.
"If I can get all the teenagers in California
freespelling, then it'll be well on the way."
Fourty or forty?
Mr Wade, formerly the executive producer of
the BBC science show Tomorrow's World and
deputy controller of Radio Four, says he's an
accomplished speller. Yet even he gets caught
out sometimes.
"I celebrated my 40th
birthday at Radio Four,
and pointed out to my
colleagues that they
had spelt my age
wrong on the card -
they'd written 'forty'
rather than 'fourty'.
"When someone gently
told me that 40 was
actually spelled that
way, I thought, 'That's
just ridiculous'."
Seeing the problems faced by his mildly
dyslexic wife and school-age stepchildren also
proved to be an eye-opener.
"There's a stigma attached to bad spelling, yet
we're very tolerant of accents and bad
grammar. I think that's not fair."
Hence he suggests sticking to the established
rules when writing for school or work, and
freespelling with friends and family.
Cracking the code
According to the Simplified Spelling Society,
English spelling had been quite straightforward
until 1066.
Then French, Latin and Greek words began to
be incorporated into the language, and spelling
went all over the place.
So letters do not
consistently correspond
with sounds, such as in
the final syllables of
burglar, martyr, actor
and injure.
"Yet learners must
decode this chaos for
reading, and memorise it for writing. Literacy is
therefore far harder to acquire in English than
in most languages," says an essay on the
organisation's website.
Solutions range from the simple - such as Mr
Wade's proposal to pick the best spelling of
the present alternatives - to the radical, such
as scrapping the Roman alphabet, as
advocated by the dramatist George Bernard
Shaw.
But no matter how good the idea is in theory,
David Lister of the Plain English Campaign says
such reforms would most likely provoke
resistance, if not outrage.
"Changing the language is not like the
metrification of weights and measures - you
can't just change the rules overnight.
"The English language is one of the things
people hold very dear - they know it's illogical,
they know it's annoying, but they love it."
Texting
lthough they might appear nonsense at first,
there is a certain logic in them.
(Feel free to add your suggestions, by
e-mailing them to
e-cyclopedia@bbc.co.uk).
WOUBLT - Would you be able to? wd u b abl tu
WOIBLT - Would I be able to?
ULBLT - You will be able to
DOUTH - Do you think
FUR - If you are
WEFD - We have had
WEFB - We have been
MAIFB- May have been
WEFND - We have not had
IFD - I have had
WOUFD - Would have had
THAUF - Thank you for
FOURM - For your information
WURD - Where do you reside
ULBLT - You will be able to
ILBT - I will be able to
COFB - Could have been
THEFB - They have been
WOBGLD - Would be glad
THAU - Thank you;
SMAFT - As a matter of fact
SRULT - As a result
FURNT - If you are interested
SOONS - As soon as
POBL - Possible
THAIM(T) - That I am (not)
POFS - Post office
AOT - Another
SHUBL(T) - Should be able (to);
WERG - We are going to;
NAIBD - Neighbourhood
NIG - Anything
MED - Immediate
PERL - Personal
FURNT - If you are not
GING - Beginning
WRIG - Writing
WOUBLT - Would that be Bacon, Lettuce,
Tomato?
FOURM - A funny thing happened on the
way...
WURD - something on the streets...
MED - Sea immediately around Malta
PERL - computer language instruction that
follows KNIT2
WRIG - do you want some chewing gum?
Submitted by: Ken Thornton-Smith
Here are some terms used in chat rooms and
when playing games online
c u l8tr m8 - See You Later Mate
lol - Laughing Out Load (rotfl - Rolling on the
floor laughing)
gr8 - Great
u@? - Where are you (You At)
Submitted by: Neil Skinner
a/s/l? - age/sex/location
Submitted by: Charles Blassberg
Last September E-cyclopedia wrote about
the boom in txt msging - sending short
messages over mobile phones.
"Do u spk txt?" it asked. "The chncs r, if u
dnt, u wll b4 lng," it said. Now, six
months later, it can pat itself on the
back. Hw rt it ws. The growth in text
messaging in the UK
is described by one
mobile phone
operator as
"exponential". Last
month alone, there
were 396 million text
messages sent by UK
mobile phone owners.
This time last year there were fewer than
45 million. It's a growth of nearly 900% in
less than 12 months.
Anyone who has ever sent a text
message knows the attraction. As well as
instant communication (something lacking
with e-mail), there is an almost childlike
Famous Five secret pleasure.
You don't need to shout into a phone, so
hated by train passengers, but you can
discreetly tap out something so
abbreviated it looks as if it might give the
Enigma code cracker a headache.
But the growth in text
messaging, or Short
Message Service (SMS)
is good news for the
mobile industry for
more reasons than
one. For a start, users
are charged up to 12p
per message.
This means it would
very easy to rack up a
couple of pounds'
worth of messages in a day without really
noticing.
But it is also good news for the networks
because it means people are getting used
to using their phones for text.
Karl Maylan, One2One's text messaging
manager, said the explosion had been
due to two factors: firstly, people being
able to send messages across networks -
which started last April - and secondly,
the extension of messaging to pre-pay
customers.
"I think eventually the new technology
will have an impact on the basic text
messaging, but I think that's some way
off. The growth has been so fantastic, it's
not going to disappear overnight."
Only three years ago, he says, much of
the pager industry had not seen text
messaging as a threat, because it
thought the 160-character limit would put
people off.
"It was a blinkered
view. But now you go
into any pub or night
club and you will see
people text messaging
away," he says.
But there are even
bigger things on the
way. Analysts
estimate that by the
end of this year, 70%
of new mobile phones
sold will be Wap
phones. (Wap stands for Wireless
Application Protocol - the technology
which gives access to a slimmed-down
version of the internet on a mobile
phone.)
And John Carter, a spokesman for Orange,
goes further still. "By the end of 2002 we
are predicting that there will be more
Wap-enabled devices in use than there
will be PCs connected to the internet. The
potential for m-commerce is huge."
(M-commerce, for those still getting their
minds round e-commerce, stands for
mobile commerce.)
One vision of the future is being able to
haggle with a second-hand car dealer with
the advantage of having all the latest list
prices being beamed to your phone.
So SMS is, in effect,
softening mobile
customers up to see
their phones as much
more than just things
to speak on. They
could become people's
primary interface with
the internet.
While the networks rub
their hands, though,
not everybody is convinced. Nick Clayton,
technology editor of the Scotsman
newspaper, says: "I have yet to see the
killer application for Wap phones. In
certain specialised areas it could take off,
but I remain unconvinced that it will be
massive across the board."
One major limitation to it is the size of
the screen, he says. And as far as SMS
messaging is concerned, he believes it is
mostly the preserve of young people,
students, and employees of mobile phone
companies.
Whichever vision proves to be right, the
growth of SMS at the moment seems
unstoppable. And we won't have to wait
long to know which way it goes.
Because the future for mobile phones - as
in the internet business - will be here in
months, not years.
(FOOTNOTE: To see how BBC News
looks on a mobile phone, try going to
http://www.gelon.net and type
www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/mainmenu.wml
in its Wapalizer.)
The E-cyclopedia can be contacted at
e-cyclopedia@bbc.co.uk |
