|
|
| ................. | Twain on Spelling
Reform
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
 "Do
I claim that the substitute which I am proposing is without defect?"
"No. " It has a serious defect. My fellow revolters are struggling for one thing, and for one thing only -- the shortening and simplifying of the spelling. That is to say, they have not gone to the heart
of the matter -- and in my opinion the reform which they are urging is
hardly worthwhile. The trouble is not with the spelling; it goes
deeper than that; it is with the alphabet.
The trouble is not with spelling...it is with the alphabet There is but one way to scientifically and adequately reform the orthography, and that is by reforming the alphabet; then the orthography will reform itself. What is needed is that each letter of the alphabet shall have a perfectly definite sound, and that this sound shall never be changed or modified without the addition of an accent, or other visible sign, to indicate precisely and exactly the nature of the modification. The Germans have this kind of alphabet.
Every letter of it has a perfectly definite sound, and when that sound
is modified an umlaut or other sign is added to indicate the precise shade
of the modification. The several values of the German letters can
be learned by the ordinary child in a few days, and after that, for
90 years, the child can always correctly spell any German word its
hears, without ever having been taught to do it by another person, or be
obliged to apply to a spelling book for help.
Chris Upward published a study in Reading Research where he showed that English students of German could spell better in German than they could in English. They had been studying and using English for 16 years or more, but after a semester of German, they found German spelling easier than English spelling. "But the English alphabet is a pure insanity. In it can hardly spell any word in the language with any large degree of certainty." When you see the word chauldron in an English book no foreigner can guess how to pronounce it; neither can any native. The reader knows that is pronounce [chauldron] -- or kaldron, or kawldron -- but neither he nor his grandmother can tell which is the right way without looking in the dictionary; and when he looks in the dictionary the chances are hundred to one that the dictionary itself doesn't know which is the right way but will furnish them all three and let him take his choice. Unfamiliar
English words you encounter on a page cannot be pronounced. Adding diacritics
often fails to help because there is no agreement on what the diacritics
mean. a-macron could be aa or ei
The traditional alphabet consists of nothing whatever except sillinesses. [Twain's version of the Cadmus
Myth]
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Links
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
© 2000
BETA
Information Design
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Humor
