Reading and writing are different transformations - they are not complementary or inverse - they are just different.
Phonics gives you some clues to remember a word, context gives you other clues. Eventually, you may learn what kinds of words come from Latin, Greek, and French, and those are more clues. But before those clues do anything at all for you, you have to care and want to read.
Four righting ewe jest halve two remmemmber thee spellin.
> "There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read."
English spelling could be significantly improved by adding a few optional accents. They could be purely additive: the ASCII spellings would remain valid for those who prefer to use them.
Native English speakers don’t seem to quite grasp how difficult the spelling is. I’ve been using this language for thirty years and I sometimes forget how some basic words are pronounced because I mostly write it.
There’s no need to change physical keyboards. In the smartphone era, most English around the world is already being typed using soft keyboards and autocomplete. A spelling reform could be agreed between Google, Apple and Microsoft. They are the de facto equivalent of Académie Française for the English language, even if they don’t use that power.
Here’s my basic suggestion for the optional accent marks:
A long vowel is marked with an acute accent. The sound is simply the one you’re familiar with from how the alphabet is pronounced. This lets us distinguish between léad (the verb) and lead (the metal), live (the verb) and líve (as in streaming), lów and how, féar and bear, bléak and break, infinite and fíníte, etc.
It also fixes the spelling of many loan words that look like the final e would be silent and today you just have to know it’s not: catastrophé, epitomé, Eurydicé, etc.
This easy rule doesn’t nearly cover all the weird vowel spellings, but it already fixes a substantial part of the worst obstacles for English learners.
Two more accent marks could be deployed:
The macron is already familiar to Japanese learners. It’s a long version of the short vowel sound, as in Ōsaka. The spelling of many English loan words could be unified by deploying the macron consistently. It would allow replacing é with ē in French loan words like fiancē.
The grave accent could be used to assign a third vowel sound, but it’s not as obvious what this should be. As an example, maybe for the letter A, it could be the sound in words like àll and hàul and àwe. Again, the point would be to give a consistent and useful hint of a sound that doesn’t follow the basic rules, not to make the spelling perfect in one stroke.
I have the impression that it is indeed broken, but even if there was a worldwide generational effort to fix it, USA would stubbornly remain in their old ways as a matter of national pride.
This seems like a good idea that isn't likely to catch on widely, but could maybe be deployed in places like the Simple English Wikipedia and other contexts where non-native English speakers are a major part of the target audience.
> Native English speakers don’t seem to quite grasp how difficult the spelling is.
We're well aware. This is why we have spelling competitions and why spellcheck is included everywhere. Native English speakers regularly use spellcheck. Some people even forego standard English spelling and just spell stuff as they want.
There are many things I could say about optionally adding accents to clarify some vowel pronunciations, but the worst case scenario would probably be if it actually gained traction. https://xkcd.com/927/
There’s a thorough explanation of the history of the poem and the research that went into rediscovering the author of the poem and [re?]producing the ‘final’ version presented in the article - scroll down to after the poem.
The conclusion is that “This version is essentially the author's own final text, as also published by New River Project in 1993” (so ‘1922’ in the page title and link text is arguably wrong, or at least misleading).
Really, English is sort of a patchwork quilt. English spelling starts making sense if you also know the spelling of several of the source languages it borrowed from. French especially important; Latin and Greek via french IIRC; and maybe German and Dutch or so for the Saxon side of things.
The confusion happens when (Anglo)-Saxon, French, and Greek words all happen to collide.
Or I would say that, but then I looked at one of the first given examples: Corpse and Corps, not actually from two different languages. Actually borrowed from Latin "corpus" (body) via french twice . [1]
You still get quite a bit of traction if you know those other languages, but ... that one is particularly bad!
See also: Ghoti (Supposedly can validly be pronounced "Fish")
* "Gh" = /f/ (laugh) : A sound that doesn't exist in english anymore, but does in german" "Lach", which is pronounced roughly the same as in old english). Or, if you want a word you might recognize: "Loch", which is the Scottish Gaelic word for Lake.
* "O" = /ɪ/ (women) : Actually english, from the great vowel shift I think?
* "Ti" = /ʃ/ (nation) : Nation is actually a french word, borrowed wholesale including the original spelling. [2]
But it says little about the English language proper, things like syntax, the system of verb tenses, or even phonetics. It's only about the spelling, and specifically the hodgepodge of various historical spellings, and the tendency to import a word with its foreign spelling and foreign pronunciation. Chunks of Romance languages, mostly Latin and French, stick out as especially noticeable: things like "bona fide", or "corps", or even "beauty".
Most languages in which the connection between the written form and the sound is straightforward, like Spanish or Japanese, import foreign words by writing down the sound and ignoring the original spelling. The problem is that in Britain, French was directly spoken and written for centuries, and for a person who speaks and writes French daily, it would be rather jarring to write "bohteh" instead of "beauté" or "ko" instead of "corps". To have a taste of that, trai tu rait inglish fonetikalli. It's an attempt to avoid that what has driven us to the current situation.
Isn’t wild that if you said that sentence about why other language, particular, a non-Western one, this would be considered hate speech? It’s interesting how language works.
People are generally given a free pass to criticise their own in-group.
There's a famous Chinese poem demonstrating an issue in the Chinese language, IIRC spelling reform; but were I to speak it (I can't*) I suspect anyone who couldn't speak Chinese would think I was mocking the language despite the original being from a native speaker:
And honestly I agree with your broader point that everyone gets a pass to hate on "western" (the way your using means the englishing speaking first world) culture, but is very sensitive and careful about insulting other cultures. I just dont think this is an example of that
Nah, it's too long. You can do it but it's going to be a pain trying to extend and add different lyrics. Would probably be a full evening of work, multiple tries per section.
Readit News
Phonics gives you some clues to remember a word, context gives you other clues. Eventually, you may learn what kinds of words come from Latin, Greek, and French, and those are more clues. But before those clues do anything at all for you, you have to care and want to read.
Four righting ewe jest halve two remmemmber thee spellin.
> "There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read."
https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ (and hn discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35599181 )
> "Lucy Calkins was an education superstar. Now she’s cast as the reason a generation of students struggles to read. Can she reclaim her good name?"
Gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/lucy-ca...
Deleted Comment
Native English speakers don’t seem to quite grasp how difficult the spelling is. I’ve been using this language for thirty years and I sometimes forget how some basic words are pronounced because I mostly write it.
There’s no need to change physical keyboards. In the smartphone era, most English around the world is already being typed using soft keyboards and autocomplete. A spelling reform could be agreed between Google, Apple and Microsoft. They are the de facto equivalent of Académie Française for the English language, even if they don’t use that power.
Here’s my basic suggestion for the optional accent marks:
A long vowel is marked with an acute accent. The sound is simply the one you’re familiar with from how the alphabet is pronounced. This lets us distinguish between léad (the verb) and lead (the metal), live (the verb) and líve (as in streaming), lów and how, féar and bear, bléak and break, infinite and fíníte, etc.
It also fixes the spelling of many loan words that look like the final e would be silent and today you just have to know it’s not: catastrophé, epitomé, Eurydicé, etc.
This easy rule doesn’t nearly cover all the weird vowel spellings, but it already fixes a substantial part of the worst obstacles for English learners.
Two more accent marks could be deployed:
The macron is already familiar to Japanese learners. It’s a long version of the short vowel sound, as in Ōsaka. The spelling of many English loan words could be unified by deploying the macron consistently. It would allow replacing é with ē in French loan words like fiancē.
The grave accent could be used to assign a third vowel sound, but it’s not as obvious what this should be. As an example, maybe for the letter A, it could be the sound in words like àll and hàul and àwe. Again, the point would be to give a consistent and useful hint of a sound that doesn’t follow the basic rules, not to make the spelling perfect in one stroke.
We're well aware. This is why we have spelling competitions and why spellcheck is included everywhere. Native English speakers regularly use spellcheck. Some people even forego standard English spelling and just spell stuff as they want.
There are many things I could say about optionally adding accents to clarify some vowel pronunciations, but the worst case scenario would probably be if it actually gained traction. https://xkcd.com/927/
The conclusion is that “This version is essentially the author's own final text, as also published by New River Project in 1993” (so ‘1922’ in the page title and link text is arguably wrong, or at least misleading).
The confusion happens when (Anglo)-Saxon, French, and Greek words all happen to collide.
Or I would say that, but then I looked at one of the first given examples: Corpse and Corps, not actually from two different languages. Actually borrowed from Latin "corpus" (body) via french twice . [1]
You still get quite a bit of traction if you know those other languages, but ... that one is particularly bad!
See also: Ghoti (Supposedly can validly be pronounced "Fish")
* "Gh" = /f/ (laugh) : A sound that doesn't exist in english anymore, but does in german" "Lach", which is pronounced roughly the same as in old english). Or, if you want a word you might recognize: "Loch", which is the Scottish Gaelic word for Lake.
* "O" = /ɪ/ (women) : Actually english, from the great vowel shift I think?
* "Ti" = /ʃ/ (nation) : Nation is actually a french word, borrowed wholesale including the original spelling. [2]
[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/corpse
[2] The story might be more involved, but this post is getting long.
Most languages in which the connection between the written form and the sound is straightforward, like Spanish or Japanese, import foreign words by writing down the sound and ignoring the original spelling. The problem is that in Britain, French was directly spoken and written for centuries, and for a person who speaks and writes French daily, it would be rather jarring to write "bohteh" instead of "beauté" or "ko" instead of "corps". To have a taste of that, trai tu rait inglish fonetikalli. It's an attempt to avoid that what has driven us to the current situation.
There's a famous Chinese poem demonstrating an issue in the Chinese language, IIRC spelling reform; but were I to speak it (I can't*) I suspect anyone who couldn't speak Chinese would think I was mocking the language despite the original being from a native speaker:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_...
* I lack the skill to tell if this is correct pronunciation: https://youtu.be/vExjnn_3ep4?si=hbg3b3niapF6X4TH
And honestly I agree with your broader point that everyone gets a pass to hate on "western" (the way your using means the englishing speaking first world) culture, but is very sensitive and careful about insulting other cultures. I just dont think this is an example of that