Re: USAGE: Language revival

I think regular vs. irregular spelling is parallel to regular vs.
irregular forms in language (a matter I have expressed strong opinions
about in this forum before):

Because, neurologically, lookup is always more efficient than
computation, and there are no known storage space constraints on human
memory (your hard drive never "fills up" and it doesn't get harder to
recall things as you learn more things), forms will always be recalled
from memory rather than computed formulaically, if that is possible.

So once you have seen a word enough times to recognize its form, you
will not sound it out and regular spelling will give you zero
advantage in reading.  This is parallel to regularity in, say,
paradigms: you will store the combination "Imperfect active indicative
third person plural, esse = erant" and once it is stored, you will
never look it up again, so its regularity or irregularity will be of
no consequence to you whatsoever.

The value of regularity is entirely confined to unlearned forms.
Regularities of spelling and of morphology make *learning* easier.  So
you are likely to see regularizations of both only in situations where
ease and speed of learning are at an absolute premium.

Where humans have the luxury to make things complicated and difficult
(but not impossible) for themselves, they seem invariably to do so. :)

So, given these facts, it would be expected that it would be much
easier to learn, say, Spanish than English and English than Chinese
writing systems, but that there would not be a whole lot of difference
in how easy they were to use once you had mastered each one.

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                       edheil@postmark.net
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Patrick Dunn wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Irina Rempt-Drijfhout wrote:
>
> > Is that the Initial Teaching Alphabet? I have one book printed in it
> > (that I can't find now, of course; it's called "How John caught the
> > sea-horse" in ITA) and I can only read it aloud; it's so far from my
> > mental picture of English words that it reads like phonetic
> > transcription, which it is, of course.
> >
> > I find it hard to imagine that the transition is easier than learning
> > to read "properly" from the beginning; in fact you have to learn that
> > much of what you know already is wrong!
> >
> >    Irina
>
> Irina points out something important, I think: Trying to learn to read
> English phonetically is a little like trying to learn to read Chinese
> phonetically -- our written symbols do not correspond accurately with our
> spoken ones, and when one reads (especially when one reads quickly), one
> recognizes words not as phonetic units but as symbols.  This is why it's
> slightly annoying to see people spell "through" as "thru" -- we don't
> "read" (Or sound out) t-h-r-o-u-g-h, but we have to "read" (sound out)
> t-h-r-u.
>
> I don't know.  I'm not making any sense.  I'm losing my mind.  Any
> pschologists on the list?  I'd make a snazzy case study right now.  In
> love with a straight man (again!) and probably failing out of grad school
> to boot!  Give me a life.  Please, god, give me a life.