Re: USAGE: No rants! (USAGE: di"f"thong)

Citerar Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:

> In the Modern age
> 'correctness' in spelling and grammar has strangely become
> a powerful tool of social and cultural oppression --
> strangely because the same age has seen the most advances
> ever in terms of political and personal freedom.
I'm not sure if I agree with the later statement, but in any case one of the
strongest tendencies of the post-medieval West is one towards increased
centralization, politically and socially. I'd think normative standardized
spelling fits right in.

> It wouldn't actually impair any other Swedes' understanding of
> what I write if I introduced a number of new letters and/or
> used some of the old ones slightly differently from them
> -- it's the prejudice that everybody ought to spell identically
> that is the real stumbling block.
Call me prejudiced, but I'm quite convinced it would seriously impair my
understanding of your writings if you introduced a number of new letters.

However, some mild respellings - 'kk' for 'ck', say - probably wouldn't affect
comprehension.

> Again if spelling wasn't so rigid maybe people wouldn't
> be so unaware and surprised about how speech differs!
> IMNSHO what makes these YAEPTs so annoying is that people
> don't just take an interest in how speech differs, but
> there is somehow a more or less unexpressed assumption
> that this is strange, undesirable and/or problematic!
> why are you all conlanging if linguistic diversity is
> strange, undesirable and/or problematic?
It's all about context.

In a conlang set in a non-modern setting, intended as an aesthetic exercise,
variant spellings add a measure of verisimultude. In a modern text which you
are reading because you are interested in the content, not how that content is
conveyed, it is just an obstacle to rapid comprehension*. I do not think it at
all strange I have different attitudes to it the respective cases.


* From many years' participitation on various mailing lists and online fora, I
think I can say with some authority that nonstandard spelling decreases
effective reading speed, and that it not infrequently impairs understanding.

                                                       Andreas

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