RE: SUO: English language (fwd) OUCH!
Pat,
. I think you've exemplified around SR 5379.
. Actually, I was thinking of the ambiguities under SR1 (as I
recalled it) of tort vs taut vs taught. I guess if we can understand them
when spoken, we must be able to understand it when all are written as
"tort". Basically all homophones would become additional homonyms. The
English dictionary would have many fewer main entries, but a correspondingly
greater average rate of secondary level "meanings" per main entry.
. Nevertheless, you make a relevant point in mentioning vocal
inflections, since, in English, they are not indicated in writing. On the
other hand, I wonder whether spelling differences in a phonetic system could
be used to indicate these also. That may require modifications to spoken
emphasis to achieve a sensible structure for a co-ordinated system.
. Could an "Esperanto " have ever succeeded (in so far as that
being the name of the winner of the George Bernard Shaw legacy award for a
new language for universal application) had it gone down this path? I
wonder?
Cheers Graham Horn
National Data Standards Unit
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
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-----Original Message-----
From: pat hayes [mailto:phayes@ai.uwf.edu]
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 5:32 AM
To: John F. Sowa
Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
Subject: Re: SUO: English language (fwd) OUCH!
>John Dickert wrote:
>
> >Reasons Why The English Language Is Hard To Learn: <Or why
phonics won't
> >teach how to read it all>
> >
> >Here are the classics.
> >
> >1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
> >2) The farm was used to produce produce.
> >3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
> >4) We must polish the Polish furniture. <The char staff at the
State
> >Department used to get mad at the Eastern European director who
left a sign
>
> >ordering them to POLISH one particular desk every night.>
> >5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
> >6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
> >7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was
> >time to present the present.
> >8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
> >9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
> >10) I did not object to the object.
> >11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
> >12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
> >13) They were too close to the door to close it.
> >14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
> >15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
> >16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
> >17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
> >18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
> >19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
> >20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
> >21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
>
>Other languages have a simple solution to such problems:
>accents and umlauts.
>
>German and English have similar systems of sound changes
>in verb tenses and in nouns derived from verbs. The German
>speakers solved their problem by adding "umlauts" (literally
>"sound changes") represented by two dots above the vowel.
>
>Russian has many words with different meanings that differ
>in accent, but not in the traditional spelling. An example
>is the word "sorok" meaning "forty" and the word "soroka"
>meaning "magpie". The genitive plural of "soroka" is "sorok".
>If you wanted to write "forty magpies" in Russian, you could
>write "sorok sorok", in which the first word has the accent
>on the first syllable, and the second word has the accent on
>the second syllable.
>
>In Russian, accents are not normally printed in most
>publications, but they are written in books for students
>and nonnative speakers.
>
>Suggestion: Adopt a policy similar to Russian, and print
>accents and umlauts on texts written for beginners and
>nonnative English speakers. Since the great majority of
>everything written today is written on a computer, it would
>be possible to have a menu with two options:
>
> 1. Print or display with accents.
>
> 2. Print or display without accents.
>
>Even for old texts that were written long before anyone thought
>of using accents, it is possible to use parsers that can
>determine the correct placement of the accent or umlaut in
>the great majority of cases (including most of the examples
>above). In cases that are truly ambiguous, a word processor
>could simply insert an accent in red, which the author could
>accept or change, if desired.
Anuther solushun iz to yuz fonetik speling, wich haz the merit of beeing
ritabl in 7-bit karakter bloks and eeven a chyld can reed it prity wel. Ov
kors ther ar several diferent fonetik speling convenshuns that hav been
sujested, but az any chyld nowz, anywun with a modicum of intelijens can
reed al of them; so wot the hel, Archie, wot the hel?
Pat Hayz
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