Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 4:25 am
Hi StephanieStephanie W wrote:A good example is the following that you may have seen on the net:
In this example, there is just enough information for us to recognize each word, in this case by virtue of the fact that we have the first and last letters in their correct places. Interesting, don't ya think?I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch taem at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Such a cdonition is arppoiately cllaed Typoglycemia- Amzanig huh? Yaeh and yuo awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.
Stephanie
sorry for being off-topic, but your enlightening and enjoyable example seems to invite a comment.
If I think a bit about it I spelling and the application of phonetics is even here not unimportant
Spelling:
"rscheearch" for example was misspelled even in this example. It has a "ch" too much. That was not to difficult, however. Would have been "rseearch" - rather obvious, because only two letters had been changed
Phonetics:
to separate double consonants, like the "ll" in "actually", vowel combinations like in
"aulaclty" took me several minutes because the combination/virtual diphtong "au" plus the separation of the "ll" was too much
Something like "allacuty", "atucally", "atcalluy" would have done better.
One of the few words not changed in your example was "thought". It is made up only of three phonems (of course, I am lacking here the IPA signs):
[th] [ough] [t]
No change is possible here, if one wants to remain understandable and stick to the rule/rool.
If one neglects phonetics, one/wun could/cood of course/coarse write/wright
"tothugs"
Would/wood that still be easy/eesie? – I doubt it, though/tho it depends a bit on the context, too, as well on the language competence of the reader.
That example shows of course a feature of languages like English or French with a historical orthography (to make it simple: those which may have many different spellings for the same pronunciation), opposed to more phonetical orthography (more or less one sign per sound) of Finnish, Dutch, Italian, German (to a lesser degree)
Somewhere I read that "fish" could be spelled "GHOTI":
– f like in lauGH
– i like in wOmen
– sh like in "naTIon"
Even compound words (there might be a linguistically more correct term) like "un[-]important" "brain[-]storming" etc, will become increasingly hard to decipher, if the wordboundarys are not observed. Words consisting of more then ca. 12 letters, or 3-4 syllables, as well.
Bset
Xinea
