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Definitely. There's also probably a bit of selection bias when seeing what HN users think of it; a high percentage of users likely have (at least) decent writin

Definitely. There's also probably a bit of selection bias when seeing what HN users think of it; a high percentage of users likely have (at least) decent writing skills and probably read things fairly often (even if it's just blog posts/emails/chats). If you read/write very rarely and speak very often, these kinds of misspellings may seem pretty natural. But if you write a lot - perhaps even a lot more than you speak - they may stick out like a sore thumb and your brain might flag them as highly unnatural and a potential sign of hidden meaning. (I'm probably like 99.5% writing 0.5% speaking, myself, and I bet many people reading this are, too.) Then combine it with one of the most mysterious and analyzed crime stories in US history, with a cryptic, megalomaniacal serial killer who loved to use ciphers and symbology to toy with the press, public, and police. I can definitely see why people might suspect something deeper to the spelling, but the null hypothesis always needs to be carefully considered, first. And a side note: does anyone know what the trends over the decades are like for less "hodgepodge-y" languages, like Spanish and German? They seem to have rules for pronouncing based on spelling and spelling based on pronunciation that are a lot more predictable and consistent than English's. I would guess that the popularization of spellcheck/autocorrect might be less significant for such languages, though I'd also love to be proven wrong.

asveikau 6y ago
> And a side note: does anyone know what the trends over the decades are like for less "hodgepodge-y" languages, like Spanish and German? I'm an amateur observer of this, but speaking in centuries rather than decades I can tell you that Old Spanish up until a little bit after the time of Columbus had different phonetics for several consonants, and thus different spelling. eg. There was a /ʃ/ sound spelled with X, as well as a /ʒ/ which was spelled with J or GI, GE -- this all merged and is today spelt with J or GI, GE, pronounced [x]. Also what is today /θ/ in Spain was once distinct /ts/ and /dz/, written as ç and z respectively (today c and z). /b/ and /v/ had not yet merged and their spellings have since been sort of "re-based" to look like their Latin roots. <h> for a time was not silent, and many words that start with <h> used to have an /f/. So, the interesting thing about this relative to English: when pronunciation changed around 1500, they also updated the spelling.
- bernawil 6y ago
  > <h> for a time was not silent, and many words that start with <h> used to have an /f/. Probably related, most words with an H in Spanish use an F in Portuguese. Like 'HONGO' - > 'FUNGO'. In the 17th century there was a concerned effort to make the written language consistent in writing.
  - asveikau 6y ago
    Yes, and go further back and those words in Latin all have f. Eg. hongo from fungus. hacer from facere. hijo, hoja from filius, folia (/lj/ to /x/ being another change relative to Latin). Too many other examples to list.

asveikau 6y ago

> And a side note: does anyone know what the trends over the decades are like for less "hodgepodge-y" languages, like Spanish and German? I'm an amateur observer of this, but speaking in centuries rather than decades I can tell you that Old Spanish up until a little bit after the time of Columbus had different phonetics for several consonants, and thus different spelling. eg. There was a /ʃ/ sound spelled with X, as well as a /ʒ/ which was spelled with J or GI, GE -- this all merged and is today spelt with J or GI, GE, pronounced [x]. Also what is today /θ/ in Spain was once distinct /ts/ and /dz/, written as ç and z respectively (today c and z). /b/ and /v/ had not yet merged and their spellings have since been sort of "re-based" to look like their Latin roots. <h> for a time was not silent, and many words that start with <h> used to have an /f/. So, the interesting thing about this relative to English: when pronunciation changed around 1500, they also updated the spelling.

bernawil 6y ago
> <h> for a time was not silent, and many words that start with <h> used to have an /f/. Probably related, most words with an H in Spanish use an F in Portuguese. Like 'HONGO' - > 'FUNGO'. In the 17th century there was a concerned effort to make the written language consistent in writing.
- asveikau 6y ago
  Yes, and go further back and those words in Latin all have f. Eg. hongo from fungus. hacer from facere. hijo, hoja from filius, folia (/lj/ to /x/ being another change relative to Latin). Too many other examples to list.