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Why do you think #3 is more important than #2? Why is preserving history and etymology more important than ease of learning for new writers? Put another way, wh
by mwcampbell 6y ago
Why do you think #3 is more important than #2? Why is preserving history and etymology more important than ease of learning for new writers? Put another way, why should kids have to struggle with spelling so we can have a writing system that preserves linguistic history?
- munificent 6y agoThree reasons: 1. Because it's more important to know what words mean than it is to know how they sound. My daughter reads a ton and learns a lot of words from reading. Fairly often, she mispronounces them, and that's OK. What's more valuable is that she can often infer the correct meaning of the word both from the surrounding context and from the parts that the word is made of. If we normalize spelling to match pronunciation, much of the latter gets lost. It's easier to see that "mean" and "meant" are related than "meen" and "ment". "History" and "story" versus "histery" and "story". 2. Because pronunciation changes over time. If we continuously change spelling to match, it means older printed works get harder to read. In the worst case, they can appear to be saying different words than they intended. 3. Because pronunciation isn't uniform across regions. Should "lawyer" be spelled "loyer" or "lawyer"? Is "crayon" spelled "crayon", "crayawn", "cran", or "crown"? Is it "caramel" or "carmel"?