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Just because English orthography and pronunciation are in dire straights doesn't mean that it isn't worth arguing for relatively quick wins and easy fixes. Like

Just because English orthography and pronunciation are in dire straights doesn't mean that it isn't worth arguing for relatively quick wins and easy fixes. Like I said, some Elementary School teachers I've met made a strong case that the diaresis is an easy win and would measurably move the needle based on what they've encountered in teaching with/without it. I realize that's anecdotal hearsay rather than scientific experiment, but I was passing it on as interesting anecdata from people that deal with this subject more directly. My keyboard layout of choice has an AltGr international key and some useful dead key typography shortcuts and I use that most of the time myself. I do appreciate the efficiency bonus of a keyboard layout that includes a bit more International keys. Still though, the emoji keyboard remains a far easier way to *teach* someone to type a character than to teach them to switch keyboard layouts, particularly because installing keyboard layouts requires Admin rights in Windows, and is dozens of steps in Settings pages that most regular users don't ever usually see/know/understand. (It's really not at all easier to enable the English International layout if you don't have admin rights to install alternate keyboards at all beyond your system installer's defaults. The emoji keyboard is always available in Windows 10 once you cross its release version.) Push a key to get a popup no matter what keyboards you have installed is easy to describe. Yes, the navigation could be improved and isn't "efficient" at all, but that's entirely orthogonal to "relatively easy". Bad inefficient navigation is still easy to teach/easy to learn/easy to use. Case in point, the emoji keyboard looks like equivalent soft keyboards on phone devices so it should be familiar with is more corelated to "relatively easy" than "efficient" in most people's eyes. Even if I didn't break down the specific tab/sub-tab in my description it should be relatively discoverable if you have a basic idea how an emoji keyboard should work, and discoverable is also more corelated to "easy" than "efficient". (Alternate keyboard layouts aren't very discoverable.) Personally, I love that you can type names of emoji/search keywords and wish they would extend that support to the Symbols section as well. Maybe even some dead-key inspired short codes like "o as a replacement for o with diaresis. (:o turns up the shocked emoji at least/in contrast).

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Still though, the emoji keyboard remains a far easier way to teach someone to type a character than to teach them to switch keyboard layouts, particularly because installing keyboard layouts requires Admin rights in Windows Adding a new keyboard from a language pack that is installed does not require Admin rights. I just tested it on a machine to which I do not have Admin rights. But my point is not so much that contextual swapping of keyboard layouts is a great workflow, but that the emoji keyboard for anything that is a regular part of typing text is an intolerably bad workflow. > The emoji keyboard is always available in Windows 10 once you cross its release version. No, it can be disabled by an admin, so if you have a computer someone else administers (the problem you raise with alternative keyboard layouts) it might not be there. (There's no convenient dedicated UI, but it can be done, and enough people want to do it that you can easily find the how-to's in response to questions online.)
eesmith 5y ago
What is the fix, and what is the win? Is to use diaeresis to help teach a short list of words, like "coop", in order to distinguish between two pronunciation forms ("We bought the chicken coop at the farm coöp.")? If so, that specific form can be fixed by writing it "co-op". How many other words are in that category at the elementary school level, and how many can be addressed by using a '-' instead of a diaeresis? As it is, elementary school teachers already need to teach that 'lead glass' and 'lead the way' are different; and how some words like 'read' change pronunciation in the present and past tense but are spelled the same. So it's not like there's much of a fix to have a handful of words with a diaeresis. If we change to use diaeresis, what other words will need to be changed in to fit the rule? Don't jeer at the seër. (Most "ee" words have a long e ("seed", "seem", "seen").) I'm a top tier square knot tiër. I am so good at peeing I am a peër without peer. Just like cooperative might be shortened to co-op or coop, coaxial cable might be shorted to co-ax or to coax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable uses all three! But if we teach diaeresis, then we'll have a third spelling -- coäx. I could go on. My point is, the diaeresis rule isn't that easy to explain to elementary school students. By comparison, teachers already use syllabification (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabification ), which naturally extends to these cases where diaeresis might help!. Quoting that Wikipedia entry: > The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English orthography (e.g., syl-la-ble) and with a period when transcribing the actually spoken syllables in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) (e.g., [ˈsɪl.ə.bᵊɫ]). For presentation purposes, typographers may use an interpunct (Unicode character U+00B7, e.g., syl·la·ble), a special-purpose "hyphenation point" (U+2027, e.g., syl‧la‧ble), or a space (e.g., syl la ble). So, when teaching, write "co‧op" and "pe‧er" and "se‧er" and "co‧ax". I think that's what my primary school used. This doesn't even require fancy Unicode interpuncts - hyphens also work. That's the "co-op" solution I mentioned earlier. Only, it can be applied to every multi-syllabic word. You can see examples (if you have an archive.org account) of hyphens used in teaching syllables at https://archive.org/details/teachingphonicsf02edstar/page/90/mode/2up?q=syllabyl&view=theater https://archive.org/details/teachingphonicsf02edstar/page/90... . FWIW, here's a 1852 book using acute accents to indicate stress, which teaching elementary English grammar - https://archive.org/details/anelementaryeng00lathgoog/page/n44/mode/2up?q=syllable+ https://archive.org/details/anelementaryeng00lathgoog/page/n... .

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Still though, the emoji keyboard remains a far easier way to teach someone to type a character than to teach them to switch keyboard layouts, particularly because installing keyboard layouts requires Admin rights in Windows Adding a new keyboard from a language pack that is installed does not require Admin rights. I just tested it on a machine to which I do not have Admin rights. But my point is not so much that contextual swapping of keyboard layouts is a great workflow, but that the emoji keyboard for anything that is a regular part of typing text is an intolerably bad workflow. > The emoji keyboard is always available in Windows 10 once you cross its release version. No, it can be disabled by an admin, so if you have a computer someone else administers (the problem you raise with alternative keyboard layouts) it might not be there. (There's no convenient dedicated UI, but it can be done, and enough people want to do it that you can easily find the how-to's in response to questions online.)

eesmith 5y ago

What is the fix, and what is the win? Is to use diaeresis to help teach a short list of words, like "coop", in order to distinguish between two pronunciation forms ("We bought the chicken coop at the farm coöp.")? If so, that specific form can be fixed by writing it "co-op". How many other words are in that category at the elementary school level, and how many can be addressed by using a '-' instead of a diaeresis? As it is, elementary school teachers already need to teach that 'lead glass' and 'lead the way' are different; and how some words like 'read' change pronunciation in the present and past tense but are spelled the same. So it's not like there's much of a fix to have a handful of words with a diaeresis. If we change to use diaeresis, what other words will need to be changed in to fit the rule? Don't jeer at the seër. (Most "ee" words have a long e ("seed", "seem", "seen").) I'm a top tier square knot tiër. I am so good at peeing I am a peër without peer. Just like cooperative might be shortened to co-op or coop, coaxial cable might be shorted to co-ax or to coax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable uses all three! But if we teach diaeresis, then we'll have a third spelling -- coäx. I could go on. My point is, the diaeresis rule isn't that easy to explain to elementary school students. By comparison, teachers already use syllabification (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabification ), which naturally extends to these cases where diaeresis might help!. Quoting that Wikipedia entry: > The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English orthography (e.g., syl-la-ble) and with a period when transcribing the actually spoken syllables in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) (e.g., [ˈsɪl.ə.bᵊɫ]). For presentation purposes, typographers may use an interpunct (Unicode character U+00B7, e.g., syl·la·ble), a special-purpose "hyphenation point" (U+2027, e.g., syl‧la‧ble), or a space (e.g., syl la ble). So, when teaching, write "co‧op" and "pe‧er" and "se‧er" and "co‧ax". I think that's what my primary school used. This doesn't even require fancy Unicode interpuncts - hyphens also work. That's the "co-op" solution I mentioned earlier. Only, it can be applied to every multi-syllabic word. You can see examples (if you have an archive.org account) of hyphens used in teaching syllables at https://archive.org/details/teachingphonicsf02edstar/page/90/mode/2up?q=syllabyl&view=theater https://archive.org/details/teachingphonicsf02edstar/page/90... . FWIW, here's a 1852 book using acute accents to indicate stress, which teaching elementary English grammar - https://archive.org/details/anelementaryeng00lathgoog/page/n44/mode/2up?q=syllable+ https://archive.org/details/anelementaryeng00lathgoog/page/n... .