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English spelling is not phonetic. You use one of a few canons. "Cause" is a canonical spelling. "cus" is not. There isn't a Black spelling canon. Your phone doe

English spelling is not phonetic. You use one of a few canons. "Cause" is a canonical spelling. "cus" is not. There isn't a Black spelling canon. Your phone does not offer it. Nowhere is the correct spelling "cus". It isn't Black spelling. All English speakers have unique accents and pronunciations, but do not transcribe them. They spell with a particular canon. I am prepared to defend this point to the end. The model, given incorrect spellings, infers the writer is dumber than a person who can spell. We can frame the paper as a syllogism. 1. The model judges people who can't spell. 2. Black people, allegedly, in 2024, with autocorrect on their phones, can't spell as well as my six year old can with a crayon. 3. Therefore, the model is racist. What do I do with this?

coldtea 3y ago
>I am prepared to defend this point to the end. Doesn't matter, you'd still be wrong about the correctness of the spelling. The development of differentiated versions of a language for racial, ethnic, and cultural minorities is accepted and studied by linguists in both spoken and written form, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_English Alternate spellings like that are not considered mispellings, as they are usually intentional and/or part of such a dialect. Persons using them are not losing on a spelling bee, they're using an alternative "canon". As for the paper: a model using statistical inference (going from statistics on how a group tends to write a word to an assumption of the membership to the group of someone writing like that) is not using stereotypes, it's using data (e.g. from online discussions of the group). The association "use of languge/dialect X == lazy, etc" though, is racist. That said, I'm willing to entertain the idea of "stupid" for other kinds of unintentional real mispellings like "they're/their". Those are not confined to a specific group though. Not that I don't make them all the time when quickly hammering some point in anger on HN...
- thatjoeoverthr 3y ago
  "there is no established spelling system for AAVE" I would accept you showing me that people do this, outside of the context of playing Your claim is _Black people spell this way_ Support that claim
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Your claim is _Black people spell this way_ My claim is it is a recognized by linguists dialect of English (with tons of regional and temporal subdialects). Black people can spell in the standard US English spelling, and can also spell and use syntax from AAE, and can also do both in different mixes and percentages, depending on the context, their background, and so on. No "context of playing" required, it can also be done when dead serious.
- cubefox 3y ago
  > The association "use of languge/dialect X == lazy, etc" though, is racist. The model would probably say certain forms of "bad English" (that would likely also include things like redneck or bro type language, as another commenter remarked, but that wasn't tested for some reason) make it more likely that the person in question is lazy or something like that. And that is a statistical claim which could be true. In which case it wouldn't be racist. So it is premature to call some probabilistic statements racist without even investigating whether they are correct.

coldtea 3y ago

>I am prepared to defend this point to the end. Doesn't matter, you'd still be wrong about the correctness of the spelling. The development of differentiated versions of a language for racial, ethnic, and cultural minorities is accepted and studied by linguists in both spoken and written form, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_English Alternate spellings like that are not considered mispellings, as they are usually intentional and/or part of such a dialect. Persons using them are not losing on a spelling bee, they're using an alternative "canon". As for the paper: a model using statistical inference (going from statistics on how a group tends to write a word to an assumption of the membership to the group of someone writing like that) is not using stereotypes, it's using data (e.g. from online discussions of the group). The association "use of languge/dialect X == lazy, etc" though, is racist. That said, I'm willing to entertain the idea of "stupid" for other kinds of unintentional real mispellings like "they're/their". Those are not confined to a specific group though. Not that I don't make them all the time when quickly hammering some point in anger on HN...

thatjoeoverthr 3y ago
"there is no established spelling system for AAVE" I would accept you showing me that people do this, outside of the context of playing Your claim is _Black people spell this way_ Support that claim
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Your claim is _Black people spell this way_ My claim is it is a recognized by linguists dialect of English (with tons of regional and temporal subdialects). Black people can spell in the standard US English spelling, and can also spell and use syntax from AAE, and can also do both in different mixes and percentages, depending on the context, their background, and so on. No "context of playing" required, it can also be done when dead serious.
cubefox 3y ago
> The association "use of languge/dialect X == lazy, etc" though, is racist. The model would probably say certain forms of "bad English" (that would likely also include things like redneck or bro type language, as another commenter remarked, but that wasn't tested for some reason) make it more likely that the person in question is lazy or something like that. And that is a statistical claim which could be true. In which case it wouldn't be racist. So it is premature to call some probabilistic statements racist without even investigating whether they are correct.