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> learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles" I choose to believe that the author was channeling the spirit of Noah Webster as a deliberate champion of pho
by kibwen 2mo ago
> learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles"
I choose to believe that the author was channeling the spirit of Noah Webster as a deliberate champion of phonetic spelling reform.
- somat 2mo agoOr Andrew Jackson approaching the problem from the other end. “It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.” As a rather, well... "creative" speller I blame Webster for locking things down and ruining it for the rest of us.
- jimmydddd 2mo agoI few years ago I saw a TV interview where some gen-z kid confidently stated: "the dictdionary is supposed to reflect how I talk, not the other was around."
- eru 2mo agoThat's actually how many of the dictionary people see themselves.
- thesuitonym 1mo agoMost dictionaries are descriptivist, and that's why they frequently have multiple spellings of words. It's because of your teachers, style guides & internet trolls that anyone says the dictionary spelling is the only correct spelling.
- xboxnolifes 2mo agoThe tricky part is that spoken language and written language are not the same. Even if you are a descriptionist that believes dictionaries should represent how people write, it doesn't necessarily mean that the spelling changes based on how people pronounce it.
- saulpw 2mo agoA natural descriptivist.
- tux3 2mo agoAlso known as descriptivism. That's what it do.
- thaumasiotes 2mo agoThat is in fact what the dictionary is supposed to do.
- b112 1mo agoYes, but also with a bit of lag. A dictionary would be all but useless, if it included words used for 2 months, and essentially never used in that context, way, or spelling again. That sort of means teenage slang probably shouldn't appear, and amusingly if it did appear in the dictionary, it'd probably be less 'cool' to use that slang. And alt-spellings for 'being kool' aren't what I'd call a dictionary thing. Put another way, slang is in the dictionary, but only long-standing slang. Such as 'cool'. I'd see it more as temp slang->more used->enters dictionary-> eventually the 'slang' note is dropped, it's just language. I'd want to see a word used for a few years, before it enters. And really, some slang morphs endlessly, like a fire flickering and then going out. How do you capture that? Even online, it'd be out of date once published. And lots of slang is colloquial. Do you care to add slang language used across dozens of regions in the US? I recall 20 years ago, Oxford Dictionary took a literal physical trip across Canada, and made the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, filled with 2200 'Canadianisms'. Akin to what you're saying here, if people are using it, it should be in there. But these were things Canadians had been saying for decades... Anyhow. I guess my point is, the kid was wrong because transitory has no value in the dictionary. His special words won't be used by even him, in a year.
- semilin 1mo agoWhat a rude approach! I will always prefer the more classic and civilized way of waiting for the dictionary to invent new words for me to use.
- Valodim 2mo agoDifferent languages went down different paths in this regard, each with their own interesting advantages and disadvantages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth
- eru 2mo agoShould be missels then?
- rmunn 2mo agoLet's settle the argument by all agreeing on mussels instead, and enjoy a nice seafood dish with garlic and a white wine sauce. Delicious.
- lloeki 2mo agoA well renown dish in Belgium's capital. To best be enjoyed with a muscular buddy. https://focusonbelgium.be/en/Do%20you%20know%20these%20Belgians/jean-claude-van-damme-muscles-brussels https://focusonbelgium.be/en/Do%20you%20know%20these%20Belgi...
- rkagerer 2mo agoThey're where they keep the nuclear wessels.
- shmeeed 1mo ago*Nucular wessels.
- saghm 2mo agoI'd argue that "le" is not really phonetic to how people pronounce words ending in that; "missils" would be more phonetic
- thaumasiotes 2mo ago> I'd argue that "le" is not really phonetic to how people pronounce words ending in that Sorry? How do you think people pronounce words such as truffle / turtle / tremble / pickle / maple / rubble / etc. etc. etc.?
- seszett 2mo agoThey pronounce these words as if the e and the l were reversed, if "truffle" was written in a phonetic manner it would be written "truffel". Since the "l" sound is last and preceded by a schwa, "truffle" (or "missle") obviously cannot be considered phonetic.
- thaumasiotes 2mo ago> They pronounce these words as if the e and the l were reversed, if "truffle" was written in a phonetic manner it would be written "truffel". You can just look this up. The usual way to write "truffle" in a phonetic manner is of course /tɹʌfl̩/. You'll note that there is no vowel in the second syllable at all; it consists of just the L. (And that's what the small mark below the L means - "syllabic".) This is the standard phonetic analysis. You might also notice that the IPA differs from your proposed spelling in several other ways. One, the difference between "ɹ" and "r", has no relevance in a discussion of English. But the difference between "f" and "ff" is more significant, and the difference between "u" (the vowel in GOOSE) and "ʌ" (the vowel in STRUT) is of critical importance. And this is still just a phonemic transcription. Phonetically, you'd expect the word to be [tʃɹʌfl̩], with the initial consonant matching that of "chill" and not "till". All of these are conventions of written English. Written "tr" is pronounced as if it were written "chr". Pronounced [tʃɹ] is always spelled "tr" and never spelled "chr". The difference in vowel quality between "moping" and "mopping" is indicated, as you probably already noticed, by the doubling of the consonant written after the vowel, and this is also the reason for the double "f" in "truffle". Why do we write an extra "f" when what we mean is that we're changing the pronunciation of the vowel before it? Not for phonetic reasons. And what do you know, there's a standard spelling of syllabic L in English too, and that standard spelling is "-le", not "-el". That spelling is phonetic in exactly the same way that using "m" to spell the initial consonant of "mat" is phonetic - it is the established mapping between the orthography and the pronunciation.
- cyphar 2mo agoAnd are British, at least in Australia (and the US, I guess?) we pronounce the second "i". It is always fun when you notice where someone is from based on secondary clues like that -- my favourite is the choice of "a" or "an" where it is ambiguous (for instance, I recently ran across "an HTTP request" where I would've said "a HTTP request").
- SyneRyder 2mo agoThe term for this is a "shibboleth", if it's of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
- lproven 1mo agoA shibboleth is a little more specific: it's the pronunciation of one specific sound in a different way that marks out a person as from one specific group. So, some of the go-tos... New Zealand English tends to turn an /i/ in even stressed positions into schwa (the sound on the end of "little", or "umbrella", or "gopher", and one of the key sounds to master for a non-native learner who wants to improve their English accent). When a Kiwi says "fish and chips" it sounds like "fush and chups", "swimming pool" becomes "swumming pool", and this is _the_ way to distinguish a Kiwi from an Australian, because to the rest of the Anglophone world, NZ English sounds very like Aus English. Canadians tend to pronounce the "ow" sound in words like "about" in a way that to my British ear sounds Scottish: it becomes "aboot". So if I hear someone speaking with an American sounding accent but they say "I found oot aboot something," I ask them if they're Canadian. I tend to find most Canadians and New Zealanders are delighted if someone is able to tell, so ask very early on and you can make new friends. :-)
- SyneRyder 1mo ago> and this is _the_ way to distinguish a Kiwi from an Australian Well, that, and Kiwis tend to say "hey bro" a lot ;) Beached Whale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdVHZwI8pcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdVHZwI8pcA
- ahazred8ta 1mo agoSpelling reform was associated with the Abolitionist movement; they published the Wecli Fonetic Advocat in Sinsinati.