neutral American English pronunciation of "Math.sin"
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From: Martin Gregorie on 14 Mar 2010 15:56 On Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:18:19 -0700, BGB / cr88192 wrote: > in a way, this is one way in which I am against "spelling reform", since > after all, one would have to determine whos particular dialect was > sufficiently cannonical as to use them as the basis for the new word > spellings, or worse-yet, end up with a teh-crapload of spellings for the > same words, essentially making basic literacy a much larger problem. > IIRC it took quite some time for standard English spelling to appear. I believe this also caused literacy to take a great leap forward. Remember, too, when arguing with confused people who want to 'reform English' that the other two major written languages (Arabic and Chinese pinyin) both adhere to the same written forms with the huge benefit that any literate person can read stuff written by any other literate person and, in the case of Arabic anyway, the writer can have been alive anytime in a rather long period. Against this I bet none of us English speakers can read anything much before standardisation took place (Chaucer, anybody?) and same goes for the Chinese and the much more recent pinyin standardisation. > granted, a severe split in the lexical and phonetic languages would not > be particularly desirable either, since the words do have some value as > phonetic hints. > If you go that way you're likely to end up chasing fleeting trends or playing wackamole with neologisms like the Academie Francais. > ever been to East-Asia?... > one can go there and hear the ways English is often used... > Yes, though not for a while. However the spelling is standard, so its relatively easy to figure out what a sign means. One of the problems here is that the schools went off syllabic English teaching method in favour of only teaching whole word recognition. As usual, some prat in power had a brainwave and imposed it on the country without checking that it actually worked, let alone seeing if it was any better than the existing method. The result is a disaster: half the kids can't read and the rest can't handle words they've never seen before because they don't know what a syllable is. This prevents them from working out the meaning by decomposition. It also means they haven't a clue how to say the word. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, U org |
From: Joshua Cranmer on 14 Mar 2010 17:04 On 03/14/2010 03:56 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote: > IIRC it took quite some time for standard English spelling to appear. I > believe this also caused literacy to take a great leap forward. I seem to recall being told that one reason for English's poor orthography was due to literacy spreading before a standardized spellings appeared. According to Wikipedia, the first English dictionaries would have been made around the mid-1700s (Webster's dictionary, which more or less standardized American English was in 1828). The printing press was well before that. Another major reason for our poor orthography is our love of incorporating words from myriads of languages. Often without bothering to change the spelling to match other words. > Against this I bet none of us English speakers > can read anything much before standardisation took place (Chaucer, > anybody?) and same goes for the Chinese and the much more recent pinyin > standardisation. Chaucer is actually Middle English, which is generally considered a different language from Modern English. Shakespearean times is where you would go to look for pre-standardized Modern English spellings. > One of the problems here is that the schools went off syllabic English > teaching method in favour of only teaching whole word recognition. As > usual, some prat in power had a brainwave and imposed it on the country > without checking that it actually worked, let alone seeing if it was any > better than the existing method. I probably learned to read mostly using Hooked on Phonics [1]. Interestingly enough, I do remember having problems pronouncing some words (protein and alcohol were two annoying ones for me), although I tend to be a good speller. Unless I stare at words for a long time, in which case everything looks awkward. Oh, and I have problems with "occasionally" for some reason. I don't have any experience with whole-word recognition, so I can't say how it compares to phonics. Pretty much half the Wikipedia page on the subject is labeled citation-needed, so that's not a useful reference either. [1] I only recall "a, e, i, o, u are vowels... and sometimes y" from that stuff, and memories of my life from elementary school and earlier are rather vague. My parents aren't much help on the matter, either, as their first recollection that I could read was when I asked about a "guy-ant pa-harr-ma-key." I'll let you figure out what words I was trying to pronounce. -- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth
From: Martin Gregorie on 14 Mar 2010 17:54 On Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:04:08 -0400, Joshua Cranmer wrote: > I seem to recall being told that one reason for English's poor > orthography was due to literacy spreading before a standardized > spellings appeared. > It appears that the first dictionary that gave word meanings was John Florios, in 1598, but Samuel Johnson's (1755) effort. Also swiped from Wikipedia. I knew about the HJohnson one but not its publication date. >The printing press was well before that. > Came to the UK with William Caxton, 1476. > Chaucer is actually Middle English, which is generally considered a > different language from Modern English. Shakespearean times is where you > would go to look for pre-standardized Modern English spellings. > Point. >> One of the problems here is that the schools went off syllabic English >> teaching method in favour of only teaching whole word recognition. >> Phonics! Thats the word I was looking for. And the stupid word recognition system is called the "whole language" reading method. I know its not just me throwing rocks at it: my cousin was a primary teacher for many years. 'Primary' is a NZ term for teaching 5-10 YO kids, so he is necessarily an expert on teaching reading skills. He spits tacks when 'whole language' reading in mentioned. In 2007 my cousin sent me a good article, actually an obituary, that deals with this topic. This kicked off the discussion we had about it. The following link points at our discussion in case you're interested to see it. The top link in it references the obit. http://www.gregorie.org/temp/phonics.html > Unless I stare at words for a long time, in > which case everything looks awkward. Oh, and I have problems with > "occasionally" for some reason. > I think we all do that. > "guy-ant pa-harr-ma-key." I'll let you figure out what words I was > trying to pronounce. > You couldn't do that without phonics. I get 'giant pharmacy'. Close? -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
From: Tom Anderson on 14 Mar 2010 18:38 On Sun, 14 Mar 2010, Martin Gregorie wrote: > The one that really gets my goat is grammar rather than pronunciation: > referring to "the England team" rather than "the English team". Its > sportspeak and I've been quite horrified at its spread from yobbo > football supporters right throughout football fandom, which seems to > include almost everybody these days. I'll mention that to the guys in the New York office. tom -- Give the future a chance!
From: bugbear on 15 Mar 2010 08:18
Stefan Ram wrote: > What is the neutral American English pronunciation used by > programmers, when they say �Math.sin�? In England it would be "Maths.sin" anyway, even before issues of pronunciation were addressed. BugBear |