This post is brought to you by the letter “A”. . .
Right! So I’ve started this blog. Now I have to put stuff on it so I can clear out my pea-brain and make room in there for newer stuff. This in itself isn’t such a hard thing to do, but when you’re posting to a blog, it’s supposed to be “readable”. This (for me) involves using the English language, and that’s where the trouble starts.
Everything has to “look” and “read” just right (yeah. . .right). Content is King, but spelling and grammar are the Queen and Prince, or else what will you, dear reader, get out of it? (”Boy, that guy writes like a real putz!” *mouse clicks away from site*)
The problem is that English does not lend itself to simplicity in the learning or use thereof. Let’s start exploring the subject by looking at a few examples. I quote the following with gratitude, foreboding and trepidation from Wiki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonics
Wiki: Phonics refers to an instructional method for teaching children to read English. Phonics involves teaching children to connect the sounds of spoken English with letters or groups of letters (e.g., that the sound /k/ can be represented by c, k, or ck spellings) and teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words. . .
OK, some of you can already see some of the inherent underlying problems: we have one “sound” that can be made using either of two different letters, or a combination of those two letters. Notice how the ‘ch’ combination, as in the word “ache”, was left out. Maybe they did that just to sucker some poor eager student in, so they could blind-side him later when he thought he had English down pat. (Pat? Now there’s a word we’re going to get into very shortly so stick around.)
Wiki: Phonics in English
. . . Phonics is a widely used method of teaching to read and decode words, although it is not without controversy . . . Teaching English reading using phonics requires children to learn the connections between letter patterns and the sounds they represent. Phonics instruction requires the teacher to provide students with a core body of information about phonics rules, or patterns.
Note: This article uses General American pronunciation. . .
Read the above paragraph agan. . .I’ll wait. . .Controversy is right! The new student doesn’t know how to read English and he will take a long time to learn. Why? Because he must “decode words”! How’s a bloke supposed to decode something if he doesn’t know the code in the first place!?! Your Honor, I object!
Addtionally, that “core body of information” is pronounced “smoke-screen”, and the “General American pronunciation”? They’ll tell you themselves there isn’t one. . .read on. . .
All right, there’s the premise. Our instructor has a toolbox full of wrenches at the ready to throw into the machine and gum up the works. Let’s dig into it a little further shall we? (Further. . . farther. . . which is it, and how does the starry-eyed new English student know which to use when? Maybe we’ll address this in another post. . .NOT!)
Back to Wiki for a minute:
Wiki: . . .Basic rules
Alphabetic principle
From a linguistics perspective, English spelling is based on the alphabetic principle. In an alphabetic writing system, letters are used to represent speech sounds, or phonemes. For example, the word pat is spelled with three letters, p, a, and t, each representing a phoneme, respectively, /p/, /æ/, and /t/. . .
Are you starting to recognize more of the problems with the English language after reading that paragraph? I mean, look at it. . . Wiki can’t even describe the use of the letter ‘a’ in the word “pat” without using some sort of glyph “æ” that I (and probably most people) don’t even know the name of, much less how it is pronounced in regard to the letter ‘a’!
Not to mention (to you who see where this is going) the additional confusion that in the same paragraph, there are many words with the ‘ph’ letter combination that could be eliminated with the use of a single letter ‘f’, or that the ‘u’ in “linguistic” could be a ‘w’. It’s almost enough to make one learn an easier lang(w)uage, or quit blogging altogether in disgust! (Can’t do that though, I’m cleaning brain house. . .)
Wiki: . . .The spelling systems for some alphabetic languages, such as Spanish, are relatively simple because there is nearly a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and the letter patterns that represent them. English spelling is more complex, because it attempts to represent the 40+ phonemes of the spoken language with an alphabet composed of only 26 letters (and no accents). As a result, two letters are often fused together into groups that represent distinct sounds, referred to as digraphs. For example “t” and “h” placed side by side are used to represent a third sound /th/ (IPA:/?/ or /ð/). . .
The mind reels with daunting thoughts of what else lurks behind the shadows of the English language if this is just the introduction. . .It reminds me of my time in service with the Marine Corps - always having to make the best out of what you’re given to work with. (The Marines have the smallest budget of all branches of the service. Man, I still remember running out to Radio Shack for 15¢ wire terminal ends to fix electrical systems on our million-dollar planes because there weren’t any of the $100 ones in stock in our supply system.)
But I digress. . .With English, we’re given “only 26 letters (and no accents)” to do everything with. That’s nice from a “it makes for a small, easy to carry toolbox” standpoint, but it’s also like trying to build a space shuttle with only a common screwdriver and a pair of pliers with a broken handle. There really aren’t enough tools there to get the job done properly, and the voluminous instruction manual (dictionary) is either going to wind up leveling that wobbly coffee table leg in the den, or sitting beside the bathroom toilet in case there’s a paper shortage.
Wiki: . . .English has absorbed large amounts of words from other languages throughout its history, without changing the spelling of those words. As a result, the written form of English includes the spelling patterns of five languages (Old English, Danish, Norman French, Classical Latin and Greek) superimposed upon one another. These overlapping spelling patterns mean that in many cases the same sound can be spelled differently and the same spelling can represent different sounds. However, the spelling patterns usually follow certain conventions. . .
. . .Although the patterns are inconsistent, when English spelling rules take into account syllable structure, phonetics, and accents, there are dozens of rules that are 75% or more reliable. . .
See, I told you they’d admit there’s no “General American pronunciation”, it’s all smoke and mirrors! “Dozens of rules that are 75% reliable”. . .What!?! 75% was a pretty low ‘C’ or a high ‘D’ in the schools I went to! Wouldn’t you think someone trying to learn English (or any language) would deserve the 100% - ‘A’ material to learn from?
WOOF! Is it any wonder people have trouble learning English? As of this post I am 49 years old, and I have been butchering the English language all my life. My Mother, (the English Major) didn’t help matters much. Oh, I don’t mean she didn’t try to help me understand, it’s just that she was always better at abstract thinking than I was, and friends let me tell you, you have to be able to think way outside the box to master English!
Me? I’ve pretty much always been a “hands-on” kind of guy. I can grasp concepts fairly easily (for the most part), but concepts sink in much better for me when there is a “practical application” with which I can test the concept. English does not allow for this.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s why I wasn’t stellar at arithmetic either. Yeah, I know what PI is, but why is it PI? (My math teachers would roll their eyes and state with vehement frustration: “It just IS!”, leaving me to wonder if I could get another pencil stub to stick in the ceiling before they returned to the blackboard.)
Well, I personally believe that the mathematicians were directly involved with creating the English language. Wait a minute, did I say “create”? According to Wiki above, English is just a potpourri (stolen from the French) of words from all over the earth! No wonder it seems so confusing.
This confusion makes perfect sense though, if you stop and think about it. After all, America is the “melting pot” of many cultures and nationalities, so it’s little wonder the language doesn’t make any sense to try to learn and/or use. You get to a point where you’ve added so much water to the broth that there isn’t any more broth, just tainted water.
Why do you think people created vanity license plates, and why do you think people text-message each other using cryptic conglomerates of letters and numbers? It’s a conspiracy, a grass-roots uprising to generate a simple language that spells words like they sound! Good bye “E”nglish, hello “I”nglish. (I know, that wasn’t such a gr8 example, was it?)
SIDEBAR: What is with words like “wasn’t”, or “it’s”? OK, they are contractions, where a letter is removed to shorten two words into one. How have we shortened either of these? We removed one letter and replaced it with an apostroph(f)e! Nothing has been shortened! Well, OK, we have removed the space between two words, but that didn’t accomplish anything except to require yet more rules to learn about apostrophe use and abuse!
I’ll bet the Native Americans didn’t have this problem, and they were doing fine until English stumbled into the land. . . Which brings me to another topic: “Indian Americans vs American Indians”, but that’s another topic. . . for another post. . . for another day. . .
I could go on all day about the many disfunctions of the English language, but I know you have to answer the door for the Domino’s dude, so I’ll let you go for now. (I know how hard it is to concentrate on this stuff when searing hot, melted cheese is sticking to the roof of your mouth. . .)
Come on back as quickly as you may, I’ll be here. . . cleaning out my brain house. . .
~(G)Q