Should spell checkers be mandatory ?

[Susie]

I think it's polite to try and communicate so that other people can understand you reasonably comfortably, but, I do think Boboff is right (God, what's happening to me?), people are starting from very different baselines.

Obviously, people suffering from dyslexia and such are going to struggle but to be honest, the most annoying posts for me are from people who express themselves in a very pedantic/patronising way and can't spell, have bad grammar etc. I'd like to go through the post with red pen and say "you can get down from your high horse now..."

I think that was it, really.

Merlin - I take your point, but, I was assuming flower_hercules was a native English speaker as he/she identified as having a somerset accent (no reason why you wouldn't do that if it was your second language though, I suppose). And could of isn't actually a phonetic transcription of could've, or, it isn't with my accent (I don't know the phonetic sign for the vowel involved but it's different to 'o'). It's interesting that you think English is an easy language to learn, and you're right, nothing (or not much) is inflected so it all goes on word order, so you can fudge it for quite a while! (Not like something like Latin where you seem to have to know the whole bloody language and all the conjugations/ declensions before you can even produce a 2-word phrase!)

[MKG]

To show you how far things could go, here's an example of Nooalf. It's English through and through, but let's see how understandable it is ...

XEZ 34 LeTRZ oR oL YQ NED TQ SPeL XE eNTiR INGLIs VOKaBYQLeRE, PLUS MOST WRDZ IN MOST UXR LaNGWIJIZ.
XeR oR NO RQLZ TQ MeMORiZ BESiDZ 1 LeTR = 1 SoWND.
NQaLF SPeLING IZ KLOS ENUF TQ ReGYQLR INGLIs TQ BE REDUBL Bi PEPL HQ HaV NeVR SEN IT BEFOR.

Mike

EDIT: An afterthought. Nooalf is an attempt to simplify English spelling (it fails because the pronunciation it seeks to represent is American rather than anything else) and, in performing this simplification, it becomes MUCH more prescriptive than normal English. Spell something wrong in Nooalf and it's a completely different word.

[flower_hercules]

I say could 've, would 've, should 've (I guess having a somerset accent is bad english.) and type it as 'could of' etc.

But why do you say it right and then change it when you write it so it is wrong? (I know right and wrong are loaded terms! I'm not being bitchy, I'm just interested). Do you not like the look of the abbreviation?

No I was thinking about how I pronounce it - would 've (I'm from Bath, and we still use words and phrases in our family you don't hear on the telly, like "hark at 'ee" "where's that to?"and "'gis one 'o they then")

What I mean when i say it is would of; I had to look it up for the post that I should have said would have.

It is a shame it annoys people... there are so many things to get annoyed at in life: war, bankers, people jumping the que at a supermarket. It's a bit like getting annoyed because someone is too tall, too short, too shy, too confident, too different in ways that they simply cannot or find very difficult to control (not you in particular Suzie, but people annoyed about spelling). I guess we all have our bug bears.

There are people who cannot spell (or are just plain lazy) who I have leaned the most interesting things from lurking on this site, and have wonderful perspectives. How they write may be drivel to some, but what they mean is inspirational, and I would read these posts over a perfect one not so inspiring any day. Better that they post it errors and all than their wisdom is not shared, eh?

[gregorach]

EDIT: An afterthought. Nooalf is an attempt to simplify English spelling (it fails because the pronunciation it seeks to represent is American rather than anything else) and, in performing this simplification, it becomes MUCH more prescriptive than normal English. Spell something wrong in Nooalf and it's a completely different word.

Yeah, you can't really have phonetic spelling for English, since the pronunciation is so wildly divergent across the country - whose pronunciation would you use as the standard? Pick a vowel, any vowel...

Things get even more fun for Scots, since we've never actually standardised the spelling at all, and there's lots of different dialects... Those Doric buggers up in Aberdeen might as well be speaking a different language. I believe some linguists would argue that they actually are...

[boboff]

Wow, Susie agreed with me a bit! Not too sure how to take that!

So it's only people who you disagree with, who do not spell correctly, that annoy you? One Mans Pedantry or patronisation may be a well formed and logical argument to someone else. Terms like High Horse really don't do much to help this impression.

Flower Hercules' points are well made in this regard also.

I found Mike's Noolarf reasonably easy to read!

[julie_lanteri]

Boboff, as you're quoting my post, I'll explain what I meant by pedantic/patronising/high horse etc.

To me, there's a massive difference between having an opinion and expressing it argumentatively (which is what most people do on Ish)
and having an opinion and trying to force it down everybody's throat, implying more or less subtly they know better and therefore who thinks any different is an idiot. Those are the ones who annoy me (and the bad spelling and grammar is just adding )

I've got nothing at all against people who have different opinions to mine, "au contraire", it helps me understand the issue better. I might change my mind, or not, but it makes me think and that can only be positive.


@ Mike: you made me blush...

[merlin]

Personally. I couldn’t give a monkies elbow.

About any opinion other than your own?

About whether spell checkers should be mandatory.

However, I did rather enjoy the posts from Julie and Gregorach.

[trinder]

By way of an apology. I generally don't have a problem in using spell checker. I am happy to do it so that I avoid the possibility that anyone will think I'm thick. But I know my downfall is sentence construction. My OH looks at anything I've written and says "but you've written it the way you'd say it "! duh that's where I fail. Was anyone else confusing the two?
A bit like "what you said- isn't what I heard"

[merlin]

i hear you Trinder, intersting subject, is it not. I was wondering what an OH is?

[oldjerry]

I'm not sure where this idea that English is an easy language to learn comes from,most TEFL tutors would disagree,especially when compared to say Italian or Spanish.Consider for instance how many ways you can pronounce 'ou'.The fact that so many people want to learn it is more a reflection of it status and worldwide usage.

To find some middleground here,clearly some people have things worth saying and wether or not their spelling and grammar is flawless isn't relevant,but there is a limit.There are plenty of ways to communicate that don't involve the written word,and if your literacy is so poor that people are forced to spend more time deciphering what you've produced rather than digesting it's content,perhaps you should concentrate on one of them.

[julie_lanteri]

not talking bad spelling but more about linguistics...

(Gregorach) "you can't really have phonetic spelling for English".

Totally agree, can you say that to the minister of education? kids are taught phonics and sounds to read and that's also how they write. Some of them don't even know the name of the letters just the sound they make. So yeah, b-e-d, d-a-d, c-a-r, v-a-n. What about notey (naughty),diskise (disguise), flud (flood), dident (didn't), paluces (palaces), dinna (dinner), neeley (nearly)? I didn't make them up, they're straight out of stories I have to mark for next week. Scary...

about English being "easy" to learn... That's one of first questions students ask me: "Miss, was it easy for you to learn English?". My answer is:
Not overly difficult, although Spanish was easier to learn at first. Quite logical as French and Spanish have so much in common. (By the way, I'm not trying to show off, learning 2 languages is standard in French secondary schools ) But also, We were taught, should I say drilled, French grammar in primary school, so it was a lot easier to learn and apply new grammatical rules. Being told that you need the auxiliary in the present tense followed by the present participle wasn't much of a problem; ie: You are + cooking.
Did you learn English grammar formally when you were at school? I know that now if a kid can recognise a describing word (=adjective) or a doing word (=verb), they almost get genious status; but was it always the case?

[MKG]

Julie - no, it certainly wasn't always like that. Through most of the 60s I had English Grammar drilled into me for five days a week. That, with hindsight, may have been over the top - but not doing it at all is, as far as I'm concerned, silly.

As for learning English as a foreign language - yes, it's an easy language to learn in its simplest, basic form. To learn it well, though, is another story. It takes years.

Mike

[trinder]

i hear you Trinder, intersting subject, is it not. I was wondering what an OH is?

Sorry Merlin it's Other Half
And ( Can a sentence start with and)? once I had decided that I was more interested in dreaming about horses and ponies . i.e. had gone into daydreaming at Noun= naming, verb = describing) all the rest of it was all lost to me.

I really should have gone back and got that right but at the time I was too busy building a career where those people either didn't care or accepted that what you think and what you can inspire is actually all that matters.

[boboff]

I wish they had spent more time on Grammar in Schools, although I think that as parents we have a huge role to play with this in correcting the spoken issues regularly and consistently.

Thank you for the clarification Julie on the High horse thing, I agree with you, as it happens. Opinions are fine and add to the debate, bombasity and condescention I can do without (Although Durgans spelling and grammar are reasonable?)

[Dr.Syn]

To return to the main gist of this topic. My spelling is atrocious and always has been. Anything over 5 letters often has me beat. I "googled" for spell checker and it sits behind everything waiting to pounce and help. It is american but it is pretty obvious when they are using their own version of English. Doesn't help with grammar and correct usage though.