Should spell checkers be mandatory ?

[Odsox]

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?

So, no "i after e except after c" any more then ?
I can't remember having English grammar "drilled" into me at school, but I do remember it taking up a large part of the curriculum together with "arithmetic" as it was called then (I was schooled in the '50s). I know that learning your tables was shelved a long time ago, which to my mind is a crying shame as I still have the tables from 2 to 12 now hard wired in my brain and refer to them on a very regular basis.
But that's whole new thread material.

[MKG]

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?

So, no "i after e except after c" any more then ?
I can't remember having English grammar "drilled" into me at school, but I do remember it taking up a large part of the curriculum together with "arithmetic" as it was called then (I was schooled in the '50s). I know that learning your tables was shelved a long time ago, which to my mind is a crying shame as I still have the tables from 2 to 12 now hard wired in my brain and refer to them on a very regular basis.
But that's whole new thread material.

You 'ad tables? Eeeeeh! When ah were a lad, we couldn't even afford numbers. We 'ad a few ones, twos and threes, aye, I'll gi yer that, but them expensive eights and nines - well, we just dint know about them.

Anyway, not only English grammar, but Latin grammar as well. I'm immensely grateful for that one - I can't think of a better introduction to most European languages.

Mike

[Odsox]

Ah now, that's one of my big regrets that I wasn't taught Latin, I wish I had.
I think we should start up a petition for a return to classical education.

You 'ad tables? Eeeeeh! When ah were a lad, we couldn't even afford numbers. We 'ad a few ones, twos and threes, aye, I'll gi yer that, but them expensive eights and nines - well, we just dint know about them.

That's because you chose to be born in the deprived north, us sensible ones darn sarth could afford all the way up to twelve (and know how to spell 12)

[Millymollymandy]

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?

Not one bit, which was why I had such a problem trying to learn French at school, as that was all very grammar based and they expected us to understand such things as the Proceding Direct Object rule, which, of course, I didn't (but have since learned that really most French people don't follow this rule too much either, and certainly not in spoken French.... )

[Millymollymandy]

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.

I can't understand this. Can just about make out some of the words which don't have numbers in. Could you provide a translation please Mike?

[MKG]

Anything for you, MMM.

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.

These 34 letters are all you need to spell the entire English vocabulary, plus most words in most other languages.
There are no rules to memorise besides 1 letter = 1 sound.
Nooalf spelling is close enough to regular English to be readable by people who have never seen it before.

So you give the lie to that last statement, MMM.

Mike

EDIT: Just in case anyone's wondering, I'm not a fan of Nooalf. English, in common with most European languages, contains its own rich history within its spelling and grammar. It would be an awful shame to lose all of that information merely because of facility.

[Odsox]

Thanks for the translation Mike as I didn't want to appear as thick as the proverbial by admitting I couldn't read much of it either.
I do have to ask the obvious though, why is 34 letters ALL you need when I have been managing quite well with only 26 ?
And some of those 26 not very often.

[boboff]

They do teach allot of times table in Primary schools now, it's the fundamental basis of Maths apparently!

[flower_hercules]

So, no "i after e except after c" any more then ?

Ha Ha! I still say that every time in my head and, more embarrassingly, have to do the alphabet song to find which letter goes next to the one I'm looking up in a index. how sad is that!

I'm so over counting on my fingers though

[Green Aura]

why is 34 letters ALL you need when I have been managing quite well with only 26 ?

And a supposedly simplified language requires more letters for vocabulary and language?

[Maykal]

English has more sounds than it has letters. Native English speakers (should) know when to change the pronunciation of a word according to context, to the other letters around it, or simply due to historic reasons. Think about how you say 'and I can swim' in a normal voice and how you would say it if contradicting someone; 'You're wrong, I really can swim'. The ‘a’ in ‘can’ changes according to the emphasis put on the modal. Think about how you pronounce the 'i' in 'Tim' compared to the 'i' in 'time'. Other languages handle this by having extra letters, diacritics to indicate changes in pronunciation, or both. So in that sense, having one particular letter to represent each phoneme would simplify the language: ‘f’ would always be written ‘f’, so words like ‘cough’ and ‘bough’ would be less confusing to pronounce.

[MKG]

Absolutely what Maykal said. You can see it in the Nooalf Q, which represents the "oo" sound in English (or even "ou" in French). There's no way of doing it in conventional English using only one letter. No definitive way, that is, although words like "who" appear to argue against that.

Mike

[Millymollymandy]

That's why I couldn't understand it Mike. How on earth would I know to pronounce a Q as 'oo', or X as 'th'. I've been making some very funny sounds out of that text!

VOKaBYQLeRE - that one is odd though, I am sure I don't pronounce vocabulary like that. Oh hang on, that makes Y + OO, don't worry, I've got it now.

fink i prefer txt speek.

[demi]

im dyslexic. i allways try to spell correctly but if im in a hurry i tend to make lost more mistakes.
id rather there was a spell check option on the forum, i would definetly benifit from using it :)

[Odsox]

As far as I know, spell checkers are loaded into your web browser, not individual web sites.
I'm running Chrome and it has an English (British) dictionary installed, before that I ran Firefox and it ran the same dictionary as an extension.
Not sure about MS Internet Explorer as I don't like it, but I would assume that it has one too.