# Amerika:The smartest cuntry on erth. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 6, 2006, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amerika-the-smartest-cuntry-on-erth/363335 "2006-07-06T05:34:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amerika-the-smartest-cuntry-on-erth/363335/101 "2006-07-09T04:54:25Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] And I’m sure you have an extremely cogent analysis and lots of relevant data backing up this viewpoint . . . Or else you might just be talking out of your ass. :rolleyes: [/QUOTE] I’m fluent in Japanese and have studied Chinese extensively, dumbfuck. :rolleyes: indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amerika-the-smartest-cuntry-on-erth/363335/102 "2006-07-09T05:41:15Z")
[QUOTE=Aeschines] I’m fluent in Japanese and have studied Chinese extensively, dumbfuck. :rolleyes: indeed. [/QUOTE] How funny, then, that you can’t provide any justification for your assertions. It must be comforting to be able to be so sure of things without needing evidence or even reasoning to come to a conclusion. I suppose this fits well with your general modus operandi of only believing in things you can’t prove. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amerika-the-smartest-cuntry-on-erth/363335/103 "2006-07-09T05:57:36Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] How funny, then, that you can’t provide any justification for your assertions. [/quote] You arrogant little cunt. We hadn’t even begun to discuss the matter when you preemtively suggested that I was “talking out my ass.” Throughout this thread, you have been acting as though you are the sole authority on these matters, only you have anything factual or intelligent to add, and everyone else is an idiot. Are you fluent in a foreign language? You style yourself a linguist, but would you care to prove you yourself are not “talking out your ass”? > [@](#): > > It must be comforting to be able to be so sure of things without needing evidence or even reasoning to come to a conclusion. There is a difference between “needing evidence” and “reasoning to come to a conclusion” and feeling included to discuss it with a twat like you. > [@](#): > > I suppose this fits well with your general modus operandi of only believing in things you can’t prove. I believe you’re a petty little know-it-all bitch, and the proof is in this thread for all to see. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amerika-the-smartest-cuntry-on-erth/363335/104 "2006-07-09T06:16:21Z")
[QUOTE=Procyon] To me, it seems evident that attempting spelling reform on English would be a logistical disaster for the reasons already mentioned in this thread. It’s not the reason I’m against such a reform, though. Simply put, I don’t think the current English spelling ought to be changed because of _aesthetics_. [/quote] Which is the perfect illustration of the frankly ignorant prejudices that drive this discussion whenever it appears. English’s current spelling system is what we’re used to. Of course we find it aesthetically pleasing; it’s what we’re used to. > [@](#): > > The spelling system we have is certainly not phonetic, nor is it 100% consistent, intuitive, or easy. It certainly isn’t. > [@](#): > > But it is, in my opinion, beautiful. Which is funny, because I’ve always found the English writing system uniquely ugly among languages I’m acquainted with. Though I daresay the spellings of Catalan are even uglier - but that language is really the only example I’ve found of a writing system that strikes my eye as even uglier than that of English. (Oh, there’s Esperanto as well, but I’ve never considered that of any relevance anyway . . . :)) But that’s, of course, just my opinion. And it’s naturally informed by my own experiences and my own arbitrary likes and dislikes. It’s uncomfortable, to be sure, for those of us who value the written word to consider altering it, but in my opinion clinging to the familiar simply because it’s familiar is not a terribly noble line of thinking. > [@](#): > > The more I think about it, right now as I’m typing out these words, the more I like it. I love that _in_ the preposition has a single _n_ but _inn_ the noun has two. And isolated from the peculiar language of your own likes and dislikes, this is a very valid point. This is one of the important things to consider in contemplating a “phonetic” writing system (I use scare quotes here because this seems to be the term used among laypeople; from a linguistic point of view a truly phonetic writing system for a language is essentially impossible. While the International Phonetic Alphabet exists for recording speech phonetically, that is rarely done - and requires a level of expertise that most linguists don’t have as it’s extremely difficult and seldom terribly useful. IPA is is more commonly used to record speech _phonemically_, which is akin to the way languages like Spanish with highly regular writing systems work. The difference is complicated, so I won’t get into it now, but it may come to bear if the discussion gets technical.) There I go rambling on again. But yes, it’s worth considering that a phonemic writing system requires homophones to be written the same way. It’s debatable whether that creates a real problem, but it’s worth noting that the way Chinese writing works renders homophones entirely distinct. Mandarin tends to be full of homophones, and in arguments over whether Chinese writing should be done away with completely, one topic of discussion is whether it’s important or necessary for the writing system to make such words distinct. Suffice it to say, it’s not something that can easily be answered, although homophones are relatively rarer in English and probably present less of a problem. > [@](#): > > I love that the letter _C_, the first letter of my name, a letter someone described earlier as “totally useless,” can represent more than one sound. I love the amorphous vowels, the way they seem to melt into one another. I love homophones: _to_, the briefest, darting one, _too_, an additional _o_ for a word meaning an addition, and _two_, the number, the unphonetic, with a central doublet of valleys representing its value. And I also love the digraph _gh_, the arch-nemesis of phonetic standardization. Going from _right_ to _rite_ may preserve an idealized pronunciation, but for me, that _gh_ is there when I say it, if not on my tongue then in my mind. That’s very nice. Frankly, this strikes me as overpoetic codswallop. Which, once again, is just my opinion, but I don’t find imaginary correspondences between spellings and meanings particularly interesting or important to preserve. Does this mean that, say, French is unsuited to communication, because _deux_ doesn’t somehow contain some hidden representation of “two”? > [@](#): > > Perhaps I’m getting a little bit too fluffy here. I truly believe, though, that written English is elegant, poised, and beautiful. I’ve always thought it looked ridiculous, especially upon learning some foreign languages, and seeing how inelegant it was that a particular combination of letters could represent several different sounds, and a particular sound could be represented by several combinations of letters. It looks silly to me, like a writing system invented by a child who didn’t have any idea what he was doing. > [@](#): > > To try to change what we have now would almost certainly destroy it, especially if the goal for such a change is to make the spelling easier, _i.e._ more phonetic. Writing systems developed as a way of encoding the sounds of a language. In a purely phonetic writing system, one sound has one and only one written representation. Anyone who made it through reading the article in the OP got a glimpse of what that would be like. No, they didn’t. As has already been discussed. There’s no evidence in that article that that represents any kind of serious attempt at a phonemic writing system. Treating some off-the-cuff invention by a journalist who has no knowledge of the particular field as a representation of what might be is nonsensical. > [@](#): > > You probably noticed a great deal of repetition of odd letter patterns, ones that represent quite well the way we speak but are written only seldom. Perhaps your issue is that you find spoken English ugly, then, and don’t wish it to be paralleled in writing. > [@](#): > > Diphthongs sprouted all over the place to represent the myriad of vowel sounds that English has but manages to spell with only a few letters. A diphthong is a sound resulting from the combination of two vowels. A digraph is a combination of two letters. Letters and sounds are different things. Don’t confuse them. And by your standard, all of the phonemes that we routinely spell with more than one letter look bad, right? Doesn’t that mean that the \ of _break_ or _great_ is ugly? > [@](#): > > Of course, all the words looked _wrong_ to us, but that I imagine is simply because we are so used to seeing words spelled a particular way. What I’m trying to say here, though, is that the words didn’t just look wrong, they looked _ugly_. And what I’m trying to say is that I doubt you have the objectivity to make that decision while ignoring the effects of familiarity. I mostly doubt that because I doubt that anyone does. It certainly strikes me as an unconvincing argument, at any rate. > [@](#): > > Taking away the ability for a writing system to represent a single sound more than one way and to give multiple sounds to a single representation (I used to know the specific terms for these) would be robbing the system of its diversity, its bountiful variance. Why? English is rather unusual in the extent it permits such things. Why is a writing system that is somewhat more rational in its approach automatically ugly? Lots of them exist. I’ve never thought that written Spanish or Italian looked bad, and written Latin has always struck me as uniquely elegant. I certainly don’t see why it’s automatically ugly for a language not to have quasi-arbitrary spellings. > [@](#): > > It would be like removing similar looking tones from a great work of art. Um, why? I’m sorry, but I don’t see any comparison at all here. > [@](#): > > Sure, Michaelangelo’s _Last Supper_ won’t look as nice if it’s redone using just 64 colors, but think of how much easier it will be for others to copy! This is perhaps the most puzzling analogy I have ever seen. > [@](#): > > Maybe that analogy is a bit overboard, but let me try to rephrase my point. _Wood_ and _would_ are two homophones that I think might be spelled identically under a phonetic spelling system. I honestly cannot imagine wanting this. _Wood_ is a quick, short word, not quite phonetic, but close enough. It’s a simple word made from simple letters; those two _o_’s even look a little like lined up blocks of chopped logs. This is a good spelling for a hard, material object. _Would_ is totally different. That silent _l_ makes it seem so polite. Writing “wood you care for a drink?” makes the whole sentence feel rude. It makes _saying_ the sentence feel rude to me, and even though the spelling of a word shouldn’t have an effect on what you feel when you say it, because writing and speaking are so entwined in our current system, I can’t help but feel it. Because you’re used to it. You associate certain things with certain spellings _because that’s what you’ve seen all your life_. It seems like every point you’ve made boils down to “I associate this random thing with this random thing. See the elegance!” And what is that? It’s what you’re used to seeing. You have associated meanings of words with their spellings. That’s to be expected. But it’s a spectacularly poor argument to try to pretend that these associations reflect something fundamental or spring from anything but familiarity. Sure, there are a few random coincidences in which, if you squint really hard and strain your imagination, you can come up with some similarity between a word’s spelling and its meaning. And then there are the other 99.9% of cases, in which all the imagination in the world won’t do that. (Ooh, look, world has an O! The round shape symbolizes the world’s _roundness_. Pass me the bong, dude.) > [@](#): > > I admit that I am doing a little cherry-picking of my examples here, and of course the English spelling system was not designed with aesthetics in mind. But under a phonetic spelling reform, _none of this subtlety even exists_. Writing becomes just another form of recording and we might as well just learn stenography. So again, doesn’t it strike you that people who speak languages with more regular writing systems probably don’t feel such a profound lack? And why do you keep calling randomness or arbitrariness “subtlety”? Subtlety could perhaps refer to a (rather unimaginable) situation in which you could somehow convey fine distinctions through the use of spelling. But I don’t see how it applies to English in any particular way at all. > [@](#): > > I am sure there are people out there who think that writing exists only as a tool for writing down sounds or communicating information, and thus that spelling should be as simple, consistent, and intuitive as humanly possible. I am content to let these people gaze upon their principles made real: text and instant messages. There we see spelling _qua_ tool, with millions of disciples bowing before the harsh monarch of abbreviation. If this is what you are after, then by all means, embrace it. I will continue to write each and every _gh_. Holy false dichotomies, Batman! > [@](#): > > Perhaps if spelling reform is actually implemented – though it will never be – there will be some new beauty to be found in the new spellings. But it will be a limited one, one painted with fewer colors than were possible before. I don’t find your arguments, based fundamentally upon your familiarity with the present system, persuasive whatsoever. > [@](#): > > I hope I don’t sound totally crazy thinking all of this, but there is such grace in the current system that I don’t see at all in any proposed phonetic alternative. You are familiar with it. It strikes you as appropriate because that’s what you know best. Of course it seems magically right for it’s task - because you’ve used it all your life! A more rigorous type of thinking would involve attempting, as best you could, to divorce yourself from those prejudices. Or at least admitting that they’re the basis of your opinion, and not trying to develop arbitrary and convenient aesthetic “principles” to justify them. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amerika-the-smartest-cuntry-on-erth/363335/105 "2006-07-09T06:26:55Z")
[QUOTE=Aeschines] You arrogant little cunt. We hadn’t even begun to discuss the matter when you preemtively suggested that I was “talking out my ass.” [/quote] Correction: you made a bald and rather arrogant assertion on a matter that you plainly don’t understand. I say “plainly” because you didn’t advance any argument for your reasoning. Were you even familiar with previous discussion of the matter, you would recognize that the utility of the simplifications of Chinese and Japanese is not a settled matter, nor remotely a simple one. But you boiled it all down to a simple opinion, one you felt the confidence to spout off but clearly didn’t have the knowledge to justify. > [@](#): > > Throughout this thread, you have been acting as though you are the sole authority on these matters, only you have anything factual or intelligent to add, and everyone else is an idiot. Not at all. I’m not particularly an authority at all. But frankly, this thread has not attracted all that much interesting opinion and it’s plain to see that quite a lot of the contributors are basically talking out of their asses, like you have been. That’s not something I’m fond of. And I must admit that it becomes a bit tiresome that discussions of linguistics in general seem to attract this sort of unreasoned blather here on the SDMB when it wouldn’t be permitted in any other context. > [@](#): > > Are you fluent in a foreign language? I think it’s fair to call myself fluent in Spanish; I also have some ability with French and Mandarin and at least some familiarity with several other Romance languages (as that’s an area I’ve spent quite some time studying.) > [@](#): > > You style yourself a linguist, but would you care to prove you yourself are not “talking out your ass”? I don’t particularly like argument from authority. You seek to present yourself as an authority on Japanese and Chinese, content to offer up opinions from on high without justifying them. I have tried to present the reasoning behind the statements I’ve been making in this thread, while your own rather arrogantly simplistic opinion came with no reasoning at all, except apparently that you consider yourself an authority because you speak Japanese. > [@](#): > > There is a difference between “needing evidence” and “reasoning to come to a conclusion” and feeling included to discuss it with a twat like you. It’s funny how you’ve come up with such a complex justification for not having to provide any evidence for your claims. Hmm, I seem to remember you doing that in other threads. Are the aliens or ghosts or Abominable Snowmen or whatever it is you believe in still visiting you, dear? > [@](#): > > I believe you’re a petty little know-it-all bitch, and the proof is in this thread for all to see. And I believe you are a pathetic little man, not only based on this thread but on many others. And in this thread you wish to present yourself as some sort of intellectual authority to make proclamations about Chinese and Japanese that in themselves reveal your ignorance, because anyone who was really familiar with the study that had been put into those questions would not pretend their answer was as simple as your opinion was. You seem to like making proclamations and expecting others to take them as Received Wisdom. I’m reluctant to accept that wisdom. If you had a bit more maturity, perhaps you could assemble an argument to support your claims. But then, if you had that maturity, you would have been honest enough to present them as opinions in the first place and offer your reasoning then. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amerika-the-smartest-cuntry-on-erth/363335/106 "2006-07-09T07:04:32Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] Correction: you made a bald and rather arrogant assertion on a matter that you plainly don’t understand. I say “plainly” because you didn’t advance any argument for your reasoning. [/quote] Dude, I was just making a comment, and in that context it _was_ just an opinion. I have not been involved in the debate in this thread. > [@](#): > > I’m not particularly an authority at all. I endorse this remark. > [@](#): > > But frankly, this thread has not attracted all that much interesting opinion and it’s plain to see that quite a lot of the contributors are basically talking out of their asses, like you have been. Failure to justify an opinion is not the same as “talking out one’s ass”; the latter implies that the person really can’t back up his/her statements with knowledge, or that what statements the person has made clearly indicate a lack of knowledge. If Steven Hawking said, “Black holes exist, moron!” to someone who said they didn’t, he wouldn’t be “talking out his ass.” > [@](#): > > And I must admit that it becomes a bit tiresome that discussions of linguistics in general seem to attract this sort of unreasoned blather here on the SDMB when it wouldn’t be permitted in any other context. Funny, but I basically agree with your opinions in this thread, although your tone and method suck as usual. You assume that I’m your opponent for some irrational reason. > [@](#): > > I think it’s fair to call myself fluent in Spanish; I also have some ability with French and Mandarin and at least some familiarity with several other Romance languages (as that’s an area I’ve spent quite some time studying.) “Fair to call myself fluent” doesn’t sound all that confident. > [@](#): > > It’s funny how you’ve come up with such a complex justification for not having to provide any evidence for your claims. We’re not _debating_ yet, retard! > [@](#): > > Hmm, I seem to remember you doing that in other threads. Cite? > [@](#): > > Are the aliens or ghosts or Abominable Snowmen or whatever it is you believe in still visiting you, dear? Cite? > [@](#): > > You seem to like making proclamations and expecting others to take them as Received Wisdom. Cite? Your gotcha!-style reasoning is as infantile as it tiresome. Hey, let’s argue about what a typo is again. :dubious: You pedantic shithead. ---
**Author:** ![Procyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac91a4/32.png) [@Procyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procyon)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amerika-the-smartest-cuntry-on-erth/363335/107 "2006-07-09T21:58:08Z")
**Excalibre** , you have given me a lot to think about, and I thank you for your lengthy reply. Reading it, though, I sense that you’re looking for something in my post that isn’t there, namely, a reasoned argument to satisfy your linguistic maw. I’m afraid my words were more _pathos_ than _logos_ and for that reason you found them more than a little unsatisfying. I trust you will forgive me if I do not reply to you point-by-point and instead make a more blanket statement. The purpose of my post was to convince the reader that all the foibles of English spelling are not necessarily a bad thing. There is an attitude, held by some who have posted to this thread, not necessarily by you, that all the silent letters and inconsistencies in spelling are a lot of dead weight should be discarded on principle. My position is that they beautify our writing, that they make it unique. It is not a rational position and I cannot support it based on any set of aesthetic principles – as far as I know, none exist. My point was to put forth a reasons why someone might want all these weirdnesses to exist. I’m sorry that you remain unconvinced that English spelling is beautiful, but _de gustibus non est disputandum_. So, in short, all your criticisms of me are correct (and if it please the court, I completely withdraw the horrible painting analogy. It sounded much better to me at 1 AM). There is something you said, though, that I want to look at in more depth. [QUOTE=Excalibre] You are familiar with it. It strikes you as appropriate because that’s what you know best. Of course it seems magically right for it’s task - because you’ve used it all your life! A more rigorous type of thinking would involve attempting, as best you could, to divorce yourself from those prejudices. [/QUOTE] I would call this the theme of your reply. The idea that if I am familiar with current English spelling therefore I find it beautiful is something I considered while writing but chose not to delve into. Yet my familarity is clearly is a problem for my credibility I suppose the most correct way to phrase the objection is: I am familiar with English spelling, therefore I find deviations from it jarring and inelegant. Is my own familiarity leading me aesthetically astray? If I had been learning simplified spelling my whole life and there was a movement to change to Pretty Spelling (_i.e._ the current system), would I join them? Neither current spelling nor the simplified spelling systems were developed with any aesthetic principles in mind, so it’s fairly hopeless for me to try to prove that either one is inherently more or less beautiful than the other. So I have been thinking about things that I find beautiful and that are familiar and unfamiliar to me. It took me a really long time to come up with a halfway decent example of what I’m trying to say. Your example of Latin as a beautifully written language hit me fairly close to home, as I wholeheartedly agree. Though I am almost totally unfamiliar with it as a language, I think it looks exquisite. Yet I can’t really imagine working myself up about changing the spelling of some of the words, maybe to make them easier for students to understand, exactly because I’m so unfamiliar with it. My reaction here seems to support your contention that I’m only irritated about English spelling because it’s second nature to me. Then I remembered that in Roman times, Latin was written in all capital letters and did not have the letters _j_ or _u_, only _i_ and _v_, and capital _G_ was often rendered as _C_. Gaius Julius Caesar would have been written as CAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR. _This_ way of writing Latin is very jarring to me, and I thought I was onto something. Yet normal, modern written Latin is similar enough to written English that I’m essentially inheriting my prejudices here. I may not be familiar with Latin, but I am very familiar with all lower-case words and the letter _v_ always being a consonant. So that didn’t go anywhere. It did lead me to thinking about ancient Greek, which I am also unfamiliar with and bears little similarity to English text. My goal was to convince myself that the all-capitals ancient script was somehow more jarring than the more modern Greek writing with lower cases. This also failed, but for two completely different reasons. First, almost all Greek capitals are composed of straight lines, which is jarring to an English reader who is used to a more curvaceous alphabet. Second, and more importantly, I actually like _both_ the ancient capitals and the modern lower case. I think they’re both elegant, each in its own way. So again, I failed to find an example of something that mirrors my feelings towards English spelling. It took me a long time to think of this next idea, and while it has very little to do with languages, I think it’s worth considering. Keep in mind that I’m not trying to somehow _prove_ that my familiarity with English spelling is what is causing me to react negatively towards spelling reform. In all honesty, you are probably right, **Excalibre** , but I suspect there might be a secondary force, besides familiarity, at work in my head. So, consider the face of an analogue clock. I am extremely familiar with it and find it quite aesthetically appealing. Yet, we all have probably met a functioning, competent person who had trouble telling time from it. Then some group calling itself the Simplified Clock Society proposes a modification that they believe will rectify the temporal-illiteracy problem. Instead of having three hands, the face of the clock slowly rotates about its center, beginning at twelve o’clock with the 12 at the top. At three o’clock, the 3 will be at the top of the clock, at three-thirty the halfway point between 3 and 4 will bet at the top, and so forth. (If some clocks like this already exist, I apologize for stealing the idea, but I’ve never seen one). Despite my familiarity with the analogue clock and my belief that it is a beautiful thing, I actually kind of like this change. It does not immediately turn my stomach. I could see myself being happy with such a clock in my room. Every proposal for spelling reform I’ve seen, though, instantly turns me off. I did a little bit of looking around at various real proposals (and I’m sorry I implied that anyone in this thread supports journalist from the OP’s interpretation of spelling reform – all the scorn that has been heaped upon it is well deserved) and I just can’t handle how bad they all look. Now, I acknowledge that spelling and language have roots far deeper in the mind that a clock face does, so my analogy is once again imperfect. But I’m willing to believe that a _little_ of what I think about spelling comes from a sense of aesthetics and not wholly from familiarity. Perhaps you are not convinced, but this has been the best effort I can make. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amerika-the-smartest-cuntry-on-erth/363335.md?page=5)