Quote:
Originally Posted by Worldwalker
You see, back before someone invented "phonics" and taught children to read by teaching them to sound out the word, then figure out which word from their speaking vocabulary matched it, we were taught to understand the written word, not its sound. We learned to deconstruct words down to their roots, to pick up clues from context, and so on. That way, unlike today, our reading vocabulary could be much greater than our speaking vocabulary. We weren't limited by just the words we had heard and had explained to us; in fact, it used to be common for a well-read person to make goofy mistakes in trying to pronounce a word, because they'd read it for years but never heard it spoken. Now, of course, that doesn't happen; people don't understand any word they can't pronounce. But it must be a horrible way to live, forever limited by turning written words into sounds and hoping one has heard the sound before, or having to carry a dictionary to understand one's own language.
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Of course, one could argue that this speaks to the deficiency of the English language itself. I mean, in Arabic (and Hindi, for that matter), you don't need to learn "spelling." With very few exceptions, words are spelled how they sound. There are clear guidelines for the formation of words from the trilateral roots (there being several basic verbal 'forms' and simple rules for deriving others). Arabic evolved as a language with a very strong oral tradition; writing came later and was matched to the needs of the spoken words. I think it has a lot to do with the hybrid character of English; with so many languages from which to draw vocabulary and grammar, it would too much to ask for a consistent system of spelling. Urdu has a similar problem: there are numerous letters that are phonetically the same but quite distinct in the written Urdu script. You have to know the word in order to write it down correctly. I mean, how else would you know the name "Maz" is actually spelled "Mu'adh"? It can make using an Urdu dictionary quite difficult when you only have a spoken word or Romanized transliteration to go on.
Luqman