"But its not about themits about our audience having the right impression of our capability and the competency of our research. Anonymous will do what every they can to discredit that, and they have the mic so to speak because they are on Al Jazeera, ABC, CNN, etc. I am going to keep up the debate because I think it is good business but I will be smart about my public responses."
Wow, just wow. I'm sure what just happened is "good business" for this security firm, since they have been "hacked" by a group perceived to be nothing more (or sometimes even less) than "script kiddies". Embarrassing.
Not sure on this, but real alcohol I think was either banned or frowned upon... I remember hearing the word "Synthehol" on a few episodes. Fake alcohol I guess.
Yes, non-alphabet based writing systems are largely exempt from having "spelling" issues as we think if them.
English writing is slowly becoming a hybrid of the two systems. It is supposed to be phonetic but some spellings are so divergent from the sounds that they border on become symbolic also.
People would not confuse so many things if our English writing system were logical and consistent. Right now it is chaotic and it is the primary reason people get words "confused". This is why people make so few "mistakes" in speech but so many when writing.
I SEE what is wrong, I don't know what THERE thinking.
I know you know the difference between "there/their" and "they're/they are", but why did you make that mistake there? Unless you did it on purpose, it is because our written system is supposed to be phonetic, but is in fact some kind of weird hybrid. Words with the same sound should have the same spelling, regardless of meaning.
This is a problem that we shouldn't have in English because it hinders writing. Unfortunately reform will likely never happen in any of our lifetime.
Letters of the alphabet represent sounds of spoken language. The letter "u" in English is taught to sound like IPA/ju/ so technically "u" should be acceptable as a substitute for "you". Actually, it's phonetically more accurate. Anyway, it's all nitpicking because English will not see a change and will keep these antiquated and legacy spellings for many generations to come.
Phonetic spelling is usually the norm in languages that use alphabets for writing. If phonetic spellings are incorrect in English then that means the English writing system is flawed. Do you think people honestly confuse the words to/too and two? Have you corrected anyone while they're talking that they used the word "too" instead of "two"? I highly doubt it.
These kids who use "phonetic" spellings in their text messages are actually using the alphabet very similar to how we were taught in school. Does the word "you" not sound like the letter "u"? As ridiculous as it looks, it is correct in a way.
The writing system is the problem. Not the people. If you don't believe in phonetic spelling, then we should just not teach the alphabet and have our children simply memorize the spellings of words. That is where English writing is headed.
I studied Latin in school for many years and, yes, the Romance languages naturally are close in many ways to Latin, but there are a number of sound differences between them and Latin as spoken by the Romans. Sardinian, IIRC, is the closest Romance language to Latin in terms of pronunciation.
Anyways, I wasn't referring to just the sound differences when I mentioned Latin. Did you know that up till roughly the 17th century people in Europe were expected to write in Latin (not just spelling) even though it was no longer anyone's native language. This is because writing in Latin had been the norm for thousands of years and to deviate from that would have seemed "uneducated". Learning to write in the middle ages basically meant you had to learn an additional language (Latin).
Christopher Columbus wrote about America in Latin. Isaac Newton also wrote in Latin. Neither of them were native Latin speakers. Proper writing (and being taken seriously) meant writing in Latin.
Thanks for the very informative post. I appreciate the insight on the German language!
I agree that any movement today to reform the English writing system is destined to fail and be ridiculed. I predict that there will earth-shattering change in English writing until the spoken language diverges so much that learning to write in English becomes like learning a foreign language (Romance-speaking countries writing in Latin, for example).
In the meantime, we will just have to put up with rampant spelling errors and the risk of being ridiculed for mispronouncing words that we learn from books =)
Emphasis on the "most" in most of the world's languages. Besides English, French is also notorious for not being phonetic.
Sounds in all languages change over time, but luckily those sound changes are very regular and the spellings of words, even if unchanged over time, remain fairly accurate even if not always perfect. I think Spanish might be a good example of this. English's writing system is worse than most when it comes phonetic accuracy.
Hebrew I am not too familiar with, but if I know my history right it was essentially brought back as a spoken language after thousands of years of not being spoken. That is a very rare accomplishment (Hebrew is the only one) and that makes is very unique amongst today's languages!
English isn't broken-- the English writing system is broken. Don't forget to make the distinction, which is important because the writing system of a language is only just an approximation of that language and should be modified whenever it can no longer accurately represent said language.
Like I said in a few posts already, the spelling bee is mainly an English-only thing for a reason.:)
The English writing system is indeed at fault. We teach in our schools that "u" and "r" have a certain sound but when those same kids we taught produce a sentence like "how r u?" that is deemed completely wrong even though it is phonetically correct.
Language does not devolve, but that's a topic for a different time.
What we are talking about is the English writing system, which does not accurately represent the sounds of the English language. This is why spelling errors are so prevalent in English but NOT other languages. This is why the spelling bee is mainly an English-language-only competition. This is also why a person writing phonetically in English is perceived as unintelligent, even if his written representation of the language is more accurate.
In English writing, stilted and archaic spellings are preferred even if the spelling has almost nothing to do with the word's actual sound.
Don't be so quick to blame people that make spelling errors. The spelling system we currently use for English is the problem because it is poorly suited for representing the sounds of our language. In most of the world's languages, the spelling of a word can almost always be correctly derived from the sound alone and vice versa. These languages have a writing system in which the spoken language can be represented accurately. It is easy to forget that spoken language is the base for writing and not the other way around. It is quite possible for an illiterate person to be as articulate as his educated counterparts, despite his not being able to spell anything at all.
Back to what I was saying-- our system of writing in English is inconsistent, flawed and outdated as it does not represent the sounds of our language well. This is why the "Spelling Bee" is nearly exclusive to the English language and very rare to find for other languages.
We are very used to spelling words with little regard to how the words actually sound. Here are just a few examples of (widely tolerated) inconsistencies in English spelling:
laughter, manslaughter, man's laughter: all 3 should logically have a similar sound but do not where, wear, ware, hair: these should have a different vowel sound but they generally don't. two, to, too: again, based on spelling these should sound different pain, lane, feign: again, same sound different spelling
A few spelling inconsistencies seems minor until you think about how important the spell checker is today and how obsessed we are as a whole with spelling. Expressing our thoughts clearly is more important than memorizing artificial and inaccurate representations of our language. If it weren't for our archaic spelling system, we'd be able to focus more on that.
Of course it does. It's an iPhone and there's an app for that.
And it is huge.
But in all seriousness, that is large. I wonder how small of a compressed file you can get all those books in if using plain text (not scans!).
Who was talking about spying? What if you get pulled over by a cop who's just having a really bad day and just so happens to not like you or your attitude? If he pulled you over for something, even for speeding, I'm sure he can come up with a legitimate reason to arrest you if he really wants. Now that they'll be able to search your phone and view your text messages just because you were carrying, they can just read everything and probably find something minor to get you with.
Hopefully you keep all your texts with your friends are "business-like" and politically correct, because that's how people talk to their friends all the time, right?
just get a cheap dumb phone, no camera, no apps, no browser, nothing, just makes phone calls
Dumb phones still have text messages that can be read and probably even less security than smartphones. Do you really want someone reading all your texts, even if you don't think you've done anything wrong? Also, no passcode lock on most dumb phones-- the only thing they are likely to have is a keyboard lock to prevent butt-dialing.
If an officer of the law really really doesn't like you, I'm sure they can find something to charge you with. That's not good, even if it's something very minor.
Actually, to put things in perspective for the non-technology people (the people making these decisions), we should express the amount of data contained in modern smartphones with an already well-known unit: the Library of Congress.
Would they really think searching smartphones is the same as searching wallets if they knew they can contain more data than all the printed texts of the Library of Congress, thousands of times over?
Apple: No source code available.
Android: Source code available.
Sure, it may require bugs or something to get root for some phones, but the options are there to take the new sources from Google, mix in the kernel pieces vendors are required to GPL, and come up with something usable. My Sprint Hero has a Gingerbread ROM out now, while HTC decided to stop making updates at 2.1 (about six months after release in the US). I have found this ability to be Android's number one benefit. Support long after the hardware/carrier give up.
What options does an owner of an old i-Device have (besides install Android on it)? Buy a new device to get new software features or apps that don't support the old version?
I am still using the iPhone 2G and the first software update I didn't receive was iOS 4.0, released with the iPhone 4 in 2010. That's a full 3 years of receiving OS updates! From version 1.0 (or whatever it was) until 3.1.3.
Anyways, all the apps that I've been using still work without issues even with the latest updates that are "OS 4.x tested"'. Even Angry Birds, a game I've heard some people complaining about performance-wise lately, plays smoothly on the latest version. The only thing I notice is certain apps lack certain features that are enabled on 4.x versions of the OS. For example, Google's mobile app won't let me use Goggles and Skype won't let me do video chat.
But seriously, I am impressed with how much use I've gotten from this phone and don't feel like my device has been completely forgotten left in the dust. I expected things to break after a while but they haven't yet
But you would understand both sentences if you saw them, correct? That's because of a nifty thing called context.If a person were to say effect instead of affect in a real-life conversation with you then I'm almost sure you would not notice the difference. The only reason it bothers you is because you've learned to make a distinction between the two when written down. Language is natural and is constantly changing. Written language, on the other hand, is artificial and formal writing evolves slowly, if at all, compared to spoken language. Look at Europe, for example, after Rome fell and the various Romance languages came about, everyone who wrote *still* wrote only in Latin even though their new Romance languages were vastly different. That'd be like writing in German and only German but you only speak English. That's similar in a way to how it still is today. The way we spell in English, for example, is archaic and does NOT come close to accurately representing the actual sounds we use now. You can read Shakespeare's work but if you went back in time to watch them perform it around the time it was written then I guarantee you you won't know what the hell they're saying. We do not write the way we speak and, throughout history, people who let "common" phrasings and words slip into their written language are been looked down upon. Standards are good, but they are only guidelines meant to be followed for the sake of intelligibility and uniformity and as such can be broken. Don't submit a resume written in Ebonics though, class distinctions still apply for written language.
It's funny how everyone here thinks scientifically when it comes to everything _except_ language and culture, which of course are related to one another. Most everyone here believes in biological evolution, but what about the evolution of language? Languages and their words change whether you want them to or not. It's the most annoying thing to see people citing dictionaries to prove that their definition of a certain word is "correct". Dictionaries are not authorative sources: dictionaries only _describe_ usage and do not specify what the correct meaning(s) of a word should be. If a word gets "butchered" by the masses (hacker for example) then that's just too bad. Most of the words we use now meant something else in the past anyways. In written language, we have "standard" grammar and spelling to help intelligibility across regions and also to help ambiguity due to the lack of non-verbal cues. As for TFA, when we speak in person the actual words we can use can be ambiguous words and phrasing yet still be understood perfectly (most of the time) by the listener because they can unconciously pick up non-verbal cues that help them figure out what we meant. When people write informal emails (someone earlier said emails wasn't a word -- tough), however, they try to use the wording and phrasing that would normally work in real life but, without those non-verbal cues, the chances of being misunderstood go up greatly.
And, by the way, there's no such thing as a native speaker who speaks _better_ English than another native speaker of the same language, so attributing the "problem" to the language deficiencies of the new generation is just stupid - because they don't have one. You can say that people speak different "dialects" of English but you can't say person A speakers better than person B just because his dialect is more prestigious. Basically what I'm trying to say is people need to update the way they think about language and stop trying to prescribe usages/grammar and whatnot because that type of thought belongs in the middle ages. The same thing goes for pronunciation. If you think I'm talking out of my ass then do some research on your own.
Slashdot Mirror
From screenshot of defacement in TFA:
"But its not about themits about our audience having the right impression of our capability and the competency of our research. Anonymous will do what every they can to discredit that, and they have the mic so to speak because they are on Al Jazeera, ABC, CNN, etc. I am going to keep up the debate because I think it is good business but I will be smart about my public responses."
Wow, just wow. I'm sure what just happened is "good business" for this security firm, since they have been "hacked" by a group perceived to be nothing more (or sometimes even less) than "script kiddies". Embarrassing.
wtf? that's came out of nowhere.
Not sure on this, but real alcohol I think was either banned or frowned upon... I remember hearing the word "Synthehol" on a few episodes. Fake alcohol I guess.
Yes, non-alphabet based writing systems are largely exempt from having "spelling" issues as we think if them.
English writing is slowly becoming a hybrid of the two systems. It is supposed to be phonetic but some spellings are so divergent from the sounds that they border on become symbolic also.
People would not confuse so many things if our English writing system were logical and consistent. Right now it is chaotic and it is the primary reason people get words "confused". This is why people make so few "mistakes" in speech but so many when writing.
I SEE what is wrong, I don't know what THERE thinking.
I know you know the difference between "there/their" and "they're/they are", but why did you make that mistake there? Unless you did it on purpose, it is because our written system is supposed to be phonetic, but is in fact some kind of weird hybrid. Words with the same sound should have the same spelling, regardless of meaning.
This is a problem that we shouldn't have in English because it hinders writing. Unfortunately reform will likely never happen in any of our lifetime.
Letters of the alphabet represent sounds of spoken language. The letter "u" in English is taught to sound like IPA /ju/ so technically "u" should be acceptable as a substitute for "you". Actually, it's phonetically more accurate. Anyway, it's all nitpicking because English will not see a change and will keep these antiquated and legacy spellings for many generations to come.
Phonetic spelling is usually the norm in languages that use alphabets for writing. If phonetic spellings are incorrect in English then that means the English writing system is flawed. Do you think people honestly confuse the words to/too and two? Have you corrected anyone while they're talking that they used the word "too" instead of "two"? I highly doubt it.
These kids who use "phonetic" spellings in their text messages are actually using the alphabet very similar to how we were taught in school. Does the word "you" not sound like the letter "u"? As ridiculous as it looks, it is correct in a way.
The writing system is the problem. Not the people. If you don't believe in phonetic spelling, then we should just not teach the alphabet and have our children simply memorize the spellings of words. That is where English writing is headed.
Interesting. What state are you in? I'm from California and for me "again" rhymes with pen and hen, but not mountain, which roughly rhymes with tin.
pain, lane, feign: again, same sound different spelling
Oh I see why you said that. I didn't mean for the word "again" to be compared with the others, though I can see how it could be misread right there.
Hmm... I didn't mean to post that as AC. Oh well.
As posted by someone else here, German is actually a good example of a language whose writing system fits it very well. If only ours were that good!
I don't know enough about Tamil to make a comment, but another language notorious for non-phonetic spellings is French.
I studied Latin in school for many years and, yes, the Romance languages naturally are close in many ways to Latin, but there are a number of sound differences between them and Latin as spoken by the Romans. Sardinian, IIRC, is the closest Romance language to Latin in terms of pronunciation.
Anyways, I wasn't referring to just the sound differences when I mentioned Latin. Did you know that up till roughly the 17th century people in Europe were expected to write in Latin (not just spelling) even though it was no longer anyone's native language. This is because writing in Latin had been the norm for thousands of years and to deviate from that would have seemed "uneducated". Learning to write in the middle ages basically meant you had to learn an additional language (Latin).
Christopher Columbus wrote about America in Latin. Isaac Newton also wrote in Latin. Neither of them were native Latin speakers. Proper writing (and being taken seriously) meant writing in Latin.
Thanks for the very informative post. I appreciate the insight on the German language!
I agree that any movement today to reform the English writing system is destined to fail and be ridiculed. I predict that there will earth-shattering change in English writing until the spoken language diverges so much that learning to write in English becomes like learning a foreign language (Romance-speaking countries writing in Latin, for example).
In the meantime, we will just have to put up with rampant spelling errors and the risk of being ridiculed for mispronouncing words that we learn from books =)
Emphasis on the "most" in most of the world's languages. Besides English, French is also notorious for not being phonetic.
Sounds in all languages change over time, but luckily those sound changes are very regular and the spellings of words, even if unchanged over time, remain fairly accurate even if not always perfect. I think Spanish might be a good example of this. English's writing system is worse than most when it comes phonetic accuracy.
Hebrew I am not too familiar with, but if I know my history right it was essentially brought back as a spoken language after thousands of years of not being spoken. That is a very rare accomplishment (Hebrew is the only one) and that makes is very unique amongst today's languages!
I'm pretty sure that's what the old "wise-men" said when writing and reading first became popular too.
Damn writing doucebags.
English isn't broken-- the English writing system is broken. Don't forget to make the distinction, which is important because the writing system of a language is only just an approximation of that language and should be modified whenever it can no longer accurately represent said language.
Like I said in a few posts already, the spelling bee is mainly an English-only thing for a reason. :)
The English writing system is indeed at fault. We teach in our schools that "u" and "r" have a certain sound but when those same kids we taught produce a sentence like "how r u?" that is deemed completely wrong even though it is phonetically correct.
Language does not devolve, but that's a topic for a different time.
What we are talking about is the English writing system, which does not accurately represent the sounds of the English language. This is why spelling errors are so prevalent in English but NOT other languages. This is why the spelling bee is mainly an English-language-only competition. This is also why a person writing phonetically in English is perceived as unintelligent, even if his written representation of the language is more accurate.
In English writing, stilted and archaic spellings are preferred even if the spelling has almost nothing to do with the word's actual sound.
Don't be so quick to blame people that make spelling errors. The spelling system we currently use for English is the problem because it is poorly suited for representing the sounds of our language. In most of the world's languages, the spelling of a word can almost always be correctly derived from the sound alone and vice versa. These languages have a writing system in which the spoken language can be represented accurately. It is easy to forget that spoken language is the base for writing and not the other way around. It is quite possible for an illiterate person to be as articulate as his educated counterparts, despite his not being able to spell anything at all.
Back to what I was saying-- our system of writing in English is inconsistent, flawed and outdated as it does not represent the sounds of our language well. This is why the "Spelling Bee" is nearly exclusive to the English language and very rare to find for other languages.
We are very used to spelling words with little regard to how the words actually sound. Here are just a few examples of (widely tolerated) inconsistencies in English spelling:
laughter, manslaughter, man's laughter: all 3 should logically have a similar sound but do not
where, wear, ware, hair: these should have a different vowel sound but they generally don't.
two, to, too: again, based on spelling these should sound different
pain, lane, feign: again, same sound different spelling
A few spelling inconsistencies seems minor until you think about how important the spell checker is today and how obsessed we are as a whole with spelling. Expressing our thoughts clearly is more important than memorizing artificial and inaccurate representations of our language. If it weren't for our archaic spelling system, we'd be able to focus more on that.
Of course it does. It's an iPhone and there's an app for that. And it is huge. But in all seriousness, that is large. I wonder how small of a compressed file you can get all those books in if using plain text (not scans!).
Hopefully you keep all your texts with your friends are "business-like" and politically correct, because that's how people talk to their friends all the time, right?
just get a cheap dumb phone, no camera, no apps, no browser, nothing, just makes phone calls
Dumb phones still have text messages that can be read and probably even less security than smartphones. Do you really want someone reading all your texts, even if you don't think you've done anything wrong? Also, no passcode lock on most dumb phones-- the only thing they are likely to have is a keyboard lock to prevent butt-dialing.
If an officer of the law really really doesn't like you, I'm sure they can find something to charge you with. That's not good, even if it's something very minor.
Would they really think searching smartphones is the same as searching wallets if they knew they can contain more data than all the printed texts of the Library of Congress, thousands of times over?
Apple: No source code available. Android: Source code available.
Sure, it may require bugs or something to get root for some phones, but the options are there to take the new sources from Google, mix in the kernel pieces vendors are required to GPL, and come up with something usable. My Sprint Hero has a Gingerbread ROM out now, while HTC decided to stop making updates at 2.1 (about six months after release in the US). I have found this ability to be Android's number one benefit. Support long after the hardware/carrier give up.
What options does an owner of an old i-Device have (besides install Android on it)? Buy a new device to get new software features or apps that don't support the old version?
I am still using the iPhone 2G and the first software update I didn't receive was iOS 4.0, released with the iPhone 4 in 2010. That's a full 3 years of receiving OS updates! From version 1.0 (or whatever it was) until 3.1.3.
Anyways, all the apps that I've been using still work without issues even with the latest updates that are "OS 4.x tested"'. Even Angry Birds, a game I've heard some people complaining about performance-wise lately, plays smoothly on the latest version. The only thing I notice is certain apps lack certain features that are enabled on 4.x versions of the OS. For example, Google's mobile app won't let me use Goggles and Skype won't let me do video chat. But seriously, I am impressed with how much use I've gotten from this phone and don't feel like my device has been completely forgotten left in the dust. I expected things to break after a while but they haven't yet
But you would understand both sentences if you saw them, correct? That's because of a nifty thing called context.If a person were to say effect instead of affect in a real-life conversation with you then I'm almost sure you would not notice the difference. The only reason it bothers you is because you've learned to make a distinction between the two when written down. Language is natural and is constantly changing. Written language, on the other hand, is artificial and formal writing evolves slowly, if at all, compared to spoken language. Look at Europe, for example, after Rome fell and the various Romance languages came about, everyone who wrote *still* wrote only in Latin even though their new Romance languages were vastly different. That'd be like writing in German and only German but you only speak English. That's similar in a way to how it still is today. The way we spell in English, for example, is archaic and does NOT come close to accurately representing the actual sounds we use now. You can read Shakespeare's work but if you went back in time to watch them perform it around the time it was written then I guarantee you you won't know what the hell they're saying. We do not write the way we speak and, throughout history, people who let "common" phrasings and words slip into their written language are been looked down upon. Standards are good, but they are only guidelines meant to be followed for the sake of intelligibility and uniformity and as such can be broken. Don't submit a resume written in Ebonics though, class distinctions still apply for written language.
It's funny how everyone here thinks scientifically when it comes to everything _except_ language and culture, which of course are related to one another. Most everyone here believes in biological evolution, but what about the evolution of language? Languages and their words change whether you want them to or not. It's the most annoying thing to see people citing dictionaries to prove that their definition of a certain word is "correct". Dictionaries are not authorative sources: dictionaries only _describe_ usage and do not specify what the correct meaning(s) of a word should be. If a word gets "butchered" by the masses (hacker for example) then that's just too bad. Most of the words we use now meant something else in the past anyways. In written language, we have "standard" grammar and spelling to help intelligibility across regions and also to help ambiguity due to the lack of non-verbal cues. As for TFA, when we speak in person the actual words we can use can be ambiguous words and phrasing yet still be understood perfectly (most of the time) by the listener because they can unconciously pick up non-verbal cues that help them figure out what we meant. When people write informal emails (someone earlier said emails wasn't a word -- tough), however, they try to use the wording and phrasing that would normally work in real life but, without those non-verbal cues, the chances of being misunderstood go up greatly.
And, by the way, there's no such thing as a native speaker who speaks _better_ English than another native speaker of the same language, so attributing the "problem" to the language deficiencies of the new generation is just stupid - because they don't have one. You can say that people speak different "dialects" of English but you can't say person A speakers better than person B just because his dialect is more prestigious. Basically what I'm trying to say is people need to update the way they think about language and stop trying to prescribe usages/grammar and whatnot because that type of thought belongs in the middle ages. The same thing goes for pronunciation. If you think I'm talking out of my ass then do some research on your own.
That's pretty cool, too bad I hadn't heard about it sooner!