Glossophile
New Member
I arrived at the English/Chinese comparison independently, but although I must admit to not being able to track it down, I'm pretty sure I stumbled upon another person making a similar remark in my research a couple of years ago. In trying to locate the original third-party comment, I did find another one making similar statements (scroll down to "Words in General") .
Of course, the above linked version states that it mainly applies to experienced readers rather than young novices, and I agree with that. However, I would also argue that English orthography compels children to make the shift earlier and more completely than they would otherwise have to or risk falling behind. I summarized my reasoning here in the unabridged version of a published paper of mine (a "logography" is what you call a "pictography"):
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Any code, however alphabetic in its underlying construction, will ultimately come to function as an effective logography in the minds of well-read literates. The holistic visual form of a word, regardless of the smaller units comprising it, eventually becomes a shortcut to recognition. Nevertheless, reaching this advanced stage will be greatly facilitated and catalyzed through the use of a system that builds words from sequentially arranged symbols with predictable sound values. This is why I prefer to give those who are still acquiring English literacy mild or even moderate priority over those who have already acquired it…While still developing holistic word-shape recognition, the young reader/writer raised with something like [my proposed system] would always have the more readily-acquired rules of individual sound-symbol correspondences on which to fall back, hence rendering him/her a bit slow at times but never as helpless as a comparable student of traditional spelling. With functional literacy no longer so contingent upon mastery of the logographic stage, most people would then spend a smaller proportion of their lives marred in illiteracy.
~~~
Anyway, the claim is not that English words function exactly like Chinese morphograms, merely that they drift more in that direction than most people think. This is because, in many cases, the phonic route to recognition is so unreliable that it's actually more efficient overall to just memorize the visual shape of the word as a whole. I suspect that the notability of the "whole-word" or "whole-language" movement in English literacy pedagogy testifies to this fact.
Of course, educational success is determined by a complex of variables, but I'm convinced that, although it is by no means the sole cause, the excessive complexity of English spelling is one of the most prominent ones and therefore no less worthy of being the first line of attack than any other. If you want to improve our success at teaching something and know that most of the difficulties trace back to a relative few (though still multiple) factors, one of which is that the system being taught is itself far more complicated than its function demands, doesn't that seem like as good of a candidate for a first strike as any other (if not better)?
What resources do you think spelling reform might make unavailable, and for what presumably more effective strategy?
Of course, the above linked version states that it mainly applies to experienced readers rather than young novices, and I agree with that. However, I would also argue that English orthography compels children to make the shift earlier and more completely than they would otherwise have to or risk falling behind. I summarized my reasoning here in the unabridged version of a published paper of mine (a "logography" is what you call a "pictography"):
~~~
Any code, however alphabetic in its underlying construction, will ultimately come to function as an effective logography in the minds of well-read literates. The holistic visual form of a word, regardless of the smaller units comprising it, eventually becomes a shortcut to recognition. Nevertheless, reaching this advanced stage will be greatly facilitated and catalyzed through the use of a system that builds words from sequentially arranged symbols with predictable sound values. This is why I prefer to give those who are still acquiring English literacy mild or even moderate priority over those who have already acquired it…While still developing holistic word-shape recognition, the young reader/writer raised with something like [my proposed system] would always have the more readily-acquired rules of individual sound-symbol correspondences on which to fall back, hence rendering him/her a bit slow at times but never as helpless as a comparable student of traditional spelling. With functional literacy no longer so contingent upon mastery of the logographic stage, most people would then spend a smaller proportion of their lives marred in illiteracy.
~~~
Anyway, the claim is not that English words function exactly like Chinese morphograms, merely that they drift more in that direction than most people think. This is because, in many cases, the phonic route to recognition is so unreliable that it's actually more efficient overall to just memorize the visual shape of the word as a whole. I suspect that the notability of the "whole-word" or "whole-language" movement in English literacy pedagogy testifies to this fact.
Of course, educational success is determined by a complex of variables, but I'm convinced that, although it is by no means the sole cause, the excessive complexity of English spelling is one of the most prominent ones and therefore no less worthy of being the first line of attack than any other. If you want to improve our success at teaching something and know that most of the difficulties trace back to a relative few (though still multiple) factors, one of which is that the system being taught is itself far more complicated than its function demands, doesn't that seem like as good of a candidate for a first strike as any other (if not better)?
What resources do you think spelling reform might make unavailable, and for what presumably more effective strategy?