We Don't Need no Stinking English

[dogriver]

When I was in my previous job, I'd have endless arguments with my volunteers. These wonderful people, mostly considerably more youthfully-challenged than I, believed that the evolution of the language stopped the day they set foot in school. No more changes after that. These hapy memories prompted me to write an English poll. All these questions are dead serious, now!

[Poll #1096806]

Comments

Re: confessions

[3kitties.livejournal.com]

What amazed me was reading my gransmother's accounts of how she learned to spell... She only got through her first year of college, but I would have never known that. Btw, I've seen some pretty atrocious spelling from a few sighted people, but it's generally different from what a friend of mine calls "blind spelling." Some misspellings by blind people can also be attributed to people learning contracted braille without a solid grasp of what the contractions stood for... Some children are allowed to do spelling tests by writing the contracted form of the word. I was required to provide the contracted form and the full spelling; thus I got a braille test and a spelling test.

Re: confessions

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, that's what I meant; not that blind people make more spelling mistakes than sighted people, but that theirs tend to be different in nature. I've noticed that when blind people misspell words, they tend to either spell an unfamiliar word phonetically or to confuse homophones. Sighted people tend more toward trying to reproduce a picture that they have in their minds of the correct spelling, but that they can't quite recall. So, some of their misspellings are actually quite funny. The one I'll never forget is when a friend of a friend left a note on her door and misspelled "not" as "nought"! Wow! Sorry to go on and on about this topic, but it's one I love.