The Chaos (1922) | Hacker News Reader

The Chaos (1922)

ncf.idallen.com

63 pointsmxschumacher25 comments

As an antidote to this, I recommend Mark Rosenfelder’s Hou tu pranownse Inglish [http://www.zompist.com/spell.html], which gives a set of rules to correctly predict the pronunciation of English words from their spelling ‘over 85% of the time’ (using a sample lexicon of 5000 words). English spelling is certainly horrible and irregular, but it isn’t unmanageably irregular.

(To illustrate the point, I supply a quote from said article of a fact which seems to be ignored curiously often: ‘George Bernard Shaw's ghoti … illustrates only Shaw's wiseacre ignorance. English spelling may be a nightmare, but it does have rules, and by those rules, ghoti can only be pronounced like goatee.)

Is that an antidote or a confirmation of the chaos? I scrolled through that list and came away just as horrified as I thought I'd be :P

I think making a misteak twice every eleven words is axeceptable.

Axeptable. FTFY

Anyone who thinks George Bernard Shaw was ignorant is ignorant of George Bernard Shaw. Wiseacre, yes; ignorant, no.

> illustrates only Shaw’s wiseacre ignorance.

Joke’s on Rosenfelder, since it appears Shaw didn’t come up with ghoti. The evidence, and some other facetious and funny and intentionally horrible but equally justified misspellings: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=81

> English spelling is certainly horrible and irregular, but it isn’t unmanageably irregular.

True! There are harder languages to learn than English. It’s okay to have a little at English’s expense though, right? It’s irregular enough to frustrate non-native speakers and school children, and irregular enough that English seems funny when you compare it to languages that have very little spelling irregularity, like Spanish.

Part of the charm of our language is how weird it is, and how it has mashed and mixed words from other languages. I really like learning bits of other Germanic languages and finding all the cognates we have - words that have similar roots and similar spellings and meanings. There’s a lot of inconsistency in how the spellings have translated, but finding the near equivalents in other languages is often surprising and enlightening.

> It’s irregular enough to frustrate non-native speakers and school children

As my first grade teacher used to reassure us after each spelling test, “English is no language to teach first graders”

...very little spelling irregularity, like Spanish.

As a native speaker I wouldn't say very little, but none.

Anyway, I'll better be catious and ask if you know any.

Not saying that Spanish is an easy language to learn, some parts are complicated, but not that one.

I only said very little out of caution, because I don’t know of any, but I don’t know that they don’t exist either. At most very little is compatible with none. ;) Aren’t there commonly used Aztec words that don’t match Spanish pronunciation?

So we are both cautious :)

If you mean Aztec imported words, I don't know which they are. Maybe you mean the tl consonant group that is not very natural, but neither is zr (as in three) and we just get used to it, when we learn English.

Could "chocolate" be one of these words? It was just adapted, both pronuntiation and spelling.

The problem now is imported. It seems English has no letter for j sound... ahem, the real j sound :) being the h (as in hot) the closest, but way weaker, so when transcribing from other alphabets, like Arabian or Cyrilic, it's written as kh, see Ха́рків.

But the trick isn't working and everybody reads it as a lone k. Also we receive the kh transcription... what a mess :)

To make written English you need to take 1 part Old (Anglo-Saxon) German, 1 part old Norse, and 1 part old French, stir together for a couple of centuries, then, just as its going though a major pronunciation shift have its spelling formalised by a random bunch of academics with an unhealthy obsession with latin and greek. Fianlly throw away a bunch of letters because the Germans and Itallians who made block type lettersfor printing presses had never heard of them, and bodge your spelling back together using whatever you can just about get away with. (Bring back Thorn!)

Then sit back and get very upset with anyone who tries to remove the 'u' from colour.

I remember my Germanic linguistics prof saying, regarding English, the statistics of words used in English sentences are roughly 75% as you mentioned above (Germanic), but the dictionary entries are like 75% Latin and Greek variations.

The statistical conjecture of the Germanic linguist was that (roughly) 25% of the English dictionary is used for 75% of words in actual usage.

The chaos actually comes from English importing both foreign spelling and foreign pronunciation. Without a way to reliably represent an arbitrary phonetic representation, English has little choice. When English tries to phonetically adopt foreign words, success is intermittent: it may work with easy cases like sputnik or sushi, but becomes more problematic with words like typhoon or borscht.

We should spell all words using the IPA.

If you’re struggling with properly pronouncing it, try this: http://www.franglish.fr/dearest_creature/

I don't understand what the point was of having both listings, one with the normal spelling and one with the phonetic spelling, each with their own audio. I'd expect the audio clips to be based on their respective listing (and I guess ideally they'd sound the same?); but It seems like both are just reading the normal English spelling text.

2 places I found interesting:

- In the first stanza, instead of "your dress you'll tear" it sounds like both are saying "your dress will tear."

- In the penultimate stanza, the word Housewife is pronounced differently between them. But the phonetic spelling on the right is how the reader of the plain-English text says it; and the reader of the phonetic spelling says it much more like I'd expect the normal word to be read -- not how it's spelled phonetically.

The Chaos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29871318 - Jan 2022 (2 comments)

The Chaos (1922) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9717861 - June 2015 (17 comments)

"The Chaos" poem catalogues English word irregularities. Can you read all of it? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098283 - Feb 2010 (2 comments)

(We changed the URL above from https://monologues.co.uk/004/Chaos-The.htm to a different version that is helpfully italicized.)

Meihem in Ce Klasrum or Ghoti, anyone?

I can highly recommend 16th century Portugese monks if you would like to romanize your language. You can learn in a day or two how to pronounce Vietnamese text well enough for a native speaker to understand you. Unless they are from Hue.

Does anyone know of a website where would-be spelling reformers can post their own versions of classic samples like The Chaos ?

Keep this in mind the next time you claim gif must have a hard g to be consistent with other words.

missiles in 1922? what kind projectile did they mean by it?

Webster defines "missile" as "capable of being thrown or projected to strike a distant object" -- the modern use I think came from "guided missile," but in practice we've dropped the guided in most cases.

Arrows, fireworks. First missiles (self-propelling projectiles) for combat were used by some indian maharaja at the end of the XVIII century though I'm not sure if they were called so at the time.

Edit: Here is the etymology of the word

https://www.etymonline.com/word/missile

The British have had an experience being attacked with real rockets in late 18th century [1], a technology they eventually adopted.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysorean_rockets

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