Re: First National Education Association spelling bee (29-6-1908)

On 2024-07-02, Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com> wrote:

Definitely. The late Bernard Pivot ran a very popular series of
progammes called Les Dicos d'Or around 30 years ago. Errors in French
spelling proved to depend a lot on the obscure rules of gramamatical
agreement that plague efforts to write in French. One episode annoyed

They wouldn't be so obscure if they weren't silent for the most part...

me. It was filmed in Strasbourg and one question concerned someone who
had taken a trip on the île.

*frowns*

Now, anyone who doesn't know Strasbourg
will naturally interpret it as île. People who do know Strasbourg will
know that there is no island that could be relevant, and that the local
river is the Ill.

Right.

I don't think that sort of programme would work in Spanish, where a lot
would depend on possibilities of confusion between b and v and between
y and ll.

As well as s and c-z.  H, too, but I suppose it doesn't occur in
too many words and in some (e.g. huevo, hielo) it's actually
predictable.

Similarly with German. (I had just one year of German at
school, but right from the beginning I could do a dictation with almost
no errors, despite not understanding what the text was saying.)

Well, there are quite a number of ambiguities (some homonyms to
give you an idea: Wal/Wahl, Laib/Leib, Lid/Lied), but the customary
terrors of German dictation are capitalization, compounds (groß
schreiben? großschreiben?), and comma placement.

Spelling to pronunciation works well in French (much better than in
English), apart from a few oddities like poêle and oignon;

And that is no coincidence, but the result of centuries of concerted
reform effort by the Academy.  One systematic issue remains: Whether
final consonants are silent or not is poorly predictable; from what
I understand the French themselves have been somewhat confused about
this over the centuries, which has contributed to the current
situation.

pronunciation to spelling, on the other hand, is just as bad as in
English.

Sort of true, but at least there's no reduction of unstressed vowels.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de