The {ghotI}/fish effect

[Kesvirit]

posted on 8-12-2003 at 06:38 AM

The {ghotI}/fish effect

quoth Klythe in the "Paramount Hol and transliteration" thread:

(Pinker attributes the origin of ghoti to George Bernard Shaw).

(To my knowlege, so does everyone else. He used it as an example of a London Times article on spelling reform.) To review: Shaw took some particularly problematic letter combinations with too many different possible pronunciations -- enough, women, and nation -- and substituted alternative letters for these sounds to come up with a new spelling of "fish". To tie this back into Klindom, Okrand used the word {ghotI} for "fish" in thIngan Hol, where according to his orthography is sounds exactly as spelled. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge. :rolleyes:

But the original doesn't hold.  There are some positional spelling rules in  English that preclude it. Even though "gh" is sometimes pronounced "f", it never does so at the beginning of a word. For the "gh" sound in "enough" to equal "f", it must be proceeded by a vowel. Furthermore, the "gh" in English is borrowed (co-opted, stolen, whatever) from the Scots Gealic, and sounds more like Okrand's {H}.

Similarly, the "ti" in "nation" cannot be pronounced "sh" at the end of a word. It must be followed by a vowel to be pronounced "sh".

Using Shaw's logic,"You could spell fish "phoche" (photo women quiche), but why would you want to?" I for one would read "phoche" to be pronounced as "foh-shay"...

See the apropriately-named Quail-Spell page for more on alternative spellings.

 - Kesvirit
-=-=-=-=-=-
Hukt on fonix reely wurkt for mee!

[Klythe]

posted on 8-16-2003 at 10:58 AM

Shaw's point (and Pinker's) was that there is no exact method to converrt grapheme's to phonemes that works 100% of the time. Zompist has a long list of rules that take English up to 85% of a match, but admits it would be hard pressed to gain significant improvements.

Unlike Shaw, Pinker does not think it would be a good thing to spell words as we pronounce them. First off, pronunciation changes over time and space, while spelling is almost completely frozen after the wide spread publication of dictionaries, this helps to reveal the words etomology which can influence it's meaning. Secondly, spelling reflects a regularity not seen in the spoken version. The suffix for converting a verb to past tense is always written -ed, but when it follows a voiced consonant, it also becomes voiced. So while we spell spelled ... 'Spelled' we pronounce it spelt. We would have to make this an explicit spelling rule. instead of now where it is an implicit speaking rule...

I think there is an intellegent compromise that could be reached, but instituional inertia will prevent it...

But you are right, I concede to you that 'ghoti' cannot reasonably spell fish in English orthography. Shaw evidently was not a linguist, only a wirter.

[k'Tar]

IIRC the -gh consruction (as well as similar constructions) in english spelling is inherited from dutch printers who came to britain as technicians for the early printing presses.
They weren't familar to english usage and when compositing type made the best attempt at transliteration that they could.
Quite a lot of the idiosyncratic spelling in english comes from this historical accident.
Sorry if this is a bit off topic but i couldn't help but chip in my tuppence worth