Thingkin about Langwudj, Part 3

Musashi Sez:

Oh hai. I wuz goin to wryt mor about weddins todae, but mom sez it's Ayprul Fool's Dae, and mebbe hoomin peeples won't tayk what I sez srsly. So I'm goin to talk about langwudj, that isn't so importint as mai Ont Meredift's weddin. I get back to talkin about weddins tomorro or so.

Aneewhu.

I jus fynded out that mai cozzin Raychul noes how to talk in French, that is lik Inglish, egsept all the werds ar diffrint, if yu kin imajin this. She sez it’s not eezee, but if yu has peeples to talk to, wift theez new “werds” then yu kin mayk othr kins of peeples unnerstan yu. This werks fer boft hoomin peeples and kittee peeples (an mebbee even doggees, but I noe how hard that is to beleev, so we won’t talk about that todae).

I told her I didn’t unnerstand, so she told me to go look in the bible, an mai mom fynded the lolcat translayshun agin fer me, lyk she did when she wuz tryin to egsplayn that Jesus feller. So heer is a storee about langwudjiz an how they got to be lots. This com from the LOLCat Bible Translation Project. (An yu gots to rememember that they somtims spells thing in funee waes. Trai to ignor it, if yu kin.)

Genesis 11: Teh Towur ov Babel

1 And all uv de Urf was lolcatspeekinkz usin' lolcats werdz. 2 Whial teh menz be movin' eest, they finded vallee in teh land uv Shinar an sitted ther. 3 Dey sed, "Hai, letz maek teh brix an make 'em harrd wif fiir." So dey uzed brix for ston an bitumen (wtf izzat?) for mortar. 4 Den dey sed, "Hai, letz maek reel tall towerz for us so we be togethr forevr!"

5 So Ceiling Cat comeded down an saw teh men an ther towerz. 6 Den Ceiling Cat sez, "Oh noes, if they all togethr after mah hi spot, they gonna get mah hi spot! 7 I gots'ta confuzzle 'em and stop 'em!" 8 Dat's wai Ceiling Cat pwnsed 'em an dragd 'em away from ther towerz. Dey stop buldin' after dat. 9 So teh towerz wuz calld Babel cuz Ceiling Cat made teh men babbul ther befor movin' dem.

Musashi Iz Bak to Egsplayn:

OK, so ferst yu got to noe that “babul” meen speek in diffrint langwudjiz, somthin they hadn’t ben doin befor that. But when Ceiling Cat pounsd on them and mayd them all run awae speekin funnee langwudjiz, that is wher we gut all thoz othr werds fer thins.

Now, I noe that this is all perty stranje. It duzn’t soun lyk Ceiling Cat mutch, egsept fer the pounsin. But befor the LOLcat translaytrs got to it, this storee got wrytd by hoomin peeples, cuz kittees has that annoyin thum problim wift the wrytin. So yu gots to rememember what mom calls “CONTEXT.” Them hoomin peeples was annoyin Ceilin Cat, an that jus nevr a gud ideer.

Smartypants kittees wud nevr do somthin lik that. Huh.

Mom adds:

Musashi, oddly enough, is not the kind of cat who gets up on top of the refrigerator or the bookcases, for example. Some of you may be acquainted with the other type of cat, whom you may recognize in the Bible story. Also, I think the LOLCat Standard Version of the bible really needs to be edited and revised. But does anybody offer grants for that? For the evangelization of kitteez everywhere? No, of course not. Huh.

Clearly, I have been listening to Musashi a bit much...Sigh. Anyway, for the curious, bitumen is spit. Also, the pictures of the tower of Babel are by Pieter Bruegel and M.C. Escher.

Thingkin about Langwudj, Part 2

Musashi Sez:

OK! I noe that mos of yu don’t intrest in langwudj unless somboddy tell yu how it help yu or mebbe hurt yu. (I lern this from mai mom whu is a wrytin perfessr, that is lik thingkin perfessr, egsept mor on payper.) Anywae, las week, I tell yu about mai frend Cerceelya, whu noe lots about langwudj and why it happn, an how she’s helping me figger out hoomin peeple Inglish and also kittee peeple Inglish. Is not so eezee as yu migt thingk.

Cerceelya sed, “As you mentioned, Musashi, when you write, you are spelling by sound and not by history. So, you are actually experimenting with a kind of spelling reform. If you want, you can tell Sue and her friends that this is your academic experiment with phonetically accurate spelling and that if they can't hack it, then maybe they need to take another class.”

Huh. I am eksperimentin. So ther.

“And now the history: Each and every attempt at language-wide spelling reform in English has failed miserably, beginning with the profusion of recommended rules and new alphabets in the 16th century and continuing to some rather harebrained modern schemes like NuSpel, ALC Fonetic, and Simplified Spelling. What all those failed reformers forget is that any one of these schemes renders hundreds of years of literature and other information irretrievable in less that a generation. They also seem to forget that English has repeatedly proven itself to be flexible, robust, innovative, and tolerant of oddball spelling. … Of all of the potential reformers, Webster can be considered fairly successful because he got us to drop the ‘u’ in words like ‘color"’ and the ‘k’ in words like ‘magic’--but even he only managed to affect a few words.”

Huh. I lik this ideer of hoomin peeples tryin ovr an ovr agen to get somthin rigt. I lik the wurd “profyoozhun.” That’s a srsly cool wurd. An them reformrs, whu ar jus lik thoz hoomin peeples whu ar maykin mai lif mor diffikult cuz of theyr weerd, old-fashon ideers, is gud that mai frend Cerceelya calls them “faild an forgetful,” cuz if mai mom is rigt (an somtims she is) that mayks them annoyin peeples look bad, an us look gud.

Mos speshullee, I liks her sentins-thin wher she sez: “English has repeatedly proven itself to be flexible, robust, innovative, and tolerant of oddball spelling.” If kittees aren’t flexibul an innovaytiv an robuts, I don’t noe whu ar.

I’m not shur what this “oddball” wurd meen. Cleerlee, it not about me, or othr tipikul kittees. Mebbe it’s fer doggees, whu do count somtims, when we’r talking about lernin thins, speshullee them Germin Shepperds, cuz they lerns stuff reellee fast. Espeshul about ballz they need to find fast, uzhool bai smellin. Not nesasarilee faster than kittees, but still perty fast.

Werk Cytd

Musselman, Cecelia. Email. 22 Feb. 2009. Huh.

Thingkin About Langwudj, Part I

Musashi Sez:

This goin to be a speshul blog cuz it’s about langwudj (an mebbe it last all munth, wift spayses fer othr stuff in between). Now lotsa hoomin peeples onlee wryt to me on the kapyuter to tell me how bad mai spellin is. I ben thingkin about this fer a whyl: yu noe, paysin aroun an stuff. Mom sez that’s calld bein “nervuss” an I gess she’d noe, cuz she’s not a kittee, an so she’s nevr goin to be perfiklee conferdent. But then, eevn mai Grayt-Ont Meridift sed, “He [that’s me, MUSASHI] writes a blog with lots of spelling errors. (Cats don't have the time for spell check. Also, they don't have opposable thumbs.)"

(Mom want me to syt this, but I’ll figger out that akademikul stuff laytr).

Now mai mom teetchz wrytin, an she ben teetchin me how to thingk an spell at the saym tim. She call this CRITICAL THINKING, even if yu’r bein nys to peeples whyl yu do it. So OK. Heer goes.

Mai Grayt-Ont Meridift is perty cool, even if I hasn’t met her yet. Mom thingks she’s a perty awsom wryter. She has this noo blog called "helpmakecents" (an yu kin konnekt to it wae, wae below in the part wher I tell yu about mai kul links). Is a funnee blog that she is wrytin to erns monnee fer her weddin to mai Grayt-Onkul Matt, whu is a kul guy who is alwaes willin to skup yer pup, or that's what mai Onkul Me2 says (an he's a kittee, eevn tho Grayt-Onkul Matt is a hoomin peeple. I has compikaytd fambly, but is mosly werth it.) So okay. Meredift wrytd 3 thins about me. Goin bakwerds, she sed that I don’t has thums, an that’s tru. She sed cats don’t has tim fer the SpellCheck progrim, and that also tru. But then, or akshul, preveeyus, she say that I wryt a blog “wift lots of spellin errers,” an that’s what yu call a “poynt of vyu.” I noe this cuz I askd an egspert. I tell yu about that.

See, mai mom noes lotsa weerd hoomin peeples whu liks to studee weerd stuff, lik langwudj and lichrachur an fhyziks (as oppozd to nootrishun fer kittees or othr normul, praktikul stuff). So a fyu daes ago, I e-mayld mom’s frend Cerceelya. (An fer thoz of yu whu noe about how I met mai mom, it wuz Cerceelya whu sed to mai mom, “Him! This the 1. He’s perty hansom!!!!” So her an me is alreddee frends.)

Mom Explains:

That’s what’s called transparency…

Musashi Goz on Aftr the Inpolyt Innerupshun:

So I wrytd to Cerceelya lik this:

“I am workin on a blog about langwudj an mom sez yu ar an egspert on langwudj…. Here's mai problim. Everboddy complayn about mai spellin, but I'm spellin bai rulz. I'm lisnin to hoomin peeples talkin an I'm wraitin it down lik I heer it. Also, I reed lolcats on a reglar basis. Mom sez ther's somthin calld Orthographic Reform an talks about som guy namd Webstir. Kin yu help me?” (An mom want anuthr of them saitayshuns. Huh.)

Now, if yu ar narro-mind, yu migt not egspekt Cerceelya to wryt bak to (huh) “jus a kittee,” but she liv wift 2 MAINE COON CATS, an 1 of them is lik 3 of the res of us on thos funnee pills football guys tayk. So she anserd reellee fast, lik the saym dae.

She sed: “Well, I appreciate your question and I want you to know that you are actually following in a fine tradition of independent thinkers and spellers. I'll start first with some advice and then we'll get some history. Here's the advice: Usually, it's best to choose the spellings that most humans are used to if you want them to understand what you write. After all, humans are creatures of habit--just like cats.”

Huh. I ben folloin a fyn tradishun. See, now this mayk sens to me. An akshul, I ben sorta folloin this advys sins befor I got it. Fer egsempl.

Mom keep tellin me that som lettrs don’t count as mutch as othrs. There’s lotsa tims when “gh” don’t mayk anee sound at all, an that jus seem sillee. How kin 2 hol lettrs not mayk a sound? OK, mebbe 1 don’t mayk a sound, but don’t the othr 1 eevn jus wisper a littul? So I thingkd about this a lot. An I thingkd, “Hm. That H don’t mayk mutch sound eevn when it’s maykin som sound. So it mosly don’t count. But that G thin happn mosly in yer throt. An also that G, speshul when it’s small, lik ‘g,’ look lik a kittee tail. An they’r well noen fer bein reellee qwyett, an still meenin a lot when they moov. So, OK, I kin figger the G, but that H gotta go.” So the werd mai mom spell "might" that soun like "mig-hit" I simpulfiez so it look rigt to them an also soun rigt to me, an also sensibul peeples.

Hoomin peeples thingks that I spell bad, but akshul, I’m thingkin about spellin almos all the tim. If I’m not jumpin! or pounsin! or runnin! or taykin a nap, is probabul that I’m thingkin about spellin. An suddenlee, I realyz how weerd that is, cuz it mayk me sound lik mai mom… Erg.