Not Apollojetik

Musashi Sez:

Som of yu reedr peeples ben complaynin about mai spellin again, so I figgerd I wud writ yu a verree stiff not. Mom sez I cud call it an “apollojetik” cuz I am speekin in defens of mai pozishun. She sez thoz old Greek gyz inventid the ideer, so I spoz it’s based on that god-fellr, Apollo, whu was prettee gud at talkin an singin. But is sillee. Apollojee is wen yu haz to say “sorree.” An I am not sorree about mai spellin.

1 of mom’s frends sez mai spellin is awful, an I has desydid to beleev she reellee meens awsom, like inspirin “Awww!” from peeples cuz they’r so impressd. Mai granma keeps sayin that I shud “praktis mai spellin,” but is sillee, cuz I am praktissin all the tim! She sez, “Whut ar peeples goin to thingk? Yer mom is a Inglish teetchr an she spozd to check yer spellin. An it luk lik this?” (I’m whut mom callz parafrazin heer, OK?)

See writin tayks lotsa tim. That’s why somtimz I don’t publish mai blog everdae. Cuz somtim mom is too bizee graydin her students payprs to tayk the tim we need to argyoo ovr ever wurd. Lik this:

Mom: How manee tim I tell yu? “Might” got an H in it.

Musashi: How yu noe? All yu heers is the M, I, an T. I jus throws in the G cuz yu lik it an it look lik a kittee tail.

Mom: Yu don’t beleev in dikshunareez, do yu?

Musashi: Cors not. Somtim nex yeer I’m goin to writ mai own dikshunaree. Yu kin hav yers, an I’m havin myn.

Mom: Well, kin yu at leest be consistent an spell the saym wurd the saym wae all the tim?

Musashi: I spell it how I feel it at the tim. Som wurds mayk me feel happier on Toozdaes than they do on Windzdaes.

Mom: OK. Fergit the apollojetik. What yu ar writin is, ahem, “An Epistemological Study of Empathetic Orthographical Reform (Feline Dialect).”

Musashi: Wow. I had no ideer I was so smarteepants…

Now we do this fer evree wurd. So yu'r all jus luckee we evr finish theez blogs at all.

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.