PARVUM OPUS
Number 41
SPELL SPIEL
A reader sent along the following, saying it's been making the rounds of the Web:
Read the following sentence straight through without really thinking about it.
Acocdrnig to an Elgnsih unviesitry sutdy the oredr of letetrs in a word dosen't mttaer, the olny thnig thta's iopmrantt is that the frsit and lsat ltteer of eevry word is in the crcreot ptoision. The rset can be jmbueld and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut dclftfuiiy.
[Whether this actually came from an "elgnsih unviesitry sutdy" is open to question.]
He continues, with comments from other e-mailers (I'm not able to sort out who wrote what, but will identify my own remarks in bold):
This "apparently legible" effect illustrates the amazing nature of how reading works. The eye picks up an image, patterns are recognized as letters, the patterns of letters are glommed together into words and the words into phrases, and the phrases get meaning. And, amazingly, all this typically happens in a tenth of a second (600wpm).
The tricky thing is that not just any misspelling will work. For instance, in this example each word includes all the right letters. . .and that alone lets out 90% of the misspellings perpetrated by those who'd want to use this as an excuse [for misspelling].
Some scramblegrams (I just made up that word) don't work. You can understand taht I sareched goolge for an aswenr, but it's not so easy to understand taht I shraceed glgooe for an aewsnr.
Hey, writing that made me realize something vital: a scramblegram only affects "the contents of the egg" ~ the letters between the first and last. So:
Words of 1 or 2 letters have no scramblegrams ~ there's no "inside" to scramble.
Words of 3 letters have no scramblegram ~ there's only one inside.
Words of 4 letters have only one scramblegram ~ a simple transposition of the insides. (Examples: hvae, olny, wrod.)
Words of 5 letters have 5 scramblegrams. (There are 3 insides, which can be arranged 6 ways; one of them is correct, leaving 5 scrambles.) They're intelligible: Kteih, Kieth, Ketih, Ktieh, Kiteh.
Now, the only tricky scramblegrams are some of the scrambles of 6 letters or more. And if you strip out all words of length 5 or less from ordinary prose, you're left with only a few potential confusers.
Let's try that on the original example. Of those 51 words, only 13 have 6 letters or more: acocdrnig, Elgnsih, unviesitry, letetrs, dosen't, mttaer, iopmrantt, ltteer, crcreot, ptoision, jmbueld, wiohtut, dclftfuiiy.
Notice that many scramblegrams are relatively simple transpositions, and some more difficult ones are recognizable from context.
Adding up all these rules, it's no surprise that the last 11 words of the original are quite understandable: "and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut dclftfuiiy."
All in all, this whole thing is starting to look like one big illusion! There's not nearly as much insane scrambling as it seems at first.
You know how many people, especially students, will see this as a rationale for misspelling: "But everybody knows what I meeeeeaaaannnnn." (That last word is not a scramblegram but a whine.)
Advice to students and others:
If your only purpose is to convey a general idea, and the specifics don't matter, then indeed fuzzy spelling will get the general idea across.
When your actual meaning matters, you need to know how to do it right. That includes anything technical, anything legal, anything medical, etc.
To today's students (thinking of my daughter's friends), I'd phrase it more bluntly: ability to communicate accurately doesn't matter as long as you don't care whether the rest of your life is going to suck because you keep not getting the job you wanted.
(Note: Plenty of employers can't spell or recognize misspellings.)
Jeepers, someone might say I have way too much time on my hands.
(p.s. Google says Scramblegrams was the name of a game on the now-defunct web site StupidStuff.org. Gee, I guess I *do* have too much time on my hands. . .)
A noted artificial intelligence authority reportedly said that it works by keeping the consonants pretty much where you expect them.
Which is, I guess, why that spancaisitaloanglais newspaper in Europe worked so well a few years back. It reported the news in a patchwork of major Euro tongues, and it was very easy to get the gist (as well as build some foreign vocabulary on the fly).
Spancaisitaloanglais sounds like Esperanto, a language invented for the purpose of eliminating barriers to communication, and thus, by inference, conflict among European and American countries. The problem is, of course, first of all, that Esperanto omits all the non-Latin-Romance-Anglo-Saxon languages. Second of all, speaking the same language has never prevented civil wars.
Modern Hebrew skips the vowels altogether (redundant information) and everyone can still read the books and newspapers effortlessly without missing a bit (or a vowel).
Here's the "disemvoweled" version. I'll leave in start-and-end vowels, to honor the stated rule. . .still surprisingly legible, though many interior consonants are out of sequence:
Accdrng to an Elgnsh unvstry stdy the ordr of lttrs in a wrd dsn't mttr, the olny thng tht's ipmrntt is tht the frst and lst lttr of evry wrd is in the crcrt ptsn. The rst can be jmbld and one is stll able to rd the txt whtt dclftfy.
So maybe the AI Theorem should be modified to "frst and lst lttr mst be crrct, and intrr cnsnnts mst be in the crrct squnce".
I'm not a fan of spelling reform, although I enjoy these little games. Words have a historical integrity that I don't wish to see violated wholesale. I understand words better and enjoy language more when I know the roots, and that requires accurate spelling. And, notice how you feel when your precious name is misspelled. It didn't matter centuries ago, when few people could read or write, that my name, Keith, might be spelled any number of ways, but now my name will appear more times in writing than it ever will on someone's tongue. Although it's a fairly common name, I still have to spell it anyway because somehow it's hard to understand when spoken, especially on the phone.
Plus, these days we have, at last, an inarguable reason for accurate, consistent spelling ~ Internet search engines demand it.
But beyond all that, clarity is paramount, and context is not enough to ensure understanding. Even following the rules above, note that these sentences are "intelligible" but not interchangeable:
Jill is a slave to the flesh.
Jill is a salve to the flesh.
And what about people with dyslexia? How are they to understand these sentences:
Elvis is live.
Elvis is evil.
LATER, LOUIE.
Copyright Rhonda Keith 2003. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but it is permissible to forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.
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