Dana Corp files for bankruptcy

A couple of my parents friends that never made it home:

In article , L.W.(ßill) Hughes III wrote: # Attack, for those without common sense. I cdnuolt blveiee taht I #cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the #hmuan mnid aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deons't #mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng #is taht the fsirt and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be #a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is #bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the #wrod as a wlohe. Azmnaig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tohguht slpelnig was #ipmornatt! # God Bless America, Bill O|||||||O #mailto: snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

Grt, now my hed hurtz. Tnks alot!

/herb

But "attract" and "attack" don't have the same last letter. :-)

Hukt on fonicx werkt fer u!

Dan

phonics

Bill,

Some of the more recent studies indicate that phonics in English may be a waste of time, as English is not written phonetically. Incredibly, people who read and write well just know all of the words of the language as unique symbols, at a subconscious level. There is simply no time to put the phonetic information together during normal processing of written language. Your osmosis theory has some merit.

Earle

I realize this as I sit trying to teach my 5 year old how to read. He sounds out the words like he is supposed to but even then they are not pronounced that way.

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult -- for example, cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased program of changes to iron out these anomalies. The program would, of course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by participating nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'. This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therfor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o kould be dropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of ze Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.

Received from Carrie Burroughs.

It wasn't that many centuries ago that written English was phonetic.

Back in the 1960s some then-new research showed that proficient readers learn on their own to scan the outline shape of words instead of individual characters. "Ah ha!" was heard from the ivory tower, "we'll speed things up by teaching kids to `sight read' the shapes of words instead of making them learn to read characters, then syllables, then complete words. They'll just pick up the phonics and the foreign loan-word variations as they go along."

Hey, guess what. We didn't. Short-cutting the learning process resulted in kids who can read silently and quickly, but who don't automatically sound out words. I've got a fairly large written vocabulary but I can't correctly pronounce a distressing portion of it. On the other hand, even with my nearsightedness I can read highway information signs long before my traveling companions can make out the characters, so maybe it is useful for something after all.

The bottom line is that you have to walk before you can run, and you have to learn the rules of a language before you can understand how they get broken. Shortcutting the process just cheats the kids.

Earle Hort> Bill,

For really good readers, the book and its printed words simply disappear. For them, reading is just like watching a movie; characters appear, they talk and they act.

Bad movies are just as easy to watch as good movies, but not nearly as much fun. Bad writers >

-- msosborn at msosborn dot com

L.W.(ßill) Hughes III proclaimed:

Ahh, whatever happened to alt.best-of-usenet ?