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Jan. 30, 2007 At least one of Brian Barbeito's ideas is not totally lacking in merit. I have been aware for years of the needlessness of having both upper- and lower-case letters in a language. There are no opposed cases of letters in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian or Hindi. In English, capitals do serve the purpose of showing that a particular word is a proper noun rather than a common noun, as in these pairs: Turkey, turkey; Bohemian, bohemian; Cork, cork; Thousand Oaks, thousand oaks; Miles, miles; March, march; etc. But this could be accomplished just as easily by prefixing a superscript circle to a lower-case letter: ºmiles, ºmarch, ºthousand ºoaks, ºcork. Another symbol, such as /, would do just as well, except that it requires that the typist shift. Adopting the circle, we would have 27 symbols, instead of 52, in the alphabet. Thus we would make available 25 positions on the conventional keyboard. So 25 symbols that now have to be accessed from the time-consuming Symbol dialog box one finds by clicking on the Insert dropdown in Microsoft Word would be transferred to the keyboard instead. And it would obviate the constant annoying shifting involved in typing, However, taking it upon oneself merely to start omitting capitals, as Barbeito did for several months, is an affectation. It is as if the author were saying, "Look, Ma, no capitals. I'm a big boy now." It is the author indulging himself. Unfortunately, as desirable as reform in this regard might be, it is not now in vogue. So a linguistic truant like Barbeito makes his own writing harder to read by adopting the affectation. Barbeito's writing, which often, wittingly or unwittingly, verges on stream-of-consciousness, is sometimes difficult enough to decipher in the first place. Instead of proposing innovations, Barbeito should concentrate a little more on weeding out some of those malapropisms and orthographic accidents that find their way into his prose. I had forgotten all about the capìtalization issue, until Barbeito himself brought it up. He seemed to resent my having disapproved of his "bright" idea, so I thought I'd just explain myself a little. No, I am not a mindless conservative trying to dull Barbeito's cutting-edge stylistic devices. I was aware of this illogicality in the English language at least 15 years before Barbeito first graced the planet by being born. The editor of useless-knowledge.com was the one who requested that Barbeito return to ordinary English, and I merely applauded the request. Why should we stop at half-measures though? Since English is sorely in need of spelling reform, perhaps I should start posting my articles in some sort of compromise phonetic alphabet as well: dúzzent it maik sens too yooz a mor áekyooret áelfabet dhaen dha wun nou in voag? its serpríezing barbáito díddent theengk uv dhis too. hee theengks uv so méni theengz too reefóm dha éenggleesh láenggweej. shóorli súmtheeng uv dha sort must haev akúrd too him. In fact, why don't we just adopt the International Phonetic Alphabet. I'd love it. But Barbeito would be the first to cry bloody murder, "Oh, boo-hoo, life used to be so simple." ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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