undefined | Better HN

0 pointsthrowaway20376mo ago0 comments

    > Yeah my impression was the Orthography is pretty consistent compared to English.

As a native English speaker, I have learned this watching non-natives try to learn English spelling over the years. It is hell! I studied French in middle school and high school. I remember there being a similar level of ambiguity in their orthography (similar to English).

One weird thing that I have noticed when Japanese native speakers write emails in English: Why don't they use basic spell check? I'm talking about stuff as basic as: "teh" -> "the". Spell checkers from the early 1990s could easily correct these issues. To be clear, I rarely have an issue to understand the meaning of their emails (as a native speaker, it is very easy to skip over minor spelling and grammar mistakes), but I wonder: Why not spell check before you send?

0 comments

1 comments · 1 top-level

astrobe_6mo ago

> As a native English speaker, I have learned this watching non-natives try to learn English spelling over the years. It is hell! I studied French in middle school and high school. I remember there being a similar level of ambiguity in their orthography (similar to English).

Yes. I think english is even slightly worth than french wrt spelling/sound mismatches, but you can call me biased. Moreover, William the Conqueror, who brought civilization to England, also brought the inconsistencies of the french spelling with him.

> I wonder: Why not spell check before you send?

Well, some of my coworkers don't either, from french to french. And up to recently in most programs it was a bother to switch back and forth between 2 languages.

But really, that's probably about common laziness; the typos you mention can be caught by proof-reading before sending, which can also catch other mistakes like missing words or inconsistent sentences caused rewrites.

Proof-reading just after writing is not the best tho, as you tend to skip words because it is "too fresh". I try to introduce some time gap between the too (for instance, proof-reading after lunch or the next morning).