This post doesn’t strictly relate to translation, rather just words themselves in whatever beautiful language they may be – or not, as is in fact the case in this post – either way, do read on…
Reading is a multi cognitive process that has us decoding symbols in order to derive meaning. Once the retina recognises a set of symbols, the primary visual cortex processes them and then Wernicke’s area interprets them.
Convention has us arrange the symbols in a certain way and deviation from that pattern is discouraged. This is in order to maintain understandability across generations and to aid the formation of new words acording to the rules already in place.
The nature of spelling rules also make it possible for us to remember a scarily large number of words without any effort: The average 12-year old knows about 12,000. That wouldn’ be so easy if we all spelt every word differently, would it?
In light of that, consider this…
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 deosn’t mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist 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 lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Amzanig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.
By now you will already be rushing off to your prefered language forum or social networking site to tell of the mystery of your latest learnings (if you didn’t know this already) but, before you do, confirm something for me: does this work in your language?
I am particularly interested if you speak a language which uses a non Latin alphabet…Russian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Tamil and so on.
Let me know!
27 October 2008 17:53