Saturday, June 3, 2006

In yet another story on the recent winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, New York Times journalist Tamar Lewin writes Language teachers have, forever, argued the role of etymology in building vocabulary. But the lesson of the spelling bee went beyond that. It showed how the really good spellers, with a little understanding of the phonetics system of a broad range of languages, can do just fine even with languages they do not speak. (my emphasis) What is the phonetics system of a language? My guess is that it is supposed to mean the rules that map the spoken words of the language to a written representation in the Roman alphabet. But I can't find any such definition in reference sources. A Google search for "phonetics system" picks up a few mentions that suggest the proposed meaning, but it certainly does not seem to be generally used. In its standard use, "phonetics" does not have anything to do with writing systems, let alone with the specialized notion under discussion. As Language Log often deplores, writers who would (maybe) take a bit of care in their use of terms such as "neutrino" or "prime number" seem to feel entitled to take a Humpty Dumpty attitude to linguistic terminology. 7:08:27 PM