Wanna vs. Want to...Gonna vs. Going To...Lemme vs. Let me
Correction on the phonetic level of my Spanish example above (which, while I'm at it, works for Spanish in most places so mentioning 'Latin American' was unnecessary on my part). It should be:
[el aBo"GaDo me Djo el "Bino "t_din_dt_do]
not
[el aBo"gaDo me Djo el "Bino "t_din_dt_do]
<<How did this guy find a soapbox here?>>
Who knows. But his comments might be taken more seriously here if he did basic fact-checking, familiarized himself with the linguistic phenomena he's talking about, and dropped the unnecessary (and unfounded) condescending/arrogant/elitist tone of his comments.
Spelling errors don't correlate with intelligence. Spelling ability is correlated with reading and writing practice. Any ability, such as a golf swing, climbing a tree or understanding Quantum Mechanics, can be acquired and improved through training. This has little to do with innate intelligence.
"Do you guys like these welded terms, like Wanna, Gonna, Lemme?"
Does it matter?
<<<These written forms are literal transcriptions of pronunciation.>>
Not really. They're still quite faux-netic. Accurate transcriptions of pronunciation would require true phonetic transcription.>>
Yeah, that's true. ''gonna'' and ''wanna'' are not phonetic spellings. I pronounce them /gVn@/ and /wVn@/ so if they were phonetically representing my speech, they'd have to be more like ''gunna'' and ''wunna''.
I'm not at all sure that this "co-insides" teacher is able to read advertisements or other materials. The latest NAAL statistics (from 2003) are sobering. One in seven Americans is functionally illiterate. The rate for Blacks is one in four, and for Hispanics it's half the population. The literacy rate for college graduates has dramatically declined as well.
There's not much point to standards for the written language if they aren't applied to the spoken language as well.
Spanish is indeed very close to being phonetically spelled. Phonetic spelling is simply spelling that correlates closely and unambiguously with pronunciation, and Spanish certainly qualifies on that point, for the most part. Finnish does as well, and so does Esperanto, IIRC. At the other extreme is something like Gaelic or even Mandarin.
In the absence of pathology (e.g., the aforementioned dyslexia), being a bad speller is correlated with a lack of intelligence, although not to the same degree that good spelling is correlated with high intelligence (after all, some people have been crippled by look-and-say methods of learning to read).
The reason for this correlation is that spelling ability (in English, at least) is in turn closely correlated with vocabulary. The more words you know how to write, the better you tend to be able to spell. Since intelligent people tend to have generous vocabularies, they tend to spell better.
I've met moderately intelligent people who were not spectacular spellers, but I can't remember meeting any incredibly intelligent people who were not also excellent spellers, and indeed excellent writers and articulate speakers generally.
<<Spanish is indeed very close to being phonetically spelled. >>
No.
No.
No.
No.
No. Its written system is very close to being *phonemically* spelled. NOT phonetic.
<<Phonetic spelling is simply spelling that correlates closely and unambiguously with pronunciation,>>
That is absolutely untrue. The phonetic level is non-contrastive and full of allophones which orthographies do not need to represent. *Phonemic* spelling is spelling which correlates pretty closely with the phonemic, but not phonetic, level of the spoken language.
<<I've met moderately intelligent people who were not spectacular spellers, but I can't remember meeting any incredibly intelligent people who were not also excellent spellers, and indeed excellent writers and articulate speakers generally.>>
That's funny--I can. There's a friend of my family's who has a PhD in computer engineering, has worked for major companies as head of engineering, and has recently moved to being a full-time professor. He's well-read all over (not just smart in computers), is quite articulate, has a great vocabulary, and I can honestly say he's one of the smartest people I know. Yet he does not spell well because he's dyslexic (which he obviously hasn't allowed to cripple himself in life).
As I said before, even without the extreme of dyslexia some people are naturally not as good at spelling but this has no correlation with their intelligence. I've met plenty of people who were definitely above-average in intelligence yet not great spellers. One of my friends is currently pursuing her master's degree in Scandinavian history and literature in Iceland. She's also lived in Sweden and studied and learned Swedish. Yet, she is not a great speller. Her area of expertise is even inherently related to writing and reading yet the fact she's not a good speller is irrelevant to her intelligence or competence. How dare you make generalizations about things you are uninformed on!
Your comments are infuriating as you clearly have *no* idea what you're talking about.
Heh, that takes the cake! A teacher who is able to communicate a message in writing with a spelling mistake that is quasi-phonetic, yet can't read advertisements. If that's sobering to someone, that someone desperately needs a drink, a spiked one preferably.
It's not unconceivable for a "good speller" to make such a spelling mistake before proofreading a text.
Mxsmanic, you've been proven wrong. Why do you keep saying utterly false things? You would benefit by taking some time to actually learn about linguistics...