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I've always thought that ESL speakers (and writers) have an easier time
with spelling because we tend to read the individual letters rather than
the entire word. For me, there is no way I could confuse "their" and
"they're" because, even after learning/speaking English for 24+ years, I
read t-h-e-i-r and t-h-e-y-r-e in Romanian before the words "transform"
into the English pronunciation. It only takes a millisecond to process the
individual letters (I read just as fast in Romanian and English, there's no
delay), but that's how I think my brain does this. Of course, this is all
totally unscientific... (The fact that there are very few homophones in
Romanian probably has something to do with all this too.)
Ioana/Jen
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 14:10:08 -0700
From: "Monique Semp" <monique -dot- semp -at- earthlink -dot- net>
To: "Monique Semp" <monique -dot- semp -at- earthlink -dot- net>, "TechWR-L"
<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Subject: Re: is there a word - for typing the wrong homophone ?
Message-ID: <CA0106535B30434F8BFCA88E2A8E736D -at- WQIMJS>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8";
reply-type=original
I'm resurrecting this thread because... I was typing in Spanish today -- not
something I do well, but I was typing to a fellow student in my Spanish
class -- and made a similar sort of error!
I meant to type "veo" but typed "beo" because the "v" is pronounced with a
"b" sound, so clearly my fingers were typing what the imaginary voice inside
my head was saying :-).
So I wonder if this would be the same <whatever-we-call-it> as the error of
typing "your" instead of "you're"? Seems so, except that the English error
resulted in a real word being typed, while the Spanish did not... Perhaps
the English error is a "homophone typo" but the Spanish one is a "unisonic
misuse" ??
And for (fun) reference, here's the summary of suggestions from the group,
last August:
* homophone typo
* Homophone confusion. AKA whole language reading.
* Unisonic misuse
* Homophonic dysfunction/error/malapropism
* Homophony
* Pun-ting
* HomoFoneBone (with apologies to Don Martin)
* homoflub ("that ain't right" and "you'd get in a lot of trouble trying to
actually use")
* homophone funny
* You could always blame Damn You Auto Correct!
* brain-to-fingers mis-fire
* And for a related syndrome, see http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/friedmar/alexia.html
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