[ExI] commentary by one of ours

[Tom Nowell]

Mike Dougherty wrote:"In many cases we hear words (like "piqued") and learn their meaningthrough context.  My college roommate pronounced the letter "b" in the
word doubt [doob't].  I had no idea what he was saying until he
spelled the word; being a voracious reader he had only ever seen the
word in print and imagined how it should be pronounced from how it is
spelled.  I expect this will become more common since so much
communication is now in print. (or rather 'type' since relatively few
words make it all the way to dead-tree hosting these days)"

Interesting thing I learnt from a neurologist back in my student days: The difference between written English and spoken English allows neurologists to roughly gauge how good someone's vocabulary was and gain a rough idea of their educational level even after someone had suffered brain damage: show someone a flashcard with a word on it, and ask them to read it out loud. You can work up from words that are spelt like they sound (if someone gets these wrong, they probably had literacy issues before their current problems) and move up through more and more complex ones to tell if someone had a huge vocabulary. We tested this on our student group, and it was pretty interesting. And funnily enough, the word "doubt" tripped up the German exchange student who guessed "doobt".

Tom
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