Tony, if you’re at all like me, you’ll look at a word, think it’s spelled funny and go look it up to find it’s spelled correctly, even though it looks weird at hell.
And on the note of spelling reform, I came across this a few weeks ago…
Regarding the language of business:
Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.
European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult – for example, cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by participating nations.
In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using ‘s’ instead of the soft ‘c’. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard ‘c’ could be replaced by ‘k’ sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.
There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be announsed that the troublesome ‘ph’ would henseforth be written ‘f’. This would make words like ‘fotograf’ twenty per sent shorter in print.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.
We would al agre that the horible mes of silent ‘e’s in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing ‘th’ by ‘z’. Perhaps zen ze funktion of ‘w’ kould be taken on by ‘v’, vitsh is, after al, half a ‘w’. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary ‘o kould be dropd from words kontaining ‘ou’. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud find it ezi tu understand esh ozer. Ze drems of ze Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.
Footnote:
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Very interesting. I’m a visual person (obviously) and I find English spelling cumbersome (or should a write “kumbersum” 😉 ). I waste time looking up words and paying attention to detail I find unnecessary, since my meaning is clear. But I also get that the adopted Roman alphabet is not designed for the sounds of English and English spelling preserves the history of a word (the “ph” of Greek or “gn” of German).
The Asians have it right with a pictographic spelling system, and I think your last paragraph proves that spelling is also mostly pictographic for Westerner sensibilities as well.
However whenever I bring up spelling reform my friends rag on me for being a hypocrite. Because ironically, my last name “Theisen” is pronounced “Tyson” — and the spelling signifies my German ancestors who travelled to the US many years ago.
Having taken German in high school MANY years ago, I catch myself doing double-takes and thinking “Ok, how is this pronounced now, the German way or the English way?”
And as an aside, I have a friend who’s name is Theisen too and he pronounces it just like it’s spelled. 🙂
Sorry but pictographs are even more cumbersome than letters, for instance to type Chinese characters the typist spells the word in pinyin (English letters) and then the computer gives him a list of characters to pick from and without machine assistance with OCR looking up an unfamiliar character is a labor intensive process in identifying the base radical and counting the brushstrokes. Having to learn 5000 unique characters for fluency and memorizing the word combinations reinforces rote learning as a system of education.
Critical parse failure! There’s the additional factor of our entire digital infrastructure being solidly build on the English language as it is now, which would necessitate a massive overhaul of pretty much everything we use if basic spelling and grammar rules were to change.
In short, banks, programmers, and Google would be up in arms about any such attempts.
I caught up on the entire comic in an afternoon.
You should know this comic is among the best the internet has to offer. In my opinion.
*returns to lurk-mode*
I know that it’s basically redundant coming from me (a regular commenter), but I second Ort completely. I’ve spent waaaay more time on the ‘net and in front of the tube than I’d care to admit, and Endstone remains one of the closest things to an original idea that I have encountered. Your characters have actual depth to them, even the supporting cast. Attention to detail is far beyond my ability to notice, and author response to our reader feedback is superb. Just to name a few.
I’d say this considerably more often, except that, as I stated, being an active commenter basically makes all of it redundant and would reduce its satisfaction/rewarding effect.
@Ort Thanks for the temporary de-lurk! Although it probably means more to Tony, it is still reassuring for us readers to know that people do, in fact, care.
It’s not redundant at all, my friend. 🙂 Your feedback gives me a reason to keep on going with this project. In fact, just this past week I was mulling over pulling the plug on the comic. This issue has one more week and the next issue (12) will be the finale. I’ve only drawn one page for Issue 12 over the past four weeks. I’m burnt-out but having come so far I really want to finish this comic.
As a creator I’m too deep into it to tell how the comic is coming across. Readership has plateaued at about 1500 to 2000 readers and it’s been like that for years. That’s fairly low for a free comic and it makes me suspect that this project sucks. However every time I’m feeling down about it somebody posts a compliment and that helps me to keep at it. And I do have very loyal readers, some of whom have been with me for many years. So that helps, too.
Most likely, such a plateau means that not enough people even know Endstone exists. I originally found Endstone via someone’s signature in the Minecraft Forums, and aside from occasional Project Wonderful ads on other comics I don’t think I’ve seen it linked anywhere.
That, and people have an annoying tendency to simply flip through a few pages without really reading them and loose interest without really absorbing enough information to come to an actual opinion. Not a judgement, simply an observation. I’ve done it myself before.
So, factoring in the probable hiatus between issues 11-12, this means that we, the readers, have maybe 6-8 months to drive readership up enough to convince you to renew Endstone for a second volume. C’mon guys, we can do this!
Sorry I didn’t mean to sound so dire. Issue 12 will wrap up this story. I then need to take a long deserved break.
After that, I might keep doing Endstone but I think something needs to change. I could spin off these characters into a new comic since I think the archive is getting a bit heavy and maybe new people would check out a new title. I’ve also thought of rebooting the comic giving it a lighter tone and tweaking some of the characters, but keeping the setting/universe. I just don’t know yet.
C’mon Jon, you /know/ he’s right.
Good to see the president of the GATES fan club is still with us. 😉
Oh, I m always here. Nothing much to say while he’s ahead!
Why is there what looks like a snipers silhouete in the first panel?
Has Simon summoned something again?
You might want to check out the first panel of the previous page… 😉
If it looks like a sniper, has a sniper rifle, most likely is that it IS a sniper!
….and missing an “n” in cannibalism
Thanks for the spell check. The English language really needs spelling reform, or I need glasses. Probably the later 😉
Tony, if you’re at all like me, you’ll look at a word, think it’s spelled funny and go look it up to find it’s spelled correctly, even though it looks weird at hell.
And on the note of spelling reform, I came across this a few weeks ago…
Regarding the language of business:
Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.
European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult – for example, cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by participating nations.
In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using ‘s’ instead of the soft ‘c’. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard ‘c’ could be replaced by ‘k’ sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.
There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be announsed that the troublesome ‘ph’ would henseforth be written ‘f’. This would make words like ‘fotograf’ twenty per sent shorter in print.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.
We would al agre that the horible mes of silent ‘e’s in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing ‘th’ by ‘z’. Perhaps zen ze funktion of ‘w’ kould be taken on by ‘v’, vitsh is, after al, half a ‘w’. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary ‘o kould be dropd from words kontaining ‘ou’. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud find it ezi tu understand esh ozer. Ze drems of ze Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.
Footnote:
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Very interesting. I’m a visual person (obviously) and I find English spelling cumbersome (or should a write “kumbersum” 😉 ). I waste time looking up words and paying attention to detail I find unnecessary, since my meaning is clear. But I also get that the adopted Roman alphabet is not designed for the sounds of English and English spelling preserves the history of a word (the “ph” of Greek or “gn” of German).
The Asians have it right with a pictographic spelling system, and I think your last paragraph proves that spelling is also mostly pictographic for Westerner sensibilities as well.
However whenever I bring up spelling reform my friends rag on me for being a hypocrite. Because ironically, my last name “Theisen” is pronounced “Tyson” — and the spelling signifies my German ancestors who travelled to the US many years ago.
Having taken German in high school MANY years ago, I catch myself doing double-takes and thinking “Ok, how is this pronounced now, the German way or the English way?”
And as an aside, I have a friend who’s name is Theisen too and he pronounces it just like it’s spelled. 🙂
Those Theisens aren’t real Theisens. 😉
Sorry but pictographs are even more cumbersome than letters, for instance to type Chinese characters the typist spells the word in pinyin (English letters) and then the computer gives him a list of characters to pick from and without machine assistance with OCR looking up an unfamiliar character is a labor intensive process in identifying the base radical and counting the brushstrokes. Having to learn 5000 unique characters for fluency and memorizing the word combinations reinforces rote learning as a system of education.
Forgive me, but all i can say to this strange new spelling is: Dolan pls!
Critical parse failure! There’s the additional factor of our entire digital infrastructure being solidly build on the English language as it is now, which would necessitate a massive overhaul of pretty much everything we use if basic spelling and grammar rules were to change.
In short, banks, programmers, and Google would be up in arms about any such attempts.
End of Line
“Join me, and together we can end this destructive conflict…”
… does he have to rule from the dark side? (HISHE flashback watching that last panel)
No spoilers in the vote incentive – but it is quite worth looking at.
This cheesecake is defintely not a lie.
I caught up on the entire comic in an afternoon.
You should know this comic is among the best the internet has to offer. In my opinion.
*returns to lurk-mode*
I really appreciate hearing that. 🙂
I know that it’s basically redundant coming from me (a regular commenter), but I second Ort completely. I’ve spent waaaay more time on the ‘net and in front of the tube than I’d care to admit, and Endstone remains one of the closest things to an original idea that I have encountered. Your characters have actual depth to them, even the supporting cast. Attention to detail is far beyond my ability to notice, and author response to our reader feedback is superb. Just to name a few.
I’d say this considerably more often, except that, as I stated, being an active commenter basically makes all of it redundant and would reduce its satisfaction/rewarding effect.
@Ort Thanks for the temporary de-lurk! Although it probably means more to Tony, it is still reassuring for us readers to know that people do, in fact, care.
End of Line
It’s not redundant at all, my friend. 🙂 Your feedback gives me a reason to keep on going with this project. In fact, just this past week I was mulling over pulling the plug on the comic. This issue has one more week and the next issue (12) will be the finale. I’ve only drawn one page for Issue 12 over the past four weeks. I’m burnt-out but having come so far I really want to finish this comic.
As a creator I’m too deep into it to tell how the comic is coming across. Readership has plateaued at about 1500 to 2000 readers and it’s been like that for years. That’s fairly low for a free comic and it makes me suspect that this project sucks. However every time I’m feeling down about it somebody posts a compliment and that helps me to keep at it. And I do have very loyal readers, some of whom have been with me for many years. So that helps, too.
Thank you all.
Most likely, such a plateau means that not enough people even know Endstone exists. I originally found Endstone via someone’s signature in the Minecraft Forums, and aside from occasional Project Wonderful ads on other comics I don’t think I’ve seen it linked anywhere.
That, and people have an annoying tendency to simply flip through a few pages without really reading them and loose interest without really absorbing enough information to come to an actual opinion. Not a judgement, simply an observation. I’ve done it myself before.
So, factoring in the probable hiatus between issues 11-12, this means that we, the readers, have maybe 6-8 months to drive readership up enough to convince you to renew Endstone for a second volume. C’mon guys, we can do this!
End of Line
Sorry I didn’t mean to sound so dire. Issue 12 will wrap up this story. I then need to take a long deserved break.
After that, I might keep doing Endstone but I think something needs to change. I could spin off these characters into a new comic since I think the archive is getting a bit heavy and maybe new people would check out a new title. I’ve also thought of rebooting the comic giving it a lighter tone and tweaking some of the characters, but keeping the setting/universe. I just don’t know yet.