Mata e iai se su'e sipelaga
Faatoa uma laʻu faitau Righting the Mother Tongue: From Old English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling, by David Wolman.
You may not know what orthography and etymology are, and that’s okay. I know I’m a butcher of grammar and spelling, but this book made me feel better about my skills. There are millions of words in the English language, but the average high school graduate knows about 60,000. The fact is that most of us don’t have a clue what the majority of words are in our language!
Ours is a phonetically incorrect language and a nearly impossible language to learn. Some folks believe that misspelling is a sign of ignorance, but Shakespeare himself used to invent and misspell words as he saw fit. He felt letters and words were like clay to a sculptor. Imagine if I made up my own redunculous words on this blog, folks would belittle me (right before leaving).
Aʻo tatou agaʻi atu i se meleniuma fou, tatou te iloa ai ona tatou tautala i upu e tusa ai ma tekonolosi ia atonu o le a le mauaina i latou lava i soʻo se lolomifefiloi aloaia ... ma e oʻo lava i le lolomifefiloi tagata lolomifefiloi e le mafai ona malilie i le mea na mafua ai ma le a le mea.
Afai e te le talitonu o loʻo matou fatuina ni upu fou aʻo matou o, e tatau ona e toe tepa i tua i taimi e OK…. pe o le afaina… Pe o le e sa'o or ole kurreck. Just think, your grandchildren may have a part of their daily conversations, rofl, lmao, asap, lol, or ttfn.
Aua le talitonu i ai? Faʻafefea le upu Faʻatau, which used to be an acronym for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. How about Blog, which less than a decade ago was Web log! With the word has come blogger, blogged, blogging, and blogware. It’s a fairly exciting time as well because many of the words,
aotelega, or short codes that are being generated online today are used internationally.It’s interesting how advertising and marketing need not follow the rules of orthography. We’ve got companies like Google, things like the iPhone, and products like Twitter that are all fully acceptable – yet we have very little tolerance for accidental misspellings in our own content. I think it’s fascinating.
Faʻafetai lava e mafai lava ona tatou faʻamoemoe i sipela!
E iai le siaki i sipela mata,
Na sau ma lau Pea Sea.
O le vaʻalele lee faʻailoga fa loʻu revue
Miss Steaks E mafai ona ou nonoa le sami.
Mata taia le quays ma taina se upu
Ma mamafa fa fa lua fai mai
Tau matamata ua ou tusia foe sese
E taʻu saʻo mai ia aʻu le mamafa.
I’d encourage you to pick up a copy of the book; it’s a fascinating walk through history. David keeps the reading very light. Even more entertaining is that he narrates all of the origins of English as he visits the places where they were transformed. It’s a sili faitau!