Habitual imitation.

Habitual imitation has played a major role in giving a new shape to the language. We can not deny our habit of harking back to words (minimal pair), whenever we have to spell a new word trying to find existence in the language. We closely descry similar structured words varying only in one phoneme.
In other words, if you are asked to spell a word you are not familiar with, you do not know the meaning, its application, its origin, you would probably try to match it with the sounds of the words you know. For example: If you are asked to spell ‘bæt’, and you did not know anything about the word, you would try to wrack your brain to memorize similar words sounds) varying in one phoneme only. You would try to refresh your memory to recall ‘cæt’, ‘hæt’, ‘fæt’, ‘mæt’, ‘ræt’, etc.
Linguafranca is all about refreshing your memory, telling you things you do not know, or things you know but can not recall in time, and get you in the habit of recognizing sounds and structural arrangements, help you relate to all of the generalities. As in above example, when vowel ‘a’ is sandwiched between two consonant sounds and the syllable is stressed it would give ‘æ’ sound.
There are numerous words of foreign origin, the first time they were spelled, were not spelled right, and may be because of the perceptual differences or lack of understanding. Or may be they were spelled by some George from English speaking region, who could not capture the sound, or just simply spelled in a possible idle moment to kill time, or may be because people were not able to give the actual sound. Or the then-popular George might have given them options, but because of the communication gap they picked the wrong option by themselves according to their ease. And habitual imitation kindled it, and acted as an electrode in a nuclear reactor of language.
Habitual imitation is like Uranium-238 rod in the nuclear reactor of the language. The idea is, if we can put some neuron rods( periodic codifications) in place to tame the power of the fuel and somehow put a check on the plausible explosion that damage sounds, words, and finally speech; instead of just sitting back and vacillating over the confounding, and let it complicate it further.
It’s a fuel; more fuel we put more powerful combustion we expect in the cylinder. We’ve got to control the irregular and un-warranted infusion to make it rather beneficial to the language. Use it effectively and efficiently to tap the full potential of the growth of the language. For the universal comprehension among the speakers. As is practically impossible to reverse the damage, once the language is abused at a larger scale. And what scale is larger than a relatively bigger civilization ( Asian countries) more than happy to adopt, experiment, and apparently abuse a new language.
THANKS TO ANGLICIZATION AND SOUND DISTORTION.
And now every body is saying words the way the spelling suggests, or what they understand from the way those words are spelled; but not the way it should be said worldwide. The beauty of the original words is lost. It acts as a threat to both, the foreign language from which the words have come from, and also to English as a Universal language. Why English? Because there is every possibility that by the course of time a new sub-script style would emerge. Which is a Universal fact, but we hitherto failed to recognize. And at a later stage we start to realize the follies fanned out by habitual imitation, which in-turn makes it quite difficult to communicate. Which would have been avoided if had considered the importance of sound and application of letters in the formation of English replica of a foreign word( with the use English alphabet), and we start to correct at a much later stage when it is bound to confound every body.
This doesn’t mean that we never thought of written English logically. At one time we might think that something is perfectly fine, as is solving the purpose but later we realize a need for change. This is the base of development. Till the time we are not ready for any change we won’t develop anything. If we had thought of bulb as the end of electronics, we would have probably stuck with not more than a bulb in our hand.
In order to improve comprehension among English speakers across the globe, it is essential to decrease the disparity ( perceptual differences).
We’ll discuss how effectively we can correct those follies fanned out by possible habitual imitation.
I remember one instance, some time in 2006 people protested a shoe making company for printing `Allah` on the shoes they made. Company didn’t know that the people will get offended. Not every body who believe in God will take such disrespect.
’Allah’ is also a spelling for Muslim God. People know Allah as a spelling for the name of the God ‘۸la:’, the ’۸’ sound in ‘۸la:’, is a solid ‘u’ sound, as in but, cut, hut, rut, etc. Every body who know ‘۸la:’ would say ‘ ۸la: ‘ , but for the rest of the world it’s `Allah` , phonetically, `Æla: ` , with solid `a` sound as in fat, cat , rat , mat , etc.
What if today, after seeing that protest for the name sake, God himself say, “I respect your feeling for what ever you did to get it corrected , and I also know that you all love me very much” , “But there is one thing I would like to ask , I know that u can say my name right, but why did the you spelled it `Allah`? The rest of the world who do not worship me read my name as ’Æla:’ ,where ‘a’ is solid . Don’t worship a lesser GOD (the printed word).
“Please educate every body on this and please change the spelling if possible.”
The fact is that nobody is as forgiving as GOD is.
Giving space for alternate pronunciations & alternate spellings.
This difference in understanding is giving rise to alternate spelling for “Sheikh” and “Grey” as: “Shaikh” & “Gray”, and such like words and also alternate pronunciations. People are confused between “∫eikh”, “∫i:kh”, “shaikh”, and “sheikh”. And between allophones: “K” or “ख़”. If we use ‘ei’ in ‘Sheikh’, it could be misconstrued for soft ‘e’ sound (soft ‘e’ sound as an alternate pronunciation already exist in dictionaries worldwide, the original sound is ‘∫eikh’ with soft ‘a’ sound.
Whosoever know of shaikhs would agree on the sound but what about the rest of the world who does not know of ‘∫eikhs’, and understands the vowel combination “ei” as “i:” sound. They could be in a soup someday if they aren’t lucky enough, as deadly shakes could kill.
Shouldn’t we weigh a foreign language entry before we assimilate it in English language as a part, in terms of structural compatibility and possible sound change with the course of time, to save the original sound, and to avoid possible structural confounding?
Not everybody but Shaikhs would agree.
Delhi : The capital of India. Phonetically if we hyphenate the word, it is ‘Del-hi’, where ‘del’ is a solid syllable with solid ‘e’ sound in well, jell, set, get, etc. When it was named first ,it was named as ‘िदॣली’. ‘द’ as’ ‘ð’ .We can get ‘ð’ sound with ‘th’ combination in English. The only reason why ‘th’ was not used could be, that it would be misconstrued as Ø sound as in thanks, thunder, thatch, etc.
The origin sound is ‘ðil-li:’, where ‘ðil’ is solid with solid ‘i’sound.
How did ‘ðil-li:’ sound changed to ‘Del-hi’( D sound –solid ‘e’ sound – l sound-short ‘i’)?
Ignorance and perceptual difference made ‘ðil-li’ ‘Del-hi’ .
Till the time I was in my teens, everybody said ‘ðil-li:’ ðil-li:’ . And now, though everybody in India know that its ‘ðil-i:’, but they say it ‘Del-i:’. It’s not that people find it difficult to say ‘ðil-i:’ , everybody can say it . It an India word, every sound in the word is there in the National language of the country. If a Kid, whose History teacher did not tell him its ‘ðil-li:’, says it as ‘del-i’ because his English teacher told him that way, it is acceptable. But what made educated & English speaking populace, who took their History lessons well say it ‘Del-hi:’? May be the pretext of wrong spelling, or may be any other personal reason.
I think the name change, yes, I would call it a name change, happened because initially when it was spelled with English alphabetic script, we were not able to capture the sound correctly and we spelled it ‘Delhi , which is wrong.
By the course of time people interacted with the rest of the world for Business purposes, and communicated the wrong spelling. The wrong spelling was peppered through out the world, as ‘ðil-i’ had been a business center, and on all of the written communications ‘ðil-i:’ was spelled as ‘Delhi’. Also the name was broadcasted as ‘Delhi’, because broad-caster said it the way it was spelled. And the rest of the know it as ‘del-i’, with a solid ‘e’ sound.
I m not going to give you a list of such like words to make you believe the present state ( how many such like words are there, how does it effect your speech). Do your homework by yourself. Only if you think its quite true, if you think that this all make some sense, then only follow the blog, otherwise just shun like the way we always do.
Start with this, and I will show you how you can perfect your speech. Start to learn to respect original sounds and see sound do wonders for you.
Don’t worry I’ll share it later.