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September 19, 2003
Linguistics parlor trick
Well, we managed thru the storm fairly well, tho my sister is still without water. Gee, with all the TV coverage, too bad no one reminded us to fill up a bathtup (to take care of potty needs). Anyways, here's an entry befitting the out-of-the-norm circumstances. You've probably seen this email at least once...it's in the vein of "if u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb" ad. It goes: Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. The folks at Snopes have determined that the status of this potential urban legend is undetermined. I've read that may be the origin, though a quick read doesn't suggest obvious connections. Here's the languagehat post that supposedly kicked off the whole thing. Bglegos the mnid?
Comments
A little more analysis makes it look even more dubious: The majority of the most commonly used English words are of four letters or less, the average is about 5, and word-length fits a Zipf distribution. So, rearranging only the inner letters of words doesn't do much. -- Posted by Ron Zeno on September 19, 2003 11:36 PMThere is also the importance of context. Here's the infamous paragraph, with short words omitted and scrambled words sorted by alphabetical order: aoccdrnig Without the context, the assumption that it is only the inside letters that are scrambled seems to be much less apparent. In this case, there's actually some advantage to the longer words (like porbelm and iprmoetnt) compared to the short words (like slef and rset). BTW, this feels to me to be very similar to the phenomenon I've experienced which is to match shape and context when reading road signs on highway. -- Posted by Beth on September 20, 2003 09:16 PM
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IDblog is Beth Mazur tilting at power law windmills. A little bit Internet, a little bit technology, a little bit society, and a lot about designing useful information products. Send your cards and letters to .
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