Why do some words feel wierd?

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by aaqucnaona, Dec 21, 2011.

  1. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    I was writting a post and I spelled philosophy as phiolosophy and even before I realised I had put the extra 'o', the word felt 'not quite right'. I wonder why this is?
    I was watching BBC life and for a moment it felt wierd too, like, "is that the correct spelling for life?" It felt like some deja vu kinda feeling, but now when I look at them, neither look wierd.
    Why does this happen?

    Ps. Does this happen to everyone or do I need to prepare myself for the electroshock crew?

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  3. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    I believe the word you are looking for is 'weird'.

    Our brains tend to recognize patterns and often will notice that the spelling of a word does not fit the pattern in memory, in my experience.

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  5. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    I don't know. Of course that's partly because I am not familiar with the meaning of the word wierd. It is quite similar to the word weird, but I imagine that is just coincidence. If so it is quite a weird one.
     
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  7. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Please post a link to the definition of 'wierd'.

    My search engine is drawing a blank.

    Thanks.
     
  8. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't know spelling mistakes on the linguistics forum are punishable by burning at the stake!

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    LOL, now why the hell did the word 'wierd' not feel 'weird'?
     
    Last edited: Dec 21, 2011
  9. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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  10. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Burning at the stake has been discontinued.

    Staked out over an anthill while liberally smeared with honey usually makes them squirm sufficiently.

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  11. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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  12. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Maybe you were meant "wired."

    It's recently been discovered that when we read, we read whole words at a time, not individual letters. In order to recognize a word, three conditions are necessary:
    • The first letter must be in place.
    • The last letter must be in place.
    • All of the remaining letters must be in between, with none missing, no substitutions and no extras, but their sequence is not very important.
    This is why transpositions are the most difficult typographical errors to find and correct. Your brain sees "weird" and "wierd" as the same word.

    You pbraolby dn'ot bievele me, but I'm citrean tath you can raed tihs sncntee qciluky and elaisy.

    This only applies to native anglophones, of course. Wehn we raed a fgoiern luaggane we gerlenlay do read ecah lteetr sprealeaty, utinl we bmeoce erptexs.
     
  13. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Great idea, an ant catalog. We can demonstrate civility in allowing the offender to choose what type of ant they prefer for the punishment.

    I'm sure that some of them may be ticklers while others certainly look like nippers.

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    Whatever floats your boat, as the saying goes, lol....

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  14. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    OMG, I wondered why this came up in the search for ant honey torture:
    http://www.geniebusters.org/915/electrotorture.html

    But after you said:

    It makes some sense. Maybe.:bugeye:
    *Weird*
     
  15. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Weird is weird, in that it doesn't follow the "i before e" rule.
     
  16. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    aacquacnoa:
    They're called transpositions.

    And why aren't you shwoing Fraggle a little gartiutude for elaboratliy explaing to you what that 'weirdness' was?

    You're being an ahssole totally ignoring him.

    Fraggle:
    It isn't a recent develpment, though.

    The meme has been around for about a decade, passed around via emails and websites becuase someone stuck the word "Cambridge" in there, giving it the presitge of university research and people with PhD's making the claim.

    It's been sourced to a letter written to New Scientist Magazine that's snowballed into the myth that this aibility to raed this applies to all human brains.

    There was never such study and it doesn't apply to all words, usually 2 or 3 letter functional words like "you" and "the".

    That was the disheartening part-- I wanted to believe it so bad and we all do because it's something your awesome brain is responding to so how can it be untrue?

    Its true the brain sees the world in what's called 'schematics', but this weirdness doesn't apply to agglutinative languages like German or to Semitic languages where vowels are left out.


    I feel so pissed on.

    This is neat too: yellow , red, blue.


    Try saying the colors of each word as quickly as possible.
     
  17. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I call that recent.
    All the examples I've seen have been complete sentences like mine. Seems like most people who are good readers (which I admit excludes a lot of Americans) have no trouble up to 7-8 letters and many can go considerably beyond that.
    This illustrates how words dominate our thought process.

    George's mother has three children. The eldest was born in September and is named April. The second was born in October and is named May. The third was born in November. What is the youngest child's name?
     
  18. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    There's something just a bit weird about that phrase, Fraggle. :bugeye:

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  19. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't have anything to say! I didn't ignore him. If you look at my other threads, you will see I hold fraggle in high regard. He is one the best posters I have seen here.
    Btw, Fraggle:
    Thank you for your amazing posts. You really enrich sciforums.
    Fraggle reminds me of those guys on wordpress with thier amazing, long, well reasoned and articulated posts - I aspire to be like that. And I meant him no disrespect by 'ignoring him', much less warrant asshole.

    Ps,
    Scherezade -
    Bring out the ant catalog, we have a spelling mistake - ahssole.
     
  20. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    LOL.....

    We have two spelling mistakes. You might want to take another look at how my name is spelled....

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  21. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    Ants reply-
    That's it! We have had it with these martha flowering spellings on this martha flowering page. We have aphids and algae to attend to. And our grubs are hungry. And we have to sit around in a catalog till one of you plaster a naked ape with honey! Can't you just pour a few spoons of honey near our hills?

    This is abuse, I say, sir. The next time we meet, it will be with the ant torture worker union.

    LOL
    But I wonder, why did the word 'life' feel that way? There are no extra words [as in phiolosophy] and their sequences dont matter anyway [as fraggle showed].
    The mystery deepens

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    Wait, this is more appropriate:

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    Last edited: Dec 22, 2011
  22. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    You had a brain fart?
     
  23. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    No it was like deja vu.
     

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