Can You Raed Tihs? 997
An aoynmnuos raeedr sumbtis: "An interesting tidbit from Bisso's blog site: Scrambled words are legible as long as first and last letters are in place. Word of mouth has spread
to other blogs, and articles as well.
From the languagehat site: 'Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro.'
Jamie Zawinski has also written a perl script to convert normal text into text where letters excluding the first and last are scrambled."
Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, does this work well with letter pairs like, "th ch wh sh qu?" I forget what those are called.
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:4, Informative)
Digraphs? [reference.com]
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason it DOES work well with those letter pairs is that they aren't familiar at all in reverse. You're more likely to udnerstand their juxtaposition as what it's supposed to be, because you're used to it being one way.
Where it DOESN'T work as well is when you begin breaking up complex phonemes or diphthongs in short words. Konw what I'm sayin'?
Bit of a simplistic article... (Score:5, Interesting)
Turhgoh = Through
A topic that does not seem to have had much coverage in this article is the actual iconic visual recognition that our brains appear to use in word recognition.
Obviously each word approximates a patterned rectangle (serif fonts emphasize this further) with occasional outliers (ie. t, y, l, and any other letters that protrude above or below the base rectangle).
People with poor eyesight rely on this fuzzy but fast recognition frequently. In fact there is a classic psych experiment based around displaying a word that iconically is very similar to another word, while simultaneously presenting a context that implies the second word, and asking the subject to record the word. The subject mis-records the word roughly 90% of the time.
Q.
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, does this work well with letter pairs like, "th ch wh sh qu?" I forget what those are called.
They're called dipthongs. There's also tripthongs, though I can't think of any English ones right now.
And no, they don't appear to work quite as well. I had trouble reading a few words that had split dipthongs.
Split dipthongs? Sounds kinky.
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:5, Funny)
Rmiends me of... (Score:5, Funny)
Cna't beileve I was the frist to say it...
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:3, Informative)
No they ain't, diphthongs are pairs of vowels that merge together. Pairs of consonants are called err..consonant pairs.
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:3, Funny)
They're called dipthongs.
Don't you mean "dgnthpois"? You're right, it doesn't seem to work very well...
What?!? No "Frist Psot"? (Score:5, Funny)
Come on, you slacker trolls!
(ethighy-ftifh psot!)
Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"? (Score:5, Funny)
(tihs siht is too mcuh fun! sotp me!)
Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"? (Score:5, Funny)
all your bsae are boleng to us
In Seviot Rsuisa Words Srcmable You
Imangie a sbcramled bwelouf ctsuler
Tihs mhigt be big eunogh to hold all my mp3's if I smalrcebd tehm (remmeber that one?)
cehck out this lnik [gaotse.xc].
Did I miss any?
Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:5, Interesting)
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$ gzip g*
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$ ls -l
total 304
-rwxr-xr-x 1 anthonym staff 63830 Sep 15 16:33 genesis.text.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 anthonym staff 84945 Sep 15 16:36 genesis.txet.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 anthonym staff 1396 Sep 15 15:56 scrmable.pl
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$ gunzip g*
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$ zip genesis.zip g*
adding: genesis.text (deflated 70%)
adding: genesis.txet (deflated 60%)
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$
Interesting. Anyone have an explaination for tihs?
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:5, Informative)
Huffman compression would be unaffected though, as it works on a per character basis.
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nit: Huffman coding is just a technique for taking a symbol alphabet with associated probability model and generating a minimal-entropy prefix-free binary code.
It is not a compression algorithm, though it often appears as the last step in a compression algorithm. In particular, it doesn't deal with the problem of how you generate the probability model, or what your symbol alphabet is.
The gzip algorithm, for example, uses "Huffman compression" just fine, but it still does poorly on scrambled text.
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:3, Interesting)
Compression worse... (Score:5, Informative)
Now, after you scrmable it, it's got equal quantities of begat, beagt, baget, baegt, bgeat, and bgaet. It's not so easy to compress any more.
Essentially, you're increasing the entropy of the file by a fair amount. Truly random data is not so easy to compress as english, because english has lots of order. Added disorder or entropy means compression is just not as easy.
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:3, Informative)
In other words, the scramble.pl adds machine randomness to a rather organized and non-random set of data. Humans can still pa
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:5, Funny)
Thou should forfeit karma, but that is neither here nor there.
This might help (Score:3, Informative)
My neighbor weighed your argument. He used a beige scale, and decided it was probably the heinous act of a foreigner to make such a statement. And you're weird. So rein in yourself, and remove the veil of ignorance, ye feisty cad!
Thou should forfeit karma, but that is neither here nor there.
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:3, Funny)
Now, where are my reindeer?! (for my sleigh!!)
Signed, der Weihnachtsmann
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but those are "ei" pairs.
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:bah! real men only need 1 line (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh huh, and you probably post to Slashdot by tapping on the ethernet jack with battery and a paper clip, right?
People who actually know how to program realize that while line noise one-liners are sometimes a cute party trick, it's a worthless way to program.
The more your Perl looks like static, the less well you have written it.
At Lsat! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:At Lsat! (Score:5, Funny)
As if that's stopped anyone on Slashdot before.
Re:At Lsat! (Score:3, Funny)
Hehemmm. Taht solhud be: As if tath's stpoped aonnye on Sasldoht boeefr.
Re:At Lsat! (Score:5, Funny)
As if tath's stpoped aonnye on Sasldoht boeefr.
You cna't eevn get the fekucd up snleiplg rghit!!!
Re:At Lsat! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:At Lsat! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:At Lsat! (Score:3, Funny)
The bset prat (Score:5, Funny)
# Coyprgiht (C) 2003 Jamie Zawinski
#
# Premssioin to use, cpoy, mdoify, drusbiitte, and slel this stafowre and its
# docneimuatton for any prsopue is hrbeey ganrted wuihott fee, prveodid taht
# the avobe cprgyioht noicte appaer in all coipes and that both taht
# cohgrypit noitce and tihs premssioin noitce aeppar in suppriotng
# dcoumetioantn. No rpeersneatiotns are made about the siuatbliity of tihs
# srofawte for any puorpse. It is provedid "as is" wiuotht exerpss or
# ilmpied waanrrty.
Re:The bset prat (Score:4, Insightful)
yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
impruvd inglis (Score:5, Funny)
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).
In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by " v".
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
Here you go (Score:5, Informative)
http://jeff.zoplionah.com/scramble.php [zoplionah.com]
Re:Here you go (Score:4, Interesting)
In the Sivoet Uonin (Score:4, Funny)
holy.. (Score:5, Funny)
FINALLY (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Read: I think your post is proof that we definately do need the middle letters.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
But we need the spaces, at least, for the word cues.
So how many "bits" of information can we strip from a sentence, on average, before we can no longer intuitively decipher it? The spaces give us information, but not as much as the letters themselves. Yet clearly the ordering of the letters contains much less information than the contents of a word's endpoints. This is odd stuff.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
WeDoNeedPunctuation,AndSomeQueThatASpaceShouldB
IWasAbleToWriteASetOfScriptsThatWouldCapitalize
LetterOfEveryWord,ThenStripOutSpaces.IUseT
TextPagesToMyCellPhoneToSaveSpace.
ToFollowUpOnYourIdea,WeCouldStripOutVowlesFromT
WrdsAndStllFndMstOfTheTxtRdbl.IThnkWeNdT
EndOfTheWrdsThgh.
At the moment it takes a bit of extra thinking to do that though.
-Rusty
The Definitive Misspelling Post (Score:4, Funny)
<sigh>
This doesn't work at all (Score:4, Insightful)
1 - You've left out the letters, and thus our brain can't do the quick magic to "know" the words. The summary of the story worked really well, surprisingly well. But yours is hosed.
2 - There's no real context for your sentence, so it's even that much more difficult to guess quickly.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the middle letters are still necessary. I find myself misreading all the time because my brain took in the first and last letter and read it as a word with similar spelling and length.
So I would hypothesize that the first/last letters along with the lengths of the words and a rough idea of what letters go in the middle are what our brains look for.
But this only comes with practice. English is my first language and I have read millions and millions of words in English in my lifetime so I am very used to taking in written information this way. But if I switch to reading something in French (for which I took for 11 years in school but never became fluent, mainly because I hated learning french) I still have to read each word carefully because I am not used to reading it.
So if some person who is just learning english looked at words with jumbled internals, I expect that they would have a terrible time trying to figure them out. Their brains have not read each word thousands of times so they still have to decode them letter by letter.
Nwo, Teh Gebalrd Ptsos (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft calls that (Score:5, Funny)
So in other words... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So in other words... (Score:3, Funny)
Does this work for non native speakers? (Score:5, Interesting)
D
Re:Does this work for non native speakers? (Score:5, Interesting)
You did not mention if she is a fluent reader/writer, speaker, or both? From what you describe I would say that when you said "fluent" you meant as a speaker.
Re:Does this work for non native speakers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, since I'm not British, the final word of the canonical scramble threw me off:
Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro.
I read the rest of the text correctly, but I had a devil of a time figuring out the reference to the Miyazaki film Spirited Away, also known as Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi [nausicaa.net]!
Re:Does this work for non native speakers? (Score:3, Informative)
WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]
cheerio
n : a farewell remark; "they said their good-byes" [syn: adieu,
adios, arrivederci, auf wiedersehen, au revoir,
bye, bye-bye, good-by, goodby, good-bye, goodbye,
good day, sayonara, so long]
Re:Does this work for non native speakers? (Score:3, Interesting)
My native tounge is not english, nor do I live in a englishspeaking country, but I had no problem what so ever reading the post.
I do, however, read a lot of english litterature and have been doing so for the last 13 years.
My experience (Score:3, Interesting)
While at University I thought I'd take some Xhosa courses and eventually packed it in because I was struggling so much to read Xhosa, though I could speak it better than most of the other kids.
This leads me to think that once one bu
Take that 9th grade English teacher.... (Score:5, Funny)
grammar still not optional (Score:5, Interesting)
Normally I would never post a comment about grammar, but it is kind of startling that in a block of text that jumbled the absence of 'the', and the swapping of 'is' for 'are' still jump out at you.
Eggs (Score:4, Funny)
Yes I could read it but... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't ever do this again, Slashdot.
Cool (Score:3, Funny)
I'm I the only one who's curious if... (Score:3)
Only part of the answer.... (Score:5, Interesting)
So while it is possible to understand words that are not spelled correctly, it can still take a while to understand if the nxet few wdors are not qieut waht you epcext. It is aslo mcuh lses pbatldicree wehn you use lgenor wdros.
I hpoe tihs was an imuilntinag eplamxe!
Mclettat
Re:Only part of the answer.... (Score:4, Interesting)
And for those of you who remember murf.com... (Score:3, Funny)
Excuse? (Score:3, Funny)
Just english? and for all words? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also... what happen when the scrambled word is another valid word? Or a misspelled valid words?
Re:Just english? and for all words? (Score:3, Interesting)
This sounds like a good way to confuse the ole word detector. Four variants spring to mind for an original word of n letters. In all variants, hold the first and last character constant and mix the interior letters. First, can a new n-letter word be formed. Second, can a new (n-1)-letter word be formed including the original first letter, but excluding the original last letter. Third, can a new (n-1)-letter word be formed including th
Depends on redundancy in language (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the time we'll probably read it correct based on context anyway (e.g. expecting a verb, not a noun), but I imagine it'll be much harder and confusing.
Kjella
A sample sentence (Score:4, Funny)
"Tikang garet crae, I septped bihend the gril, and fdnoled her basters"
Um, that is a little hard to read isn't it. Well, ok, I think you're right. Notice "gril" and "basters" in the same sentence, make you think of cooking.
And yes, this statement could be offensive. Well, I'm male. I can't really help it.
Not entirely accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
If I type
sllpenig it's clear I'm typing "spelling"
but, if I type
slpenlig it's not so clear anymore.
What about: according
Aoccdrnig (as in the article) is ok but...
aocdrncig is not nearly as clear
There's a limit to how far your brain can stretch it. Some consonant pairs your brain DOES intepret much like a single letter, because it's an irregularity in english.
Words that use such consonant pairs and triplets like "tch" are much harder to distinguish when those pairs and triplets (which really sound like a single letter) are split.
Stewey
ynlo gcramblins eht tirsf dna tasl setterl (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ynlo gcramblins eht tirsf dna tasl setterl (Score:3, Funny)
This is Slashdot... (Score:4, Funny)
Excuse me for being a skeptic... (Score:3, Interesting)
Bisso got it from languagehat. Bisso also cites a Nature article that may be related; however, the Nature article clearly deals with hearing time-reversal of segments of spoken sentences, not reading mangled written words. languagehat cites Avva, who languagehat admits doesn't give a source; I can't get to the Avva entry at the moment.
Ha! (Score:5, Interesting)
Please go and feed the the cat.
Bet ya didn't see that, did ya?
Re-read it slowly.
-dave-
SPAM?!?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
ELNRAGE YUOR PNEIS!!!
on the subject lines of emails received? How would any of the pattern matching anti-spam methods out there deal with this one?
And, we just gave them the tool do use!
-Ben
Re:SPAM?!?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SPAM?!?!?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a serious problem. Now we just killed one of our methods for eliminating spam.
Things just spread like wildfire... (Score:3, Insightful)
I got this lteters thingy yesterday, and today my dad told me: "I just got a mail with something really interesting" so I asked: "is that the thing about reading words with scrambled letters?" I wasn't surprised to hear that it was that....
Same thing goes with the badgerbadger flash... I'm pretty sure everyone here saw that aswell...
Mod up article! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a breakthrough for a great part of humanity - it almost puts in question why should we even write the way we do. Sure, legal documents and such will stil have to be thorough and correct, but maybe a lot of other human-created docs could be leniant on typos, as long as the word contains all the necessary letters and the first and last letters are in place.
This thing really, truly works!
This is old news, here's the original (Score:5, Interesting)
Titled: Do Spellings Matter?
"... randomising letters in the middle of words [has] little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. This is easy to denmtrasote. In a pubiltacion of New Scnieitst you could ramdinose all the letetrs, keipeng the first two and last two the same, and
reibadailty would hadrly be aftcfeed. My ansaylis did not come to much beucase the thoery at the time was for shape and senqeuce retigcionon.
Saberi's work sugsegts we may have some pofrweul palrlael prsooscers at work. The resaon for this is suerly that idnetiyfing coentnt by paarllel
prseocsing speeds up regnicoiton. We only need the first and last two letetrs to spot chganes in meniang"
And if you liked *that* one so much, you might like this one too:
Read the sentence below carefully:
"I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications' incomprehensibleness".
This is a sentence where the Nth word is N letters long.
e.g. 3rd word is 3 letters long, 8th word is 8 letters long and so on.
And if you like that one too, here is another one you can try to kill your boredom...
While sitting, draw clockwise circles on the ground with your right foot. While doing that, try drawing the number "6" in air with your right hand.
Your foot will change direction.
Compression? (Score:3, Funny)
Does this work only for English? Or only for Romance languages? Or can we find a similar scheme for any language?
Implications for Phonics vs. Whole-word Debate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Experimentally, a pure-phonics approach has proven to have the highest success rate. However, these results would suggest that whole-word approach *does* map onto some important cognitive structure . Perhaps this means that, once past the basic level, whole-word techniques would prove to be valuable in turning beginning readers into advanced readers.
Re:Implications for Phonics vs. Whole-word Debate? (Score:4, Interesting)
I am no reading expert but a good friend of mine is. From what I gathered from him is that the actual act of "decoding" a written word into a spoken word is the very first step in reading.
If you don't know what the sound the letter "P" makes you can never ever read the letter. So the basics of reading _is_ phonics. Phonics is not some kind of "method" of teaching how to read, it is a process that every single person reading this text right now has to go through in order to decode the imagery into a sound.
Then once the person get's good enough at it they no longer have to focus concious attention to the decoding process as it becomes automatic.
But even I as a very skilled reader when I run into a very new, large or complex word I _have_ to sound it out, or attempt to, because that is the only way a human being can read.
Decoding visual symbols to auditory symbols = phonics.
Then after the steps of decoding comes comprehension, which is totally seperate from decoding. (I am sure I have the order of events wrong here...) A child can sound out the sentence-
"Frank went to the market to buy a german shepard"
-but they still need to understand what they decoded. Whole language is a guessing game based on assumptions and values that are not concretely 100% based on a system of the intetional ordering of the letters in relation to their auditory equivilants.
As adults we can use whole language easily in the sense that we can guess words based on previous knowledge of the word (written and spoken) but not so for a small child that has never decoded any words.
As an example my daughter likes to guess words because that is how they started in Kindegarten, with sight words ( a huge mistake ). So she started with the habit of merely memorizing shapes of words without even considering the auditory values of the letters of those words.
After teaching my daughter some very basic decoding skills based on help from my friend, my daughter learned to read words she's never seen before. She read the word "giraffe" all by herself using her new found decoding skills. I gurantee you that no skills of the "whole language" idealogy would come close to providing this kind of reading ability in a 6 year old kid.
Can you explain in detail, step by step how you know how to read the word "giraffe"? In whole language you don't have steps to parse the sounds out and recombine them.
Here's the logic.
1. "g" sounds like G as in "Great"
2. "ir" sounds like "er" as in "Her"
3. "a" sounds like "a" in "hat"
4. "ff" sounds like "f" in "fast"
5. "e" sounds like "e" in "see"
Then the child comes initially with the word "geraffy" when it should be "jeraf"
The child at age 6 knows many thousands of words, and does not recognize "geraffy" so...
1. Child recognizes the silent "e"
2. Over compensates and makes the "a" sound like "a" in "bay"
3. "g" can sound like "j"
4. Now has word "jerayf"
5. Reverts the "ay" to "a", considers it a mistake, and gets-
6. "jeraf" which is the correct sound, at which time the child jumps up and down with glee.
But even easier is reading the word in a sentence. "I saw a giraffe at the zoo today"
As competent readers we automatically do all the calculations that this child does when we find a new word. After a number of times reading a word, the decoding is either automatic and extermely fast or as I like to view it in my own mind, there is a pre-rendered cached version of the word "giraffe" sitting in my mind, so when I see the word in it's whole, I know it's meaning without having to completely parse the word a single block at a time (by letter) but by the whole word itself.
Some of this is my opinion and the rest is raw fatual data.
Simpler Perl scrambler (Score:3, Interesting)
#!/usr/bin/perl -p
# scram: scrambles the innards of words
# Usage: scram <input-text >scrambled-text
# Craig Berry (20030915)
s/
([a-z]) # Initial letter
([a-z]{2,}) # Two or more middle letters
([a-z]) # Final letter
# Fisher-Yates shuffle
sub shuffle {
my @chars = split
my $i = @chars;
while ($i) {
my $j = rand $i--;
@chars[$i, $j] = @chars[$j, $i];
}
return join '', @chars;
}
Common technique! (Score:3, Interesting)
However, it also makes reading out-loud difficult when you are used to skipping words when you read them.
Come get me RIAA (Score:3, Funny)
Led Zlepneipn - Sriawty to Hvaeen.mp3
hahahahah!!!!!
(applies pearl script to mp3 directory)
The role of context.. (Score:3, Insightful)
rteglus
blafams
frignde
It could be very frustrating to someone attempting to unscramble them when they find out they were completely random. It's just this sort of frustration that would make someone like me laugh out loud, or lol in the parlance of our times.
Real world application (Score:5, Insightful)
funny you mention this (Score:3, Interesting)
We were trying to figure out why text messaging on phones is such a hit in Japan, and yet everyone over here thinks its rather clumsy.
The study basically pointed out, that to say something like, "I love you", requires you to "type" a lot of characters to convey that message. Using Kanji, one or two characters will suffice. I should've known, (being married to a chinese person), but after I thought about it, it makes a lot of