01 February 2012

TWDBIKYWI ?

"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."

Posted more than eight years ago (!) at Language Hat, and discussed at length there.

Via The Dish.

12 comments:

  1. While reading that above I found that it only works with word we are familiar with. That ceehiro at the end was like a speed bump to my reading. I also wonder how it effects those who don't vocalize the words in their interior monologue.

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    1. I don't subvocalize when I read, and I have no problem reading that paragraph. For whatever reason, I recognized the last word.

      Andrew Sullivan's blog on The Daily Beast has a post on this that includes another similar paragraph with bigger, less common words that were more thoroughly scrambled, and I had to pause on a number of those to figure them out. I also noticed, however, that word order played a role. There were two instances in that paragraph where the word order wasn't quite what I would have expected, and I stumbled over the words there as well.

      --Swift Loris

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    2. Could you please include a link or URL for that paragraph on The Daily Beast. I would like to have a look at it.

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    3. Here you go -

      http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/02/totes-cray-cray-abbrevs-ctd.html

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  2. It's very interesting and challenges how the written word has been thought to operate. I wonder if the same technique works with handwritten script?

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  3. While that is mostly a neat trick (with less common and longer words it does not work at all), it does make a good point: we *don't* actually read every letter of a word. We learn to recognize words as a whole. This is why english's irregular spelling isn't a problem once you've learned it. We read in words.

    As for subvocalizing words, I have the understanding that "speed reading" suppresses it, but I really can't imagine reading something without it. I'm honestly quite skeptical it's possible to read something without subvocalizing it- unless some people think in written words. I sure don't.

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  4. Randeig scuh stecnnees gvies smoe plopee (mseylf dicenlud) hdeeeahcs.

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    1. Z, you misspelled "dicenlud." (first and last letters supposed to be unchanged)

      :.)

      p.s. - I really struggled with "stecnnees." Without the context of a sentence, a nine-letter anagram would be very difficult.

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    2. Looks like I failed on "hdeeeahcs", too, but I'll blame both on the hdaeahce ;)

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  5. Twdbikywi: Things we discovered because I knew you were interested

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