Interesting Stuff

[Vicsun]

I got this in a forward... don't know if you guys have seen it but I thought it was pretty amazing...


Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it
deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod
are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and
lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey
lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Fcuknig amzanig huh?

[C Elegans]

I've seen this, and it's actually demonstrated the cognitive principle called "gestalt" from the German word, meaning "figure". The human brain with its' great learning capacity, uses "pattern matching" to generalise cues it has learned to associate with certain meanings. As the text says, when we have learned how to read, we only use part of the words of the written language to identify the whole word. That's also why we read a sentence correctly if conjuctions such as "and", "or" and "but" are abscent - in our minds we actually add those words at the right places if they are missing since we don't read every word in a sentence.

[Neo]

Wow tahts' Raelly cool I dind't konw taht. huh!

[IHateUsernames]

Raed tihs a whlie ago. But nveer raelly tghout aoubt it.

[Neo]

I tinhk taht I wlil do my nxet egnilsh pepar lkie tihs. It is so cool.

[frogus]

The other posts were definately more difficult to read than the first. Is this because there is more context ion the first to deduce from (it being longer) or are the letter rearrangements possibly not actually random.

BTW - Teh is a real word.

[Neo]

Quote:

Originally posted by frogus BTW - Teh is a real word.

Waht deos it maen?
Is it a crtouny or smoetihng?

[Zelgadis]

Quote:

Originally posted by frogus The other posts were definately more difficult to read than the first. Is this because there is more context ion the first to deduce from (it being longer) or are the letter rearrangements possibly not actually random.

I'm guessing its because the longer the word, the less number of words there are with the same begining and ending letter and the same length. (Does that make any sense at all? )

[frogus]

You are probably right, indeed. Will experiment soon.

Teh is real because 1337 is real

[Vicsun]

Quote:

Originally posted by frogus You are probably right, indeed. Will experiment soon. Teh is real because 1337 is real

No, no, no! How many times do I have to repeat myself, teh is not a new word, it's a typo, just like pron... anyone who thinks it's a word or even thinks it's remotely funny should be shot. In the head. Twice. With an elephant gun. At point blank range.

On topic: did anyone notice that if you reverse the first and last letters but leave all other letters alone it's actually harder to read even though more letters are unchanged?

Gccordina to a hesearcr at Eambridgc Yniversitu, it
toesn'd rattem in thaw rrdeo the setterl in a dorw
are, the ynlo tmportani ghint is that the tirsf and
tasl rettel be at the tighr elacp. The tesr can be a
lotat sesm and you can ltils dear it tithouw mroblep.
**** is eecausb the numah dinm soed not dear yvere
rettel by ftseli, but the dorw as a eholw.

man, that took me ages to write...

[IHateUsernames]

shatt darh ot dear.

I just had to do that

[C Elegans]

@Frogus and Zelgadis: It is easier to read because it is longer, more words to derive context understanding from. I don't know whether the intermediate letters in the particular text in the first post were randomly organised or not, but there are several experiments done in this field that demonstrate that the order of all letters except the first and last, make no significant difference.

Quote:

Originally posted by Vicsun On topic: did anyone notice that if you reverse the first and last letters but leave all other letters alone it's actually harder to read even though more letters are unchanged?

Yes, that is according to the theory - the human brain uses the first and last letters as cues to identify a word, just as we use certain features but not others to identify any object.

[Nippy]

I would suppose that it is to do with patterns, and how words look to a person and the formation of the letters allow people to recognise them. After all, when we think about it, most people who read learn words by recognition, not by sounding out or looking at how it's written.

[Vicsun]

A question:
Do you think that this applies only for certain languages such as English in which characters do not correspond to sounds very stricktly? Or is this just the way the human mind works?

I would think that because of the lack of a clear letter-to-sound structure of lanugages such as English, it is easier for the brain to memorize how the word "looks" rather than actually read the whole thing and try to match sounds to letters, making reading English a smiliar process to reading a language in which words are expressed through symbols rather than through sounds (such as Chinese). That's why when you see a misseplt word in English, you can very often see it's spelt wrong without knowing what the mistake is yet. It just looks wrong. Danish is the same as English in that aspect. Letters do not correspond to sounds strictly, and you can spot a misspelt word pretty easily even if you are unsure of the exact spelling. I've heard both my English and Danish teachers say that if you arn't sure how to spell a word (in an exam where no help is available) you should write it down the way you think it's written and if it's wrong 80% of the time you'll notice.

In Bulgarian (that's my first language for those of you who didn't know) I can never tell if a word is spelt wrong by just looking at it. I have to read the word and if the misspelt letter has a close sound to the right letter I'm likely not to notice there's a mistake at all. I feel the same way in German, but it might be argued that that's because I'm not quite proficient in it Again, in German and Bulgarian if there's a missing letter or even worse all the letters within the world a jumbled up, I'll have problems reading it.
It must be pointed out however that I'm far from fluent in German, and I have read very little in Bulgarian for the past three years, so that might be the reason I'm reading the words in a more of a letter-by-letter way, rather than the fact that both languages have a clear letter-to-sound structer.