dullard
Elite Member
- May 21, 2001
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The Cambridge University text is a very specific case. All of those words were hand picked. Almost all of them are spelled in a way that if you sounded the words out, they will sound like the same word but spoken with an accent. We are used to many people pronouncing the same words slightly differently. Thus, our brains can interpret mispelled words that sound almost correct. Here are the easiest examples.
[*]"doesn't" when pronounced correctly sounds very similar to "deosn't".
[*]"What" when pronounced sounds almost exactly the same as "Waht".
[*]"tihng" sounds like an oriental saying "thing".
[*]"taht" sounds like a Minnesotian saying "that".
[*]etc.
Plus, many of the words in that original quote are spelled correctly: of, to, a, at, it, the, in, is, and, can, not, but, as, huh. If I counted correctly, I count 78 words of which 36 are spelled correctly. That makes 46% correctly spelled words and most of the rest are spelled in a way to phonetically sound almost correct. That is why you can read it.
The slashdot had only 35% correctly spelled words, and the incorrect ones do NOT sound phonetically nearly correct.
My conclusion: hand-picked misspelled words in a paragraph with approximately half correctly spelled words can be read. Paragraphs with significantly fewer correct words and paragraphs with incorrect words that don't sound like the real words are very difficult to read. Thus the Cambridge University quote is wrong. They said that in ALL cases you can read it. In reality, only in rare cases can you read it.
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