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Re: "breccia" ad infinitum

>servin@csufresno.EDU writes:
><<  Everyone pronounces things differently.  My usual
> approach with students is to tell them to pronounce it any way they like. >>
>
>Is it just me, or is THIS precisely the sort of statement which makes a
lot of
>us
>really disenchanted with academia & "higher learning" these days?!   
>"However you pronounce it is OK, dear students, we surely don't want to 
>risk damaging your delicate self-esteem by having (shudder) actual
standards".
>Grrrrrr....
>

Boy...I'm beginning to think that some on this list can't recognize a joke!
 I would be the first of us to step forward in defense of higher standards
and I also think the notion of "protecting Johnny's self esteem" is just so
much bilge-water.  One of the major problems in higher education IS a
relaxation of standards by SOME of my colleagues, but in a real sense this
is a reflection on all of us.  Students look at me like I am crazy when I
tell them I will mark them wrong on spelling.  They don't expect it because
the general public does not expect to have to spell.  I have always been
troubled by public signs (and there are many in Fresno) that have multiple
spellings of common words on the same sign.  In this case the problem is
NOT how one pronounces a word, but how one SPELLS it.  Breccia is breccia
in AMISLAN with no speech involved.  This group could go far in supporting
standards for SPELLING of terms.  Take a look at the errors in spelling of
meteorite (and other) names on home pages ( and commercial pages) or the
errors on a meteorite CD most of us own.  I'm not talking about occasional
errors in E-mail, but fairly consistent ones.  

Here are a few currently out there:

Tazerait vs Tazerzait
Murcury vs Mercury
Juacheng vs Juancheng (Heze was too easy)
Haag vs Haig (sorry Bob)
Nahkla vs Nakhla
Bedeasites vs Bediasites
Mudrabilla vs Mundrabilla
Saratov vs Satatov (Probably a typo since the r and t keys are side by side)
Campo Del Ciela vs Campo del Cielo
Canon Diablo vs Canyon Diablo
Orgueil vs Orguiel

Perhaps we should really be disenchanted with ourselves (and I include
myself in this).


Steve E.



*************************************
Dr. Stephen Ervin
Department of Biology
California State University, Fresno
Fresno, Ca.  93740-0073
servin@csufresno.edu
*************************************
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