which_chick | (no subject)

Thing that most irritates me about the language I cannot read. (Probably will not make sense to anyone but me.)

I hate, hate, hate the fact that I can tell what something says without all the words. Now, probably you can do this with, y'know, English a hell of a lot better than you probably thought you could. One of the metrics for readability is called the Cloze test, where the selected passage has words omitted and the reader tries to fill in the missing words. This is not as difficult as it sounds, and contrary to what my stupid-ass education prof did way back when I was in college, the Close test is SUPPOSED to be used on a selection that the student hasn't yet read. (Daft bint. I'm still mad at her for that whole fiasco, which was a travesty in how to teach a class. See, she prepared a Cloze on the assigned reading from the night before which, of course, I hadn't done because I was more interested in drinking and fucking than actually, y'know, studying bullshit educational theory on the readability of texts. She administered the Cloze to the class, which actually wasn't a bad way to teach the idea of readability assessments, but then the bitch had the poor judgment to ask everybody to hold up his or her hand if they got at least twenty right. Now, if you read the link above or (like

ladyivy, were in the class with me back in the early nineties and presumably remember this shit), you know that only EXACT word replacements get to be right when scoring a Cloze. Synonyms do not get to be right. It has to be exact. That wasn't bad and most of the class managed twenty. (There were about a hundred.) And then our prof went up the number of 'right' ("Okay, how many got thirty right? Forty?") and hands went down all over the class. There was a rather large gap between the rest of the class and

ladyivy and me. When it got down to just us two, the prof had us disclose what we scored. Other people didn't have to say what they got. Thanks a lot, you dipshit prof whose name has faded into the mists of time. I really needed to look like more of a freak in that class than I already was. And, y'know, when you asked how I had done so well on the Cloze test and I said I'd done the assigned reading? I was lying so that the rest of the class wouldn't stare at me more than they already did.)

How hard is the whole Cloze thing, really? I think it's pretty easy. Here's a chunk of text from the new Harry Potter book, near the front. Give it a go... you can check your work on page 5 of the Merkin edition if you're so inclined.
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Naturally, he had thought that the long campaign and the strain of the election had caused him to go mad. He had been utterly terrified to find a portrait ----- to him, although this ----- been nothing to how ----- felt when a self-proclaimed ----- had bounced out of ----- fireplace and shaken his -----. He had remained speechless -----Fudge's kindly explanation that ----- were witches and wizards ----- living in secret all ----- the world and his ----- that he was not ----- bother his head about ----- as the Ministry of ----- took responsibility for the ----- Wizarding community and prevented ----- non-magical population from getting ----- of them. It was, ----- Fudge, a difficult job ----- encompassed everything from regulations ----- responsible use of broomsticks ----- keeping the dragon population ----- control (the Prime Minister ----- clutching the desk for ----- at this point).
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So what does all of this have to do with the thing that irritates me the most about the language that I cannot read? Well... is it really reading if I can get the important parts of what it says without being able to read all the words? As an example, look at the following text (from a Japanese website I was at this morning) and take a stab at what it says. Yes, really. I'm pretty sure you can guess what it says even if you don't know any japanese words beyond sushi and kimono.

「日本のむかしばなし」をご覧になるには、最新のFlash Playerが必要です。古いバージョンのFlash Playerがインストールされている場合は、うまく再生されないこともありますので、こちらから最新のFlashPlayerをダウンロードしてください。

How much of that can I actually read? More than half. Here's what I get:

「日本のむかしばなし」をご覧になるには、最新のFlash Playerが必要です。
"To (some verb I don't know) the Japan's Folktales site, the newest Flash Player is required."

古いバージョンのFlash Playerがインストールされている場合は、うまく再生されないこともありますので、こちらから最新のFlashPlayerをダウンロードしてください。
In the event that there is an old version of Flash Player installed, (things I can't read until after ありますので), so please download the newest Flash Player here.

It yanks my chain that I can miss a primary verb (in the first sentence) and a fairly major clause (in the second sentence) and still get the stuff I need to know out of the text... but if you're even remotely internet-literate, you probably managed to guess that it was one of those standard Flash Player notices. I beat myself up that this isn't actually reading. *sigh* It was easier to learn to read when I was four and didn't overthink things quite so much.