Comments on: I am mroe itneillegnt tahn you

Question: I am mroe itneillegnt tahn you

Corduroy — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:00:32 -0800

Waht is the nmae of the teorhy taht olny the frsit and lsat lttres of a wrod msut rmeian itnact for smoenoe to raed the wrod?

By: null terminated

null terminated — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:03:57 -0800

Here's a comprehensive page on the subject.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:18:45 -0800

Despite their comment about agglutinative languages, the Hungarian sample is as easy to read as the English one (well, I mean, granted the obvious). I think "problem" with Finnish is more due the fact that multiple occurrences of the same letter are so common - if you take the "signature" of a finn word by picking out just the set of distinct letters that occur, these signatures are comparatively small, so the order-structure of the words plays a comparatively greater role in distinguishing them.

By: Metroid Baby

Metroid Baby — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:29:32 -0800

I've nceiotd it gets saabillnsttuy haderr to raed tehse wehn the mddile leertts of each word are aaegnrrd aaabcehilllpty. I dno't beeilve it.

(I've noticed it gets substantially harder to read these when the middle letters of each word are arranged alphabetically. I don't believe it.)

By: danb

danb — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:36:21 -0800

Metroid Baby, about 2/3 of the way down the page that null terminated linked there's a somewhat similar debunking of this theory. (Search the page for "This is clearly wrong.").

By: hubris

hubris — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:33:10 -0800

I think context has a *lot* to do with it.

This sentence: Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs threw me for a loop because I didn't get the context. But once I realized it was about taxes, everything but "ccunoil" became clear. I had to look that up because I don't generally think about "council taxes", so it's not in my general lexicon and thus screwed me up.

By: vilcxjo_BLANKA

vilcxjo_BLANKA — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:28:13 -0800

I think the world you are looking for is "False".

By: InnocentBystander

InnocentBystander — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:59:06 -0800

Metroid Baby, maybe I'm just autistic or something, but what you posted was absolutely as easy for me to read as the other lines.

By: Alt F4

Alt F4 — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:21:15 -0800

There's clearly something to it; otherwise the meme would have been dead on arrival.

The only word from Metroid Baby I had trouble with was "substantially" ... and in that case, the real "position 2" letter has been moved to the "2nd from the end" position. But it still worked. And hubris's line was fine. From the linked page, "magltheuansr" was tough (manslaughter), but the other samples were fine.

Basically ... the linked page debunks the meme itself, not the premises behind the meme.

By: brent

brent — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:23:00 -0800

I just happened to come across an MIT course and that same idea was linked here. Full list of class information.

By: Metroid Baby

Metroid Baby — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:14:12 -0800

Durrr. Maybe I'm just extra dumb, because I probably wouldn't have been able to figure out the longer words on my own.

Reading some of the examples above, my mind isn't even trying to rearrange the words. "Pneosenirs" becomes "pee-on-sen-eers" and "magltheuansr" becomes "maggle-thusy-anser" in my head.