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Is Simplified Spelling Worth Reform?
digitalhermit writes "I guess many folks are of very little brain, and big words bother them... There's a push for simpler spelling. Instead of 'weigh' it would be 'way.' 'Dictionary' would be 'dikshunery' and so forth. Dunno if it's a joke, but it seems in earnest. Mark Twain must be spinning around somewhere." Twain is often credited with the satirical call for spelling reform called "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling," though according to Wikipedia, Twain was "actually a supporter of reform," and the piece may have been written by M.J. Shields. Benjamin Franklin was another champion of spelling reform, and even came up with a phonetic alphabet to implement such reform.
You no what? It aint never gonna happen. People hate change, and unless you force them to (Like the communist Chinese switch to simplified) people will spell the way they want. (Kind of like trying to get Americans to switch to metric)
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Nuthing fore u tu see here. Pleez mov alon.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
A chance to use the metric alphabet!
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"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."
I've never had any problems with spelling, myself, but I have to agree with Mr. Jefferson here.
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(sigh) Don't they ever learn? From this page:
Hasn't American been trying this for a while? Night -> nite. Colour -> color. Laser -> Lazer. Licence, terrorize, etc. I don't even know how to spell licence the correct English way now. Damn you!
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Yu shud bi shur tu rid this artikel on speling riform. It wil mayk yu laf, i hop.
I for one welcome our NuSpeak overlords. They're double-plus good!
... skewl
Sig: I stole this sig.
No Jesus, no pees. No Jesus, no pees.
Actually, after the spelling reform, it shall be a four letter word: "scul."
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
It's called SCHOOL.
In the US, we say "escuela".
What?
For example, when you speak, what do you do to separate words form one another? The surprising answer is, nothing. Take a tape of ordinary conversation. Run it through an oscilloscope. Look for the breaks. You won't find them. We "blur" words together in sentences. (I suspect this is why anyone speaking a different tongue always sounds like he/she is speaking very quickly... your brain hasn't learned to put the "spaces" back in by context.)
... younger ... Shatner ... would ... disagree.
A
This is not my sig.
What, you mean like 'circ-leh'?
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
Don't be a person who makes wanks.
The only person who has the right to change English is The Queen. The Queen's English belongs to the Queen and we should all be thankful that she lets us use it.
God bless The Queen and the British Empire!
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
double-plus-ungood
As for me, I demand nothing less than total disambiguation. We need sufficient variation in spelling to make sure that the sense of each word is clear. I shouldn't have to depend on context to infer what you mean. If you reply to this post and call me "slipshod," I want to know that you are referring to the sloppy, careless reasoning of my post, and not to the looseness of my footwear (for which I propose to the new substitute "slipshoed"). Likewise, trademarks using common words will be disambiguated from the meaning of those words - popular word game Scrabble would need to be renamed, as this spelling is already in use by at least four other meanings, each of which will need its own variation anyhow. We can keep "scrabble" for "to scratch or scrape," but make subtle changes to the rest; "scragble" for "to struggle toward a goal," "scrubble" for "to climb over" (as over rubble!) and the sense "to scribble" should simply be eliminated, as "scribble" is already too close to "scrabble" anyway and might as well be handled as a variant of pronunciation. The game itself might be renamed B-3, after the second letter in the alphabet and its point value in the game (A-1 having been used for the tasty steak sauce and several thousand local plumbing, towing, and other services companies vying for the first spot in the telephone directory, each of which will celebrate its uniqueness with a new, never-before-seen name). Each town with the same name as another will also need to be reborn under a new moniker (surely a cause for revelry in the Midways, Fairviews, and Oak Groves of the world!). Finally, each of us whose name unfortunately coincides with that of another, shall have to make the tiniest of adjustments, on a first-come, first-served basis; thus, the eldest John Smith on record shall keep his spelling, while the next shall have to be subtly altered (Johnn Smith), and the next altered only the tiniest bit (Jahnn Smith), and so on (Djahnne Pschmiythe). For completeness, the birth and death certificates, tax and census records, and headstones or memorial plaques of some few billions of our ancestors shall likewise need to be "tweaked," possibly according to some fractal algorithm in cases where no living relatives can recommend how John might have preferred it, if only he'd taken the opportunity.
We see absolutely nothing wrong with our English. If the population has difficulty with spelling, then let them speak "leet"!
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This reminds me something that happened to me a few years ago. Believe it or not but this is actually a true story. I repeat... this really IS a true story! I am not making this up!
... she had to give a presentation of her work ........ yes ..... you guessed it .... in either English or English.
... yes ... you guessed it again. She prepared a speech in Spanish and I translated it into English. Now, those of you that are bilingual or speak good Spanish know that in the latter language EVERYTHING with about 1 exception (que?) is pronounced exactly as it's written. Spanish has very few vowels (A, E, I, O, U can each only be pronounced in one way), so it occurred to me to translate a 3/4 of an hour presentation from proper English to English-like pronounciation using the very simple Spanish rules.
A friend of mine, who is a sculptor, comes up to me one day and says she really wants to go to a conference in Norway. Lots of famous sculptors, opportunities to meet relevant people in her sector, an opportunity to learn lots of new things...
Next thing she does is give me the forms etc. etc. to fill out for her because she is Spanish and doesn't know any English. When I say "she doesn't know any English" I mean she doesn't even know "yes" or "no". (Well, she does know "no" because it's the same in Spanish, but you get my drift)
So what I did is translate the forms into Spanish and have her fill in the replies. I then filled in the forms for her in perfect English.
To her surprise she was accepted, and invited to the conference. They were so impressed with her work that she was invited at no cost (they even paid for her flight) with one condition
Of course I had been a bit cheeky and put on the form that her English was "quite good" (because it was a prerequisite to be accepted).
I thought she'd give up but no...
Guess what we did
In the end it became so easy for me that I could just write:
"Elou jau ar iu tudei. Ai am duin fain zank iu. Zi uezer tudei is veri nais."
without even thinking about it.
Next thing my friend did was practice for about 2 weeks... after which I set her loose on a few English speaking friends of mine and... believe it or not they actually understood what she was reading.
So, of course, she set of to Norway, went to her (free) 5 star hotel and next day gave her speech. She tells me that, what happened next is a follows:
1) a big round of applause.
2) about 30 minutes for the audience to ask her questions.
I don't know what happened next, she never told me.
if marklar would marklar all the marklar from marklar on top of marklar with the marklar previuously referred to as marklar, would then marklar have to marklar all their marklar to marklar?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"to-mah-to" is the norm in the UK. "To-may-to" sounds extremely American.
"We've already changed English spellings before. And we're likely to change them again, without permission from any queen."
:-P
Yes and we find your colourful simplified spelling of already simple words absoloutely delightful, however I don't see many others using it for fear of looking... well, American