The Spelling Society (SSS), which celebrates its 100th birthday this year, says it’s time for the English language to drag itself into the modern world, leaving behind 15th century spelling rules that have no place in the 21st century.
After my son proudly produced his first hand-written book, delightfully entitled “Imfmashen about plarnts” and peppered with details about “leevs” and “roots ” and “barc”, my sympathy for children (and teachers) across the English-speaking world
deepened.
How is it possible that the spelling such words as “cough” and “although” and “through” should be so similar when they sound so different?
In some ways, it would seem a shame to reduce our often beautiful and eccentric language to a series of text-message-like phonetics, but when you consider the cost of
teaching spelling to our children – the SSS estimates it at an eye-watering £18 million a year in Britain alone — the argument gains some weight.
In other languages, like Spanish, learning the alphabet gives you immediate access to be able to read, spell and pronounce every word — even those you have never come across and don’t understand.
And with Spanish competing with English as the world’s most dominant language, is it time for the English-speaking world to modernise or die.
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26 comments so far
You can´t just go changing the English language because children find it hard to spell!! The English language is one the the most descriptive and complex languages in the world.
- Posted by James CrossIf you compare it to Spanish then you will see what i mean. In English we would say “could i have a lighter please” whereas in Spanish you would say “fuego por favor” (fire please). This shows English is far more descriptive and complete as a language. Although it is hard to learn and teach, it is very specific and therefore can be used in may different ways.
For example: British comedy is rarely understood or liked by foreigners and could we have such excellent works as Shakespeare if the language was dumbed down to accommodate people who were bad at spelling.
I myself used to struggle as spelling but I would rather struggle than dumb down one of the worlds most expressive languages.
We have used the English language as it is for centuries why change it now people in the 21st century are getting lazy. Shakespeare would be turning in his grave!!!
riddikulos
- Posted by PiersEnglish is a great language, we created some of the most literary genius in world history. to try and dumb it down would be an atrocity to the country i live in, the very fact that the Americans want to have “their language” (which is our language), re-named as New English. how preposterous! the uncultured brutes! I think every single country in the world should educate their children in English throughout their education, granted many countries do. Were it not for the English and our language most of the rest of the world would still be an incredibly uncivilized place, full of barbarians and animals. Bring back the British Empire!
- Posted by Lazor JakoffPersonally, I think this would be a terrible thing to do. The whole point of a language is that it standardises communication.
If we accepted that people could just write phoenetically then our language would immediately become corrupted by geography.
Already on messageboards and in text messages people use corrupted language meaning that you need to know where they come from, in order to relate to the dialect and try to make sense of their content.
However I do think that already teachers will turn a blind eye to this, leading to children believing it is acceptable to use abbreviations such as ‘r’ and ‘u’ for are and you etc. And these examples are just the start.
I am fortunate that although 23, and arguably one of the oldest who grew up always having mobiles and the internet, I had a decent schooling and parents who were patient with homework.
My generation can type faster than they can write, but perhaps there are fairly few of us who use full stops, parenthesis, new paragraphs etc and (at least try to) spell correctly.
- Posted by GrantEnglish is stupid.
- Posted by Prannesh MurkhejeeWho is the “we” in question. The English Language is after all an English thing. Maybe the question should be “Should we persuade the English th simplify the spelling of their language?”
- Posted by Fred McKayWhile I like most of the English language the way it is some of the arguments out forward are rubbish. If English was such a wonderful descriptive language then why are all the legal documents you get from your banks, EULAs etc so incomprehensible to the average person. It is is precisely because English is too complex and ambiguous that we end up with things like that.
Also, have you ever tried to explain to a 7 year old why Berkshire is pronounced “Barkshire” where everywhere else in the English language berk is “berk” not “bark”. To turn around and say “it just is” means there is something wrong.
- Posted by StephenThere is a deeper issue to all this. How much more can we make easier for ouselves. The long term effect will be like a science fiction nightmare. Too lazy to spell, too lazy to walk, too lazy to think. The world will be taken over by less lazy creatures, maybe termites! Lets be lazy, take a shortcut and become fluent in termite. I can’t believe we’re even debating this!
- Posted by AndyYes, why not simplify our wonderfully complex language in order to make it easier for the roles. That would be double plus-good.
- Posted by Tom MorganI actually find it harder to read words spelt this way than I do the “15th centuary spelling”.
- Posted by Sascha GoslinJust because people are too lazy to attempt to memorise the correct spelling of words does not mean that we should re-organise our language to suit their inability.
Japanese is a harder language, while they have fewer letters and sounds than us they have hundreds of different characters with multiple possible meanings… and don’t even get me started on chinese? There is no reason to change our spelling, it isn’t hard in comparison.
Plus how will we be able to tell the difference when it comes to words like ‘there’ and ‘their’ if we adopted this kind of spelling? We wouldln’t.
Stephen you Rass Clat!
- Posted by James CrossJust because you don´t understand what the words mean on legal documents does that really mean the English language on whole is too complicated for us to understand. I agree that some words are fairly difficult to comprehend but thats because its the a name for a legal document! Unless you have a degree in Law i´m sure it would be the same for any language, it would probably be the same for a Spanish legal document?!
As for your comment about explaining how you say Berkshire to a 7 year old. No i have never tried, but i don´t think that is the sort of question a 7 year old would ask. There more likely to ask where babies come from or is the tooth fairy really real?
I´m not trying to piss on you bonfire Steve but think about what your saying? Do you really want us to change the English language, something that has been around for centuries and used by half the world just so legal forms are easier to understand and you can justify the spelling of Berkshire?
It is patently absurd to believe that changing spelling has anything to do with the success of people in spelling. Spelling is just a convention that mostly follows understandable, if convoluted rules. By declaring “simpler” spellings all anyone would be doing is making the process even more arbitrary.
We could all just learn a phonetic alphabet like IPA and then write according to our own pronunciations, but I’d tremble to read something from Alabama or Scotland in that situation!
- Posted by Da6dAlso, be glad you don’t have to learn characters - the Chinese have it far, far worse, and it is not nearly as specific a language as is English.
- Posted by Da6dJust a thought here: if our wonderful teachers; the same teachers who recently went on strike to secure higher salaries are incapable of teaching English then instead of “dumbing down” the language perhaps we should “smarten up” the teachers?
- Posted by Graham HopkinsonI love it. American brute here. I must confess not being able to decipher certain English words, such as calling a bloke a “Rass Clat.” Indeed, we call both blokes and gals ‘guys’ on this side of the pond. It all makes me sympathetic to our wee folk, otherwise enrolled in places called kindergarten here in the states.
Yes, English, as you can see, is a difficult language to master.
I’m sure the kind people who thought to man (or ‘person’) the ramparts of the noble Spelling Society must feel the same. The meeting where they opted to keep the three “S”-es in their name (Is that the correct plural form of ‘S’, O ye, our great English forbearers?) rather than go with “SS” when the abandoned ‘Simple’ as in the original name of the organization known as the “Simple Spelling Society” must have happened rather awkward. I would imagine that decision was not made lightly and made at a time post-WWII. Just the plain old simple letters “SS” simply would not do, old chap.
So, some things change, eh? as your Canadian colony might so coyly articulate. Not the least of those being “English”, whatever that is as some of these posts reveal a definite problem with spelling, grammar, etc.
Funny, but we rather thought we were. Being English, that is. Oh, but I forgot. You consider us to be Americans. So leave us to our speaking well, um, American?
- Posted by Orange of GreenwichToodle-ooo!
There is no need to change the language. All that is required (in the UK, at least) is for teachers to teach, instead of engaging in social engineering to suit the perverted aims of the government.
- Posted by Mike TOh, and if the SSS is just ‘SS’ now, how is it possible that they could be marking their 100th year? Did they not rename themselves? Or did I miss something simple?
- Posted by Orange of GreenwichAnd what is a rass clat? Is that cockney, like “apples and pears’ for up the stairs? Class rat?
- Posted by Orange of GreenwichI would like to give the explanation for a Rass Clat but it keeps getting taken off by the moderator. It is the same as a bumba clat or a blood clat or a batti rider.
- Posted by Bounty KillaMenny of the comments on this article bemone a threttend change of the language. No one is proposing such a corse. Language evolves naturally. Spelling is an unnatural human-made convention to record the language.
- Posted by AllanEnglish is rich, taking words from menny sorces. In doing so it has unfortunatly not automatically anglicized their spellings to fit English conventions.
When other languages adopt English words, they usually adapt them to their own spelling conventions; eg, ‘football’ becums ‘futbol’, ‘futebol’, etc. We hav faled to do this in English, and now our spelling is a dogs brekfast.
If that wer all, we could cope. But the unpredictability and unreliability of our spelling ’sistem’ throws all sorts of problems at children lerning to reed and rite. Most eventually mannage. Menny dont.
Hence we hav a ratio of one in evry five English speekers being functionally illitrat. Worldwide. No exeptions. Irrespectiv of teeching resorces or methods.
Is hanging on to our outdated, outmoded, past-its-use-by-date spelling caos worth all this?
Allan is rite. it surprises me to reed such a barage [rimes with garage] of objections to updating the way inglish is speld. Wy in the world shudnt we update it? Is the riters’ negativity sum sort of sycological defense mecanism? This antidiluvian traditionalism is laffable. I can only think of it as a game, or a form of mental illness, or an animalistic snarl agenst those who ar trying to make reeding and riting inglish eesier. ”Keep it hard!” is their wor cry. ”Grind down the little brats! Make life harder for the teachers, for the taxpayers, for the immigrants, for EVRYBODY!” They call us reformers names. We can call them a few things…
- Posted by Theo HalladayPerhaps more people should take a few minutes to visit http://www.englishspellingproblems.co.uk to see what the worst aspects of English spelling are?
- Posted by Masha BellIt shows what children are up against and why all English-speaking countries have to spend vastly bigger sums than others on teaching reading and writing, and also on the problems which stem from failing to acquire those skills: unemployment, poorer health, costs of more crime and imprisonment, teenage pregnancies. One dyslexia support group estimates those to cost nearly two billion pounds per year in the UK alone.
U don’t get hardly any dyslexia in Finnish, Italian and Korean.
J Cross, Changing the spelling of English to something closer to a dictionary key has no impact on the spoken language.
“Cood I hav a liter plees” represents a regularization of your sample phrase. “cud aI hæv @ laIt@`pli:z” is a dictionary key spelling.
LJ, We don’t preserve the works of Shakespeare in the original spelling. The spelling has little to do with the greatness of a literary work.
The spelling reformers just want a standard that is easier to teach and learn.
The new standard would be used by dictionaries, newspapers, and schools. People could continue to spell the way they pleased. Outside of school and the preferences of your boss, there are no spelling police.
The new spelling would represent the major broadcast dialects. Where pronunciation differed, a world English commission would have to come up with a compromise.
A typical compromise would be to keep the old spelling if it represented the way the word was spoken in one major broadcast dialects. The commission would not keep “rough” because every newsreader pronounces the word “ruf”
- Posted by Steve BettEnglish is dumbed down already - consider the spelling of the words: dumb, rum, comb, tomb.
The panic reaction to the thought of upgrading our antique spelling system is that we are going to damage the language - when these are two different things.
Most European languages have had regular and planned repairs. They are not dumb & do not have the costly illiteracy problems that the English speaking world have. We simply can not afford to run a system that excludes so many. Truly, we are being dum.
Oh, in case people think there was a golden age of good spelling: there never was. It has been chaotic for centuries. And don’t forget Shakespeare spelled his own name 10 different ways.
- Posted by N J HLet’s bring back the pound, shilling & pence currency system - remember that? And while we are about it why not bring back Roman Numerals? We got rid of these for the simplified dumbed down systems that we have now that just any old lazy person can use. Gad zooks!
What I don’t understand is: why people don’t want bring back these ornaments to our culture?
I shaul taketh tvngue aut ovf cheake, herewith.
- Posted by Varklanguage of babies…
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- Posted by language of babies