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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- Posted by language of babiesLet’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 VarkEnglish 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 HJ 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 BettPerhaps 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.
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 Halladay