Spelling is just far to difficult.
I was alarmed today to read of a group called the "Simplified Spelling Society".
It appears that their mission is to get us all to butcher the English language so that spelling becomes easier for children to learn. They even picketed a spelling bee in the US (they are an American group).
How stupid! For starters, kids generally don't have a problem with learning to spell. They've been managing for hundreds of years so I don't see why they are suddenly unable to learn. And in any case, stretching their minds is surely better than making everything easier.
Additionally (adishonaly?) words do follow basic rules, meaning that even if you are unsure of the spelling of a word, you stand a good chance of getting it right. It just becomes instinctive after a while. Changing the spelling of the words would throw out all of these rules.
The new system would be largely phonetic, and here lies the problem: Different accents pronounce different words differently. A London/home-counties type of person such as myself, would write "bath" as "barf". Northerners would write it as, well, "bath". Keeping the spelling non-phonetic alleviates these problems. Text would become unreadable as different spellings are used for different accents. At the moment if somebody from, say, Glasgow sends me an email, I can read it. But talk to them on the phone and you'll understand about one word in five. Translating that to the written word as well would be disastrous.
In March, Ele and I took a weekend break to Stratford-upon-Avon and visited Shakespeare's house. I'm not the biggest fan of The Bard really, having been made to suffer the depressing tedium that is Romeo & Juliet in high school, but I appreciate his contribution to literature. More to the point, they had an original manuscript penned by the man himself. I tried to read it and couldn't. The printing press stabilised spelling and grammar a great deal, and this is a good thing. Consistency has made the whole shebang a lot easier.
Still, at least we could give the Americans victory on "vase". We English insist on pronouncing it "Varz", but are happy to say "base" and "case" whilst sniggering at those that say "vase". I've always thought that a bit odd.
It's all becoming a bit to text-speak for my liking.
Change to phonetic spelling? Oova ma did boda as they would say in Newcastle.
It appears that their mission is to get us all to butcher the English language so that spelling becomes easier for children to learn. They even picketed a spelling bee in the US (they are an American group).
How stupid! For starters, kids generally don't have a problem with learning to spell. They've been managing for hundreds of years so I don't see why they are suddenly unable to learn. And in any case, stretching their minds is surely better than making everything easier.
Additionally (adishonaly?) words do follow basic rules, meaning that even if you are unsure of the spelling of a word, you stand a good chance of getting it right. It just becomes instinctive after a while. Changing the spelling of the words would throw out all of these rules.
The new system would be largely phonetic, and here lies the problem: Different accents pronounce different words differently. A London/home-counties type of person such as myself, would write "bath" as "barf". Northerners would write it as, well, "bath". Keeping the spelling non-phonetic alleviates these problems. Text would become unreadable as different spellings are used for different accents. At the moment if somebody from, say, Glasgow sends me an email, I can read it. But talk to them on the phone and you'll understand about one word in five. Translating that to the written word as well would be disastrous.
In March, Ele and I took a weekend break to Stratford-upon-Avon and visited Shakespeare's house. I'm not the biggest fan of The Bard really, having been made to suffer the depressing tedium that is Romeo & Juliet in high school, but I appreciate his contribution to literature. More to the point, they had an original manuscript penned by the man himself. I tried to read it and couldn't. The printing press stabilised spelling and grammar a great deal, and this is a good thing. Consistency has made the whole shebang a lot easier.
Still, at least we could give the Americans victory on "vase". We English insist on pronouncing it "Varz", but are happy to say "base" and "case" whilst sniggering at those that say "vase". I've always thought that a bit odd.
It's all becoming a bit to text-speak for my liking.
Change to phonetic spelling? Oova ma did boda as they would say in Newcastle.
posted by Nej at
3:05 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home