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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Push for simpler spelling persists |
| 2006-07-07 |
| Mucky's light years ahead of them. I don't know if that's a good thing. WASHINGTON - When "say," "they" and "weigh" rhyme, but "bomb," "comb" and "tomb" don't, wuudn't it maek mor sens to spel wurdz the wae thae sound? Those in favor of simplified spelling say children would learn faster and illiteracy rates would drop. Opponents say a new system would make spelling even more confusing. ...and you'd spell like an illiterate even if you weren't one. Eether wae, the consept has yet to capcher th publix imajinaeshun. I would love to see a Joe Mendiola rant all in Muckese. Those CIA guys that monitor us would be jumping out of windows. As would we... It's been 100 years since Andrew Carnegie helped create the Simplified Spelling Board to promote a retooling of written English and President Theodore Roosevelt tried to force the government to use simplified spelling in its publications. But advocates aren't giving up. Oh-oh. "Advocates". They even picket the national spelling bee finals, held every year in Washington, costumed as bumble bees and hoisting signs that say "Enuf is enuf but enough is too much" or "I'm thru with through." Hey, whatever happened to "ebonics"? Thae sae th bee selebraets th ability of a fue stoodents to master a dificult sistem that stumps meny utherz hoo cuud do just as wel if speling were simpler. As Alphabet Blondie would say, "Spelling is hard!" "It's a very difficult thing to get something accepted like this," says Alan Mole, president of the American Literacy Council, which favors an end to "illogical spelling." The group says English has 42 sounds spelled in a bewildering 400 ways. What is this guy, the Mr. Spock of spelling? Americans doen't aulwaez go for whut's eezy — witnes th faeluer of th metric sistem to cach on. But propoenents of simpler speling noet that a smatering of aulterd spelingz hav maed th leep into evrydae ues. ...and we could all pretend we were rap stars! "The kinds of progress that we're seeing are that someone will spell night 'nite' and someone will spell through 'thru,'" Mole said. "We try to show where these spellings are used and to show dictionary makers that they are used so they will include them as alternate spellings. Great changes have been made in the past. Systems can change," a hopeful Mole said. Don't kill the job, right Moleman? In languages with phonetically spelled words, like German or Spanish, children learn to spell in weeks instead of months or years as is sometimes the case with English, Mole said. But education professor Donald Bear said to simplify spelling would probably make it more difficult because words get meaning from their prefixes, suffixes and roots. "Students come to understand how meaning is preserved in the way words are spelled," said Bear, director of the E.L. Cord Foundation Center for Learning and Literacy at the University of Nevada, Reno. Th cuntry's larjest teecherz uennyon, wuns a suporter, aulso objects. Hey, Beavis...he said cuntry.hehehehehehheheheheheheheh... Michael Marks, a member of the National Education Association's executive committee, said learning would be disrupted if children had to switch to a different spelling system. "It may be more trouble than it's worth," said Marks, a debate and theater teacher at Hattiesburg High School in Mississippi. E-mail and text messages are exerting a similar tug on the language, sharing some elements with the simplified spelling movement while differing in other ways. Electronic communications stress shortcuts like "u" more than phonetics. Simplified spelling is not always shorter than regular spelling — sistem instead of system, hoep instead of hope. But for aul th hi-proefiel and skolarly eforts, the iedeea of funy-luuking but simpler spelingz didn't captivaet the masez then — or now. "I think that the average person simply did not see this as a needed change or a necessary change or something that was ... going to change their lives for the better," said Marilyn Cocchiola Holt, manager of the Pennsylvania department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Carnegie, hoo embraest teknolojy, died in 1919, wel befor sel foenz. Had he livd, he probably wuud hav bin pleezd to no that milyonz of peepl send text and instant mesejez evry dae uezing thair oen formz of simplified speling: "Hav a gr8 day!" |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #10 An irony is their trying to force this, when it is happening on its own. An unexpurgated Websters from before 1900 is filled with anachronistic words that have been utterly discarded from the colloquial. Reading it is almost funny. And every reason to believe this evolution in english will continue. The language advances first from a simple tongue with a minimum of words, then achieves a plateau of maximum communication for literate people. But then it continues to increase complexity with parochialism and nuances that are only used by an elite, such as Doctors and lawyers. Only a few of these words become popularized, adopted into the common language along with words from other languages, and new words such as slang. But all depends on usage. Too simple, and nuance is lost. Too complex, and it becomes ill-used. But over time, Darwinism changes the tongue through usage. And thus "light" becomes "lite", "through" becomes "thru", and "enough" becomes "enuf". And writers stop using quotation marks. The evolution also occurs in punctuation. The British are now discarding the periods in Mr., Dr., etc., and are now only using one space after a colon. The semi-colon and the ampersand are so ill-used that they may soon just be used for computer code. Spoken language adapts likewise. The master vowel of english (and some German) is becoming the "schwa", which is shown as an upside-down letter 'e' (producing an "eh" sound). This is because it is often substituted for most other vowels, long or short. In german this is replacing "das, der, die", with "deh", much like the english "the". Spoken english with the schwa instead of other vowels is much easier for people to understand if their native language has different rules for word emphasis, like spanish. The ability of english to be so adaptable makes it the world's premier language, so that in another 100 years, it may be a completely different tongue, yet if we heard it, we would have a pretty clear understanding of what had been said. As much as if we heard english of 100 years ago. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-07-07 21:38 |
| #9 This "Simplified Spelling" joke is so old it's bald on top. I first read this in Readers Digest somewhere around 1960 or so. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2006-07-07 20:34 |
| #8 DAMN IT!!! I'll always spell it GHOTI as long as they swim in the sea!!!!! Umm, for the iggerant, that's GH as in Tough; O as in women and TI as in nation. Some people spell it fish. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2006-07-07 19:42 |
| #7 We will go completely metric first. |
| Posted by: Penguin 2006-07-07 19:00 |
| #6 Understandable, a good idea in theory, but hard to implement-at least if spelling is to be manageable for both old school and new school English readers at the same time. And just imagine how many different spellings there would then be between British English and American English? How about Aussie English! I would promote direct instruction in phonics to help students of all ages spell (and read) better. As far as the rule-breakers and oddball spellings? Keep the language intact; it's complicated, but it's a beauty. |
| Posted by: Jules 2006-07-07 18:57 |
| #5 Which accent gets used? He says uennyon I say eunyun. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-07-07 18:22 |
| #4 alredy hav doblesp33k... F u cn rd ths u cnt spel wrth a drn. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2006-07-07 18:20 |
| #3 Wutz nxt on th ujendu - NuSp33k? |
| Posted by: Xbalanke 2006-07-07 18:17 |
| #2 These clowns need to grow up and get a life. Or, they could push for simpler spelling of German. In Germany. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-07-07 18:05 |
| #1 lol at the beavis comment, awesome! |
| Posted by: bombay 2006-07-07 17:25 |