The way you wrote your article, I feel you want to _simplify_ things, to help people who are too ignorant to learn their language correctly, sorry, to help more people know spell their language correctly.
If you push this logic to its extreme, why not use SMS spelling, while you are at it! Evrbdy can rd SMS, cn’t they? (well, I can’t, sorry).

I find this type of thinking rather horrifying, really. Let’s just do like the Americans: if people are stupid, then let’s all lower the level of education! That way everybody can feel good about themselves…
I hate this with a passion: simplify things so we get better statistics. Since when should a language be modified so that we can get better statistics! *shudder*
Wouldn’t it be more logical to actually change the teaching methods, so that people learn better?
The only way you can learn Maths is if they are taught properly. You can’t make the subject simpler, you just learn it, or you don’t. Why would languages be different, then?

Besides I like the oddities of my languages (I am a native French, but I learnt German, Latin and English, in that order). It’s nice to know that there is some sort of history behind words, some reason behind the way they are spelled. Spelling isn’t about pronounciation, it’s about meaning, etymology, grammar, all that. I say “potato”, you say “potato”, but we both know what we are talking about, don’t we?
When you simplify your language to allow analphabets to have an easier time, you lose all that. What’s the fun in that?

LarryB
My experience of dyslexia (and what I read about it) is that it doesn’t come from some mysterious brain damage at birth, but from stupid teaching methods…
I have two sisters, who are 16 years apart. But they were taught with a different system, called the “global method” in French, where you learn words as a whole, rather than by spelling them out phoneme by phoneme. For my first sister, we didn’t realise this (that was 20 years ago) and since I hadn’t had any problem, we couldn’t see why she should and assumed that indeed, she was “born with dyslexia”.
When my second sister entered primary school, she just completely lost it, and indeed started showing signs of dyslexia. As soon as we changed her to a private school (the Global method is the official one) she showed signs of improvement, although she is being treated by an orthophonist to fight off the bad habits she has already acquired.

My point ? Wlel, tihnk auobt it tihs way: if you can raed tihs txet, as I am srue you can wiuohtt too mcuh plrbeom, it is buascee yuor bairn roiegncse the wdros goalllby, rahetr tahn by atlluacy raiendg every letter in words. That’s the underlying principle of that global method. And what works one way, works the other: read globally, and you end up writing globally. I.e. you got dyslexia.
Or at least, that’s how I see it…

Why not concentrate your energy on the education system which nowadays is stressing what it chooses to call “self-esteem” over the kind that one acquires through one’s achievements? I am living proof that it is possible to acquire a working knowledge of English and French spelling even as a native speaker of German. It wasn’t even hard.

Best regards,
Felix.

On the other hand MSWSC sometimes comes up with some completely bizarre spelling.

Speaking about English spelling in general, it is important to tolerate variation, while giving every occurance to reduce variation from the Standard Spelling, such as it exists. If too much variation is allowed, then meaning will suffer, such as the manufactured word “ghoti” supposed to be pronounced “fish”.

As to “Same Sound Same Spelling” promoted by local advocates Doug Everingham, Ivor F and Tom Hardwyck, SSSS can reduce or destroy meaning.

Consider SSDifferentS: “Fair Ferry Fare” as a newpaper headline.

Consider SSSS version: “FAAR FAARI FAAR”.

The problem with the words “Fair”, “Ferry”, and “Fare” is that there aren’t enough phonemes to pronounce all different words differently. At least different words with different meanings which happen to be pronounced the same can be spelled differently.

Spelling reform advocates Doug Everingham, Ivor F and Tom Hardwyck, fail to acknowledge the loss of meaning or ambiguity problem that comes with SSSS. Hardwyck gave an sample sentence of his new spelling system, which was understandable enough until it to a key word that was long and difficult … I was not able to figure out what that word was, and therefore the whole message was lost.

A episode of the TV series “Flipper”, starring the talking dolphin, had as its crux a mishandled urgent message. The 10 year old boy whose pet the dolphin was, mispronounce the word “urgent” as “UR-GENT” instead of “URGE-ENT”, so that the adults did not realise that the message was important and had to be dealt with quickly.

English has millions of words, and it is not possible to say in advance which word, like the Hardwyck word, or the URG-ENT word may be misunderstood if misspelled or mispronounced.

Everingham, Ivor F and Hardwyck are to be praised for their efforts in keeping the issue of spelling reform alive, but they are mostly misguided.

2004H27

So did the French. In 1792 I think..

One argument for spelling reform is that more “rational” spelling reduces the level of dyslexia. Is this just a legend?

I consider myself an above-average speller of English, although I remain a mediocre but speedy typist. I think that English spelling has drifted too far from the spoken word to ever be reformed. Besides, we have something like four versions of Standard English, each of which would suffer more from spelling reform than the language as a whole would benefit. And don’t even get me started about phonics!

Shorter comment - spelling reform in English or German, if it doesn’t materially improve the language or literacy rates, why bother?

I too am curious about the time that a whole bunch of peasants changed their pronunciation of something because of a spelling reform.

Nowadays, half of the people have gotten used to the reform (well, to be honest: as long as they’re no journalist they write whatever they want which usually is correct or at least a legal option). But since Spiegel and Bild made all that stir now they remember the controversy from a few years back and that’s why the reform is discussed this fiercly once again. It also doesn’t help that Germans hate their government anyways (currently it has a rock bottom approval rating of 20%!)

And another bit of personal opinion about the reform: It really is stupid. The old way of writing German had many difficult spellings and illogical forms. The new way of writing abolishes some of them but in an attempt to be logical it introduces heaps of new irregularities and forms nobody has ever seen before. So it’s no improvement at all.

English doesn’t connect words. It’s “bicycle riding”. In German, however, connecting words is part of the language. The reform changed that in many cases. To be honest, although German is my mother tongue I don’t know the rules well enough to give you proper examples (I’m one of those guys who writes whatever Word says is right and I don’t write texts for public consumption anyways). But to help a speaker of English understand the controversy: Just imagine someone made you write “on going” instead of “ongoing” for reasons you don’t understand without having read 10 pages of rules
well, that’s my 2 cents.

“Thanks to the effectively universal use of a single word processing suite, English spelling is what Bill Gates says that it is.”
Wouldn’t be complete without pointing at corporate America would it?

It’s amusing how much your politics has infiltrated this post. English spelling is difficult because a polyglot of other languages have been incorporated. Do you really think Microsoft has generated anywhere near the influence as the aftermath of 1066? Right.

“prolly” isn’t a word in English. Probably is. Prolly is starting to displace probably (google prolly). Type prolly in MS Word and see what happens.

Intellectual corruption is a terrible thing.