Is Simplified Spelling Worth Reform? 1183
digitalhermit writes "I guess many folks are of very little brain, and big words bother them... There's a push for simpler spelling. Instead of 'weigh' it would be 'way.' 'Dictionary' would be 'dikshunery' and so forth. Dunno if it's a joke, but it seems in earnest. Mark Twain must be spinning around somewhere." Twain is often credited with the satirical call for spelling reform called "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling," though according to Wikipedia, Twain was "actually a supporter of reform," and the piece may have been written by M.J. Shields. Benjamin Franklin was another champion of spelling reform, and even came up with a phonetic alphabet to implement such reform.
This is exactly what America needs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Never going to happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, I've seen 5th grade papers where the kid spelled through 'thru' and the teacher didn't let out a peep.
Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called SCHOOL.
English (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S. Implementing this idea would also mean that people would soon lose the ability to read the vast body of works already written in English; a huge translation effort would have to be undertaken, and a lot of works would still remain untranslated. Such a loss is not acceptable (unless you have Orwellian intentions in mind).
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
difference: (Score:5, Insightful)
Our spelling of words inherits from their roots. English is the kind of language the hunts down other languages and corners them dark alleys to nick their vocabularies, and that history is in the spelling. If a words is unfamilliar, its spelling is a clue to its meaning. "Simplified Spelling" robs us of an ability to learn new words easily.
TFA says that these weirdos claim that illiteracy rates would drop if spelling were simplified. Not likely. The reson folks are illiterate is that we refuse to fund our schools sufficiently, or pay teachers enough to hire qualified ones. Not to mention that (and I wish I had a cite for this handy) the fact that junk food is cheaper than fresh food with plenty of veg means that kids in the poorer parts of America tend to have diets that reduce their ability to concentrate and learn. The problem isn't the language, it's social.
Metric on the other hand was regected out of misguided nationalism, and because people tend to refuse to acknowledge a good thing when they see it.
This is founded on a common misconception... (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, when you speak, what do you do to separate words form one another? The surprising answer is, nothing. Take a tape of ordinary conversation. Run it through an oscilloscope. Look for the breaks. You won't find them. We "blur" words together in sentences. (I suspect this is why anyone speaking a different tongue always sounds like he/she is speaking very quickly... your brain hasn't learned to put the "spaces" back in by context.)
And that's for words. It's worse for letters. In an oscillograph of the word "bat", you won't see discrete units for "b", "a", and "t". It's just one sound. Heck, the "letters" we pronounce depend on what comes before or after.
The people behind this movement also act as if pronunciation is fixed, while of course, it is not. Some of the "nonsense" words they offer up as looking the same but not rhyming did rhyme, once. Then the spoken language evolved and, since the written language is considerably less plastic (an advantage, I would maintain), the oddness is frozen in.
Finally, when we adopt spelling that "looks like" the pronunciation... whose pronunciation will it look like? Bostoners and New Yorkers and Atlanteans pronounce many words in different ways. Who gets to be the official "correct" one?
Moving in favor of spoken English won't help literacy. I suspect, albeit without proof, that such a move would hurt it.
It CAN'T happen (Score:4, Insightful)
I gave this a lot of thought one time. Everybody wants this and thinks it's a good idea, but there's a fundamental reason that it's simply impossible to reform spelling into a logical phonetic system:
People pronounce words differently.
Think about it... would it be to-may-to or to-mah-to? And that's just for starters. Factor in regional dialects and different vowal pronounciations. It simply can't happen.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't decide whether to think your misuse of the word "no" is meant to be ironic or not, given the context...
Re:Aggressive refactoring .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't eliminating words the modus operandi of Newspeak?
At Least Use the International Phonetic Alphabet (Score:4, Insightful)
The simplification of Chinese characters represents a similar reformation, but at least traces of etymology remain in tact. A more accurate analogy to this proposal would be if the Chinese were to exclusively use Pinyin [wikipedia.org] instead of Chinese characters -- simplified or traditional. Ask any Chinese-speaking individual what she'd think of the idea, and she'd say it's malarky.
If Americans really wanted to do this -- simplify spelling to eliminate inconsistencies between words and sound -- it would be a slightly better idea to make everyone use the IPA [wikipedia.org] at least.
A silly idea (Score:2, Insightful)
HOW ABOUT THIS??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
In the context. Japanese has the same issue and that's how they deal with it. Besides, it would vastly increase the odds of constructing puns.
Please let it be fruitless jocularity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh huh.
This movement appears to be indicative of the propensity of lackadaisical or indeed preposterous individuals to repudiate the necessities of encouraging a proper enlightenment of the intricacies of linguistic comunication. Unquestionably, this preposterous recommendation can only be indicative of a desire to bring forth an ideology resulting in the reduction of the instruction of responsibilty upon one's self. One must ponder the disappearance of intellectual progress when considering why our many progenitors incurred no difficulty in the attainments of the identical language. Yet for reasons unknown the current populous has in some way been deemed too intellectually challenged to educate themselves of the same vocabulary. This indicates a very bankrupt, mental capacity with respect to the educational capacities of my fellow homo sapiens and should not be looked upon favorably.
Re:Simple solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, we've tried that - and look where we are now.
Maybe we should try something different - like education.
I hope I spelled everything correctly!
Year Zero (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't think it likely that the rich might get to learn both methods and the poor find themselves distanced, if not severed, from the majority of previously published English text then?
Earnest, but flawed argument (Score:3, Insightful)
The argument for more phonetic spelling ignores the question of "Which phonetic version is our model?"
American's pronounce words quite differently than the British do and even -- in some situations -- Canadians.
Try this one: Pasta.
In the U.S. it's predominantly pronounced P-aw-sta
(This is not the case in, say, Alabama where it's pronounced "Macaroni" in my experience.)
In Canada it's a hard "a" sound. P-a-sta.
You say "Lou-ten-ent" and Canadians say "Lef-ten-ent"
I say since we set fire to your White House we get to choose the spelling. In honour of the colour, I pleaded at the theatre for a more concise judgement.
(Ok. Pleaded is a linguistic pet peeve of mine whereas the others are words that are spelt differently.)
Uh, this is stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Simplified" spelling is a grave error, because the constant shifting of language rapidly overwhelms any benefits that might be had. The inconsistancies in a formal spelling system accumulate O(1), but the changes required in a phonetic system will accumulate O(n). Periodic re-alignments may be useful, but loosening the spelling system would be a disaster.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:4, Insightful)
I done speak that proper english! N ain't nothin' wrong wit my speelin'!
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everybody pronounces words the same way (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:difference: (Score:0, Insightful)
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. This is spin pushed by the NEA and people fal for it year after year. Teachers' salaries are right in line with, and somewhat higher mostly, other professionals at their degree level. Far more than they deserve, considering teachers are consistently those who themselves performed the worst in school [capmag.com]. I'm sure you've heard the expression "those who can't do, teach" and it's true here in spades. Perhaps if we start holding teachers accountable we'd attract teachers with work ethic and professional pride, rather than those who simply want to ride the NEA gravy train.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is founded on a common misconception... (Score:4, Insightful)
Since stuff written phonetically is more likely to have patterns repeated between words since there are few unique sounds in the English language, it could mean that average reading ability would become worse, despite the initial learning being quicker.
Our brain tries to look for shortcuts. How often has it happened that you read something like "Well" as "We'll" when it's in a valid context. This perhaps indicates that our brain is only skim reading and using the context and the overall look of the word to derive it's meaning. Just as not many people have trouble udnersatnding wehn wrods are wrirten lkie tihs, provided they don't overthink. If there are more words that look similar because they have similar sounds, it could result in more mistakes. Our brain probably isn't going to listen to every other syllable when someone is speaking but we might read only every other letter.
Any anyway, if we're going to go the simplified spelling route.. why not just teach the phonetic alphabet to everyone?
Re:Never going to happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Makes me cry when I read opera such as the following:
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, people who use IM-speak, even when instant messaging, should be fed to a woodchipper Fargo-style. Hopefully, when I rule the world, this edict will carry the force of law.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't have noun genders like other European languages, and we don't have too many verb conjugations. It's also easy to transform words into other parts of speech, e.g. verbing nouns, or making verbs nounish or noun-y, so it's pretty easy to re-use words you already know.
So just learn a few rules, learn the vocab, and the few exceptions, and you're set.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, a few others.
They have all undergone a reform around the turn of the last century which simplified spelling and grammar. As a result Russian grammar can be expressed in under 8 pages and the language has in total around 40 exemptions to these rules. Everything else is built out through some fairly simple grammar rules. Bulgarian and Serbian are quite similar to Russian to this extent, though their language reform did not go that far.
The results are quite interesting though most people prefer to "oversee" them, because expressing them is considered to be very politically incorrect.
First of all as a result of the reform, most English speaking humanity students find Russian staggeringly hard. Engineering students (the few that are interested in languages) cruise through it with ease. I am speaking from the experience of trying to teach students at an American University Russian and it was not fun. The humanity majors could not gear their brain into "rule operating mode" and that was it. Some of them knew 3-4 languages by that time, but Russian was beyond them.
Second, Russians and attention to detail do not mix. I am half Russian and I have lived there for 10+ years so I am speaking this out of experience. Their brain functions from the perspective that things are built according to rules and most of them are not good at memorising exemptions and minute details. At the same time they will swipe the ground with you on math, ability to draw general conclusions and cold cynical logic. Sometimes you think that their entire bloody nation got a Turette syndrome.
Third, they even learn to read in a completely different manner. They learn to assemble things in blocks to get a meaning. That is simply impossible with English. An average toddler will outright get lost trying to get through all the intricacies of bought vs buy and caught vs catch and so on, so they learn to recognise words a whole, not to try to assemble them. This once again changes the way people think.
So on so forth. And by the way we can continue along these lines looking at Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and especially Chinese. Each of these shapes the brain in a specific pattern and some thoughts which are OK for them will be immensely foreign to an English speaker. And vice versa of course.
Overall, "the language shapes the thought". There are some very good observations by David Brin in the Uplift series to that regard that a language by design may prohibit certain type of thinking. So someone with a different language may come to a thought which will never otherwise occur.
A language reform will change the way English think. It is not just a problem of word meaning and context. It will fundamentally change education, culture, way of thinking, etc.
You are right, I do not believe it will happen.
Re:English (Score:3, Insightful)
In conclusion, ifnya vist Nawlins ymait unnstan wut I talkin bot.
Another drawback to simplified spelling... (Score:2, Insightful)
Pronuciation changes have slowed down and stopped (Score:3, Insightful)
>The people behind this movement also act as if pronunciation is fixed, while of course, it is not.
That was once the case, but no longer so.
Now in the age of mass communications, the level of isolation needed for languages to drift have largely
disappeared. Nowadays, regional accents that formed in the US are slowly receding, and most people have
generally softened to or wholly adapted the US comman accent and sound.
The levels of isolation needed for entire new languages to formed dissappeared at the dawn of the industrial age, with fast ships able to cross the globe, the required several generations of isolation needed simply did not exist on the planet any longer.
Regional dialects continued to form, such as in the US, as waves of immagrants did not fully assimilate.
But telecommunications, television, radio, and the vast storehouse of recorded words, voices, and movies have
reversed this trend, and the languages of the world have begun normalizing.
If there was ever a use for standardizing english pronunciation, now is a better time then ever before.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
For whom? I would argue that a French-only speaker/reader would have a much easier time learning English than an Arabic-only speaker/reader. Ditto an English user vs. a Japanese user learning Chinese. My wife spent a couple of years in Japan ten years ago. She can still read the odd Chinese sign around town, whereas I have no idea.
Re:This is exactly what America needs. (Score:3, Insightful)
And let's be honest, if you recognize the shared root between docent, docile, doctor, and indoctrination, you probably already know what all those words mean in the first place. Also, consider that the predominant use of the word "doctor" today has nothing to do with teaching.
Teaching Arcana (Score:3, Insightful)
English is a huge language with a vast amount of momentum, It needs to be replaced. Esperanto or LogLan seem to be a very nice seed to build a replacement language. In the long term this is a very good move. Of course this is a pipe dream, as America cant wean itself off standard weights and measures. There is no reason to believe that the world will wean itself off English as a common trade language.
Storm
Re:no, British English makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
centerpedal
Yeah, An american.. (Score:1, Insightful)
colour
favourite
honour
enrolment
fulfil
skilful
analogue
analyse
centre
Instead of "reform" of something that doesn't belong to them why don't they get thier own fucking language, then they can "simplify" it to a level where thier tiny little brains can handle it.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
As for English, I guess as a native speaker the only way I can assess how hard it is to learn is to look at foreign learners and judge how hard of a time they have. And since I sometimes teach ESL at a refugee resettlement agency, the answer is: a really hard time.
Annoying article (Score:2, Insightful)
The other issue is that a spelling system works much more effectively if homophones can be spelt differently. In Chinese, this problem was solved by making a different character for every word, even if they sounded the same, and much was done the same way in Japanese, but the downside is how much longer it can take to read this way. In French and English, this is of course done by spelling differently (their, there, they're) and in French (moi (me), mois (month, s is silent)).
Spelling is changing all the time but not in a major way. Through is becoming thru, and you maybe someday might be u (although I would hate this). The other problem with English, unlike Spanish, is that there are many dialects in a sort of close area. Boston is only 40 minutes away from me and I'll start hearing words like car become simply kaah and park become paak, then I could go to Lowell not too far away (pronounced Lohl in Lowell, I pronounce it Lo-wull). In Spanish, the problem is not there because everyone was given the same spellings a long time ago and they read with their accent, which of course we do, but anyone learning Spanish would see how much more logical the spelling is.
I think the major reason for this is because the spellings were simply set whether people liked it or not, and not much has changed since then regardless of accents; there were not that many speakers at the time (just Spain) that it could make an impact. In English, it's far too radical to tell 515 million speakers (English [wikipedia.org]today to spell differently. We all spell the same (mostly) and pronounce according to our dialect. Changes will occur, but nothing major will ever happen in English spelling.
Also note that unlike many other languages, English shows the origins of many words. Yacht is a strange one to anyone who doesn't know where it comes from, but it comes from Dutch, and of course in Dutch the ch is pronounced (like a k). Knife and knight used to pronounce the K sound. Today the K in knight helps majorly to anyone reading because then they automatically know the word is referring to a knight, not a night.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Hanyu works best for you, Wade-Giles works best for me. Same sounds, different spellings.
To suggest a simplification of english spelling seems to me either arrogant or ignorant. Changes that will seem obvious and sensible to one person will make absolutely no sense to another.
Probably best to just let the language follow its natural course. All written languages change over time, and english is particularly susceptible to such "natural" changes. Just let it go....
Re:Don't mod truth down, language evolves (Score:3, Insightful)
If language did not evolve and we did not allow for changes in the English language we'd be making posts that sounded like a Elizabethan era play:
"Thou art privy to mine code licenseth henceforth as GPL! Thou art forbodden to present ye argument that henceforth BSD is superior to our tavern keeper!"
But seriously, trying to make English a permanent static monolithic thing will limit us when we come across new ideas that we cannot express with our current language.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, but if they would ditch all the "excepetions" in grade school today, since the language is defined by useage it would be corrected in our lifetime.
you know keep the "i before e except after c unless it sounds like a" type rules, but fix words like "codeine, conscience, deify, deity" to name a few that dont follow the rules, and for no good reason (I assume anyway.)
Recent experience shows it's possible (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Russians did it in 1917 by dropping the "hard sign" in most places and getting rid of the letter "yat'" as well as changing the spelling of some words, which made everything more readable.
Hauever, if Inglish woz tu bi chen'gd intu a fonetic len'gwich, it wood soon bikam eether simil'ar tu Dzhermun or Dutch in spelin'g were it origineited.
I speak/write/type Russian, Ukrainian and English. The hardest part about learning English was the vocabulary and getting the patterns of spelling (through, though, etc.). Once that and the grammar rules were down, it wasn't hard from that point forward. Moving to the US at a young age also helped.
I think simple changes such as through=>thru, though=>tho, borough=>boro should be widely adapted as they're easy to implement and people already use them widely.
If big changes were made to a language, we'd experience a couple of problems:
1. Current speakers won't be able to read the new spelling (we read words, not syllables, remember?)
2. Kids in school now will have trouble learning the language their teachers don't know. Then, some teachers will force students to learn the new spelling, while others will prefer the old spelling, and given the fact that we don't have a standardized educational system we won't have a single standard for a couple of generations(why does everything have to be individualized??? France and Russia got right, why can't we adopt their system?!?!?!).
3. Gradual implementation will have to take place. You teach kids spelling from day one in first grade and you go through with it until they graduate from school. You teach the new spellign every in subsequent year, but you don't touch the kids that have already learned spelling and let them re-learn it later, or not learn it at all.
4. For 50 years we need to be willing to accept both types of spelling.
People will have trouble typing using the new spelling. I constantly have trouble typing transliterated words in Russian, using an English keyboard because I know how to type using a real Russian layout and constantly want to switch - think of Dvorak vs. Qwerty - you'd need to change the layout to make typing easier. Even if you don't change it, it will still be harder to type.
As for the metric system - it's much easier. Everything has to be industry-driven. First places that need to change are city planning departments and construction firms. If things change from feet to meters (or metres, if you prefer) everyone will follow. Again, this will have to be done gradually and to an extent it is already done in some industries. Personally, I have a big problem with feet. I can't picture how long 2000 ft is but I can picture 600 m... but that's a matter of preference. I can see it happening the other way around too. Don't get me started on conversions. In the end, it's hard to do reforms and what you need is an event for the reforms to happen suddenly (like a revolution) or a gradual implementation over a number of years (something we in the US don't seem to be able to do since we like instant gratification so much and we don't like to use our brainz).
In eni kejs, itz never too erli to start so wi better start nau wi litl ings.
The U.S. is a country of Brain Wimps (Score:3, Insightful)
My cousin was diagnosed with dyslexia in his senior year of high school. He got his B.S. degree in English. ANYONE can learn to spell and read. As others have pointed out, the problem, like so many other problems in our society, is that parents don't want to be involved in raising and educating their kids. It's like as soon as their kids can walk and talk, they feel like they've done their share and the rest is the society's responsibility.
This attitude really needs to change around. People need to start reading to their kids more and help teach their kids to read early on. My mother got her degree in English and my father got his in Journalism, so the standards of "functional literacy" in our house, growing up, was a bit higher than average. To some degree, I probably don't really understand how people can grow up not learning to read. Most of my friends growing up didn't seem to have problems learning English either. So, unless children today simply have less brainpower for some reason, there's no reason they can't learn English as well. They just need their parents to get a bit more involved in teaching them English.
I lived in Mexico for 3 years. Spanish is SIMPLE in terms of spelling, but you'd be surprised how poorly people write, in general. My Mexican girlfriend had a degree journalism and I still had to correct her spelling from time to time. I suspect the difference is, her parents didn't teach her to read as a child because they couldn't read, a problem many Mexicans of that generation face. So, parents, take your kids to the bookstore, buy them some books, and spend the evening reading with them. It shouldn't be a chore. It's your child. You should enjoy spending the time with them.
That article.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:English (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Expand the alphabet - don't just change spellin (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:this would require more work than you realize (Score:3, Insightful)
I can make my way through that, but that's considered trivial. Also, if you can make your way through that, it would mean that it is easier to make the change since people can still read the "garbled" text as it changes. The original proposal by Mark Twain suggests doing it a step at a time rather than doing a complete overhaul.
As for the article itself, it's an extremely bad recommendation. There is no pattern for changing the spelling and can easily damage the English language. For example, "new gnu" gets converted to "nue nue" resulting in teachers docking you for doubling a word when they mangled the language in the first place. Language reform attempts that do not take homonyms into account are bound to fail.
And just in case someone may actually believe the scrambled text, here's a rebuttal.
Try reading the following:
1) A vheclie epxledod at a plocie cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober and an Irqai polcie offceir
2) Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs
3) A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur
These sentences fit the requirements, but become increasingly difficult to read - especially when the last word almost looks like a similar word. In addition, the scrambling blindingly kills Proper names, which risks making it difficult to find an appropriate reference (especially on other news sites.)
While there is some truth to the text in question (e.g. pattern recognition), it requires the brain to work harder and can break down on uncommon or complex words.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Expand the alphabet - don't just change spellin (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, the problem with phonetic spelling is that not everybody uses the same phonemes. How do you pronounce route? Roof? Centimeter? Status? Aunt? Praline? Species? Tomato? Amen? Do you make Irish stoo or styoo? Should chamois be spelled differently when it refers to the leather instead of the animal?
And it's not just the sounds. To me, protein is a three-syllable word, because I learned it in the late 60's, but to most people today it's two syllables. Listen to people talk around here: squirrel is a one-syllable word; chocolate, every, and syllable have two syllables; athlete has three. How do you say them?
Shall southern and midwestern children continue to find spelling difficult because the spellings are based on California or New England pronunciations? (Daddy, why does my spellin book keep puttin a "g" on the end of words? Why isn't there an "r" in warsh or horspital?) Shall the British find American English even more incomprehensible because nothing is spelled the way they say it?
Once the US goes metric... and origin of words (Score:3, Insightful)
Then once hell has frozen over we can think about changing english spelling.
One other problem with changing spelling is we are purposely removing connections to the roots of the words. Often the spelling of a word tells us a lot about it's meaning (if we are unsure) and hints at subtlties that will be lost if we move to phonetic spelling. In fact often the "odd" spelling of some words is because of the original derivation of words.
English is very good at "absorbing" words from other languages and with that often comes unusual spelling which, however, provides valuable insight into underlying meanings.
Re:Teaching Arcana (Score:3, Insightful)
The major differences between Google and Furl are
1) Even my mother "googles" for things. She does not "furl" things (except maybe towels).
2) Google used a word that kinda means what they do. Furl did not. Nothing about bookmarks makes me think of folding things. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that "furl" based their name on the term URL, or Uniform Resource Locator. Therefore, Furl has no relation to the dictionary word. But Google does.