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.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed, especially considering it was originally proposed [sdsu.edu] in 1789 by our most famous dictionary's namesake, so if he can't get it going, well then, I ask you, who really can?
What a Brilliant Idea !!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Blechhh!
no, British English makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
e.g. centre, centripetal, centrifuge are all connected concepts and share the stem "centr".
the American spelling "center" has the stem "cent" which suggests center is something to do with 100; a center is a machine/person that makes cents?
you only make things more difficult for yourself in the long run if you wimp out of learning things properly in the beginning.
Re:I like the idea... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is exactly what America needs. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
Simplified spelling destroys context and meaning in English. We would basically have to rewrite the language from scratch to avoid problems like the one outlined above. In not so simple terms: that will never happen.
Most other countries did it two centuries ago (Score:4, Interesting)
Reform isn't a mental shortcut, its a good idea to encourage correct communication in a language with world-wide significance. If the Anglosphere could promulgate a change in spelling, it will improve commerce and reduce misery for students around the world. It isn't just an American thing, it's a rational thing.
But coordination is key. A change must be made by England, Australia, India, South Africa, and America simultaneously for best effect. The difficulty is that the question of which letter groups make the same sound depends on accent, so any change will require compromise. It's doubtless this is the reason why languages such as Croat could change spelling quickly, while English lags behind with an unravelling of standard spellings and a profusion of meaningless letter groups.
Proof by intimation! (Score:1, Interesting)
1984 New Speak? (Score:2, Interesting)
From the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
absolutely. any problem cited with "students in america take longer to spell than in countries with phonetic languages" omits one teensy factor:
i don't have cite for this, but my guess is that those kids who take years to learn to spell didn't start learning it until the teacher showed them at school, probably around age six or seven. the development of the human brain is such that young kids can learn almost anything really easily, and if their parents had taken the time to start reading books to them from the beginning, and helping the kids sound out words when they show an interest, and those kids likely would not be taking years to learn.
i used to teach english as a second language to 3 and 4 year old japanese kids with extremely ambitious parents. those kids could pick up phonics and english spelling no problem. the natural OCD-like nature of kids make the details easy for them, as long as their having fun, and have a good healthy diet that's conducive to a reasonable attention span
Signers know this very well (Score:3, Interesting)
ASL isn't just a word-for-word translation of English. It would be extremely tedious to sign that way; you could more-or-less do it, but you'd sound very stilted (just like if you spoke in the same way you wrote). It's not even just an abbreviation; there are syntactic structures used in ASL that have no exact word-for-word correspondence to either spoken or written English.
We all learn at least two languages, one spoken and one written. They're usually closely related. Orthography is hardly the biggest difference between the two.
Re:I like the idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
And poor neighborhoods never have an altered dialect from the standardised version of the language shared by those that take the effort to educate themselves, nope.
Okay, sarcasm aside, the educated have a better command of the language because they put a lot of work into making it so. Anyone can do it without formal education by reading a lot of known proper english, so there's really no reason to sympathise with the purposefully ignorant.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Between that, and when spelling/phonics began being taught (in my era, that was in the 2nd grade), it was very easy for me and for most students. Kids who couldn't read, and who couldn't puzzle out new words, were very rare.
But now? Spelling isn't taught until the 4th grade or even later. Phonics often isn't taught at all, another legacy of the "whole word recognition" debacle (if you watch severe dyslexics, you'll see that WWR is how they read -- so the object of WWR was apparently to make everyone read at the level of the lowest common denominator!) I remember when the first WWR experiments came along -- my 5th grade class was one of 'em, and even at that age we KNEW we were being shortchanged compared to the other kids.
As to "odd" spellings like weigh vs way, they DO convey meaning. Frex, a "weigh station" is not the same thing as a "way station".
Re:This is founded on a common misconception... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, to clarify, you will find them. They don't occur between words, however, but they are consonants. That's right -- consonant sounds are actually silences, stoppages of sound.
Try this simple experiment: say the following sentence as slowly as you can: "I'm going to the store." You will find that you actually cut off vibrations *only* at the 'g' in 'going' and the 't's in 'to' and 'store'. (Technically your voice box isn't vibrating with 'th' in 'the', but your tounge is asperating on your teeth, which creates sound. )
For more detail, see Pinker's _The Language Instinct_, specifically the chapter 6, "The Sounds of Silence".
Also interesting to note, some researchers think that dolphins may have complex language like humans -- their clicks and whistles might be analogous to our consonants and vowels. It is theorized that the silence is what allowed human language to become the arbitrary, abstract communication system, whereas other animals make simple harmonic calls, that indicate emotion or a small repertoire of signals, such as 'danger' and 'all clear'.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
wh used to be a 'hw' sound, ay ey and ei used to be defined more carefully, and gh actually represents a variation of voiced spirant that often took the place of g when it fell between two vowels. (a form of this shows up as the f-sound at the end of trough)
But, there are still big problems. A lot of words underwent I-mutation (a form of vowel and diphthong sound shifting) in prehistoric (i.e., before written manuscripts) Old English from its Germanic roots; sometimes, verb stems changed to accomodate this, and sometimes they didn't. In Old English, this wasn't so much a problem, because the pronunciation was almost always clear from the spelling, as long as the vowel length was known (sometimes written, sometimes clear from context).
I-mutations sometimes occur between different forms of a word, giving us a variety of stem changes in verbs, and vowel changes in other words.
Sometimes a very regular ending change in an Old English word has become an irregular spelling, when the spelling or pronunciation changed in one form but not another.
Multiple sound shifts in the language weren't consistently applied to spelling; that's why we have tons of different spellings for the same sound, and multiple sounds that are all written the same way.
If you want to see a fairly predictable but complicated early version of English, look up Old English (you know, Beowulf-era); for a more simplified variant (but having its own odd quirks and a good bit of spelling variation) check out Chaucer's English and classical Middle English.
(I am not a linguist, please correct my ignorance)
I'm guessing that, given some time, many common words will have simpler 'modern' spellings.
Maybe we can use old-style vowel lengthening to distinguish homophones in our speech in the future (would greatly aid foreign english speakers, and since I hear there's more of them than native speakers...), although we don't usually seem to have a problem figuring that out from context (although the fact that there are many more homophones than homographs explains why we are very reluctant to change our written system, as it is a less ambiguous way of recording the language).
For example, weigh might be pronounced with a longer vowel than way and written waay -- fixes the homonym, and fixes the homograph that simplified spelling would give (of course, this is assuming that some homonyms will start to vary in pronunciation, but that's entirely possible, given the number of foreign speakers)
(Or, how about throwing a [j schwa] at the end of a syllable whose spelling ends in an unpronounced gh? weigh -> "way-uh" -- well, maybe not for the more common words...)
Re:Never going to happen (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is this sad? "Thru" is more economical than "through", sounds the same, is in common use, and is unambiguous in meaning. Language should be allowed to evolve.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it makes sense now is not a reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because it makes sense now is not a reason. Things are made unintelligable with time. People attempt to draw distinctions between things and change them subtley. Time compounds the issue. A significant advantage must be shown before doing this. Even simple reality makes things change. China is reforming the written language out of necessity, because becoming literate in classic Chinese takes almost a decade. Latin is easier... Shaving a year or two off of this schedule means more time for real learning. Words are pronounced differently a year from now, in different places, even by people who attend different schools. I wouldn't want people with 'Harvard' accents dictating spelling, I live in Texas. I'm sure people at Harvard would equally hate the idea of someone from Texas like Bush dictating the dictionary.
For example, months in many languages are counted. First Month instead of January, second month instead of February, and so on. This used to be the case in English. But, the start of the year was changed to reflect the solar calendar instead of a lunar calendar, and the months no longer made sense. What was the seventh month of the year, was now the 9th month of the year and so on. The names September, October, November, and December each mean seventh month, eigth month, ninth month, and tenth month respectively. Even though they are in fact the 9th - 12th months.
Adding 'engineered' changes only add to the confusion long term. Not only do people have to deal with tense and style changes, but forcing more changes on top of it only makes problems worse. Words gain meaning with time. This will happen whether we try to temporarily fix it or not.
This is no better than the political correctness debates. A word which may be proper and make sense one year quickly gains meaning in both positive and negative connotations until many are unwilling to use a word. The end result of not accepting this additional meaning is that old written language quickly becomes unintelligible. Forcing change makes the issue worse. The Chinese had riots when they briefly tried switching to the latin alphabet in the 50s.
A big part of the reason the Chinese stopped switching to a phonetic alphabet is it would in many ways destroy their national identity. Mandarin is spoken very differently from Cantonese. But, they largely can understand each others writing. If they had switched to a completely phonetic system, there would be very little tying that nation together. Written Chinese is more like spoken Mandarin from a few hundred years ago. Not even regular Mandarin speakers would be able to read a phonetic version of what was spoken a few years ago.
English is an evolved language. Because of this, it is easy to start but hard to master. It will continue to evolve.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Literacy and spelling (Score:3, Interesting)
It would make learning English an order of magnitude easier (still have our insane conjugations and other grammatical nonsense to overcome - fight, fought, bring, brought, what the hell).
But, dream on... one would still have to learn old spelling to read everything previously written. That's why Esperanto exists; a fresh start.
Man is not a rational animal, but a rationalizing one. We'll still be on soapboxes insisting that "right" (originally sounded like "rikt") be spelled the way the Anglo-Saxons woulda spelled it as the waves rise over the shores and over our heads in that big meltdown a-comin'.
Japanese (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:English (Score:2, Interesting)
A bit off-topic, but this is exactly what's happened to Chinese, at least to a certain degree. Before the Communist Party took over China, people wrote using the "standard system" (which is still being used in Taiwan and Hong Kong today). It is often possible to guess the pronunciation and meaning by just looking at a Chinese character in the standard system. Now in mainland China, the official way to write Chinese is the simplified system, which "requires fewer strokes to write certain components and has fewer synonymous characters"(from the "Chinese language" entry in Wikipedia). Unfortunately IMO it adds much confusion and complexity to the language rather than making it easier to learn. And they fine heavily anyone who use the traditional system in China. However in a way they succeeded in isolating mainland Chinese from Taiwan and ancient Chinese writings, both of which detested by the Communist Party at the beginning of their rule.
In short, it's not a very good idea.
If you want to know more about Chinese language, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language [wikipedia.org].
Re:Or use Kanji (Score:2, Interesting)
to differentiate among the homonyms.
whey isn't necessarily a homonym of way and weigh (above). I'd use what's in the dictionary [reference.com] as the first [listed] pronounciation (hway). Then again, I don't have an accent which most people can detect.
Koreans had the same problem when they went to a phonetic alphabet.
Japanese has two phonetic alphabets: hiragana [wikipedia.org] and katakana [wikipedia.org]. The former for Japanese words, the latter for non-Japanese.
When I studied & learned Japanese & Chinese (together) many years ago (and subsequently lost virtually both of them via severe concussion in a car accident eleven years ago), I found them easier to learn that I think most foreign people woould find English. People wondered how I could do both (and work full time - I couldn't play club soccer any more, learned to juggle - 7 balls two hands, 5 balls, one hand (nowhere the level of Anthony Gatto (wiki page isn't current, BTW - see his web site for small clips of workouts), and discovered shogi [wikipedia.org] and xiang-qi [wikipedia.org]. At that time, all of the books were in the native languageas and I decided to learn the languages.
English is a million rules with a million exceptions. So many words have come from so many other languages and sources, and that creates the complexity.
The rules & exceptions made sense in those languages and they weren't tough to remember. The dropout rate for either language was 50% at fairly regular intervals for all of the classes and semester after semester they had to keep combining classes because people were frying. People asked how I kept them separate and I pointed out throughout all of the time I took the languages, Japanese was MW, and Chinese was TR. During that day, and until after the class, the only language I thought about was for that day, even if I thought I might not be ready for the following day, particularly a tough test. Kanji. People also would refer to drawing characters, I told them to think of writing. Also, when making flashcards, they'd review all of them, over & over. Go through them, remove the ones you guess right, and review and re-review the ones you can't get right, then go back and rebuild the deck to do a full review.
What killed people in Chinese was the four tones and larning to listen for them. (I believe the other tonal language is Vietnamese).
Also, many of the Kanji and Hanyu [wikipedia.org] characters are used in the other language, because the Japanese Kanji is based upon the Hanyu characters for either pronounciation or meaning. The other thing which killed people was not understanding how to dissect the Kanji & Hanyu characters. e.g. The Kanji character for ocean has mother and water in it: the mother of all water is the ocean. House has roof at the top, pig at the bottom. Pigs were kept beneath the floors where the leftover food could be dropped or swept.
I think one of the problems with English for people is they don't understand the roots for many words and have no interest in doing so. This means a lot of rote memorization. Just like juggling, coding, and everything else, break things into their fundamental pieces, then put them together.
Personally, (see Romaji reference above) I thought it was as stupid thing to do. It was learn Romaji for reading & writing along with the verbal|hearing phrases as well as grammar. After that, it was replace Romaji with hiragana, then add katakana, and along the way somewhere, start seeding the process of learning Kanji. Basically, learning Romaji was a waste because it was a throwaway. People were already dropping,
Expand the alphabet - don't just change spellings. (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is that Spanish (and Esperanto, I think) have additional letters in their alphabet that make the sounds that we attempt to make by smooshing letters together in odd formations. "eigh", "ay", etc, all make the "long a" sound, for example. Why don't we use a distinct letter for this sound, and another distinct letter for the "short a" sound? That's how dictionaries do it -- they even already have the symbols worked out. Just look at the pronunciation key.
If this were to happen, I believe that the answer is not in "spelling phonetically" -- at least with the existing alphabet. I believe the answer is to expand the alphabet to include the dictionary's phonetic symbols (or substituting them where appropriate). We'd end up teaching kids 35 symbols instead of 26, but I think that's a hell of a lot easier than teaching them myriad spelling exceptions, double letters, phonetic groupings, etc.
The only real drawback I see is that the alphabet song would need a new tune.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:2, Interesting)
Simplified spelling rebuttal (Score:3, Interesting)
===================
I am one of those people, and it may be luck or early grounding, who does not find it difficult to spell in the dictionary fashion, and I have some grave concerns about the concept of freespeling.
First of all, as someone who uses technical documentation every day, I believe that freespeling will introduce ambiguities. If I cannot rely on people always to spell the same word in the same way, how can I be sure that they actually mean the word I think they mean?
Secondly, it is my experience that freely spelled words are not, in fact, easier to read. I am not an educationalist, but I understand from limited reading that when one reads, one does not, in fact, construct the sound of the word by translating the page letters into phonetics. Rather, you learn the shape of a word, and the pattern 'yacht' is read and understood for its meaning without some intermediate step of working out that ach has the sound of a short o in this context. Dyslexia is an imperfection in this mechanism, and I don't think freespeling is going to help.
I distinctly remember, as a child, reading the word 'Colonel' and not knowing that it was the same word as the military rank, though I did know that word. It wouldn't have helped to have had it spelled Kernel, though, because then the abbreviation Col. throughout literature would have been obscured. That brings me to a third point - if freespeling becomes widely adopted, people unfamiliar with the dictionary spellings will find it much harder to read the vast literary legacy which has arisen since the standardization of spelling. (And yes, I know that might have been standardisation!). I fear that we shall be in a situation analogous to the everyday reader trying to get to grips with Chaucer, or even Shakespere in his original spellings. It's not easy to do; at least I can't do it.
I am sure that Shakesperian spellings are a product of pronunciation at the time of writing - Shakespere wrote 'dye' for the word we write as 'die' (or I do, in any event) because he pronounced it with two vowel sounds - dy-e. Will freespeling track the changes in pronunciation? If so, for which national or regional accent? In Bristol (UK), the speech pattern is often to add a terminal L sound to words ending in a vowel - should it be acceptable for Bristolians to write 'good ideal' when they want to convey 'good idea'? Or read Uncle Remus, written gloriously but phonetically in the speech pattern of a US slave at the turn of the nineteenth century. It's freely spelled, but it needs a good deal of intellectual effort to extract the meanings.
Finally, I am concerned about information retrieval. At the moment, much information on the World-Wide Web, and in electronic document repositories is automatically indexed word by word. (This is on the false premise that the words in a document tell you what it is about). If words are freely spelled, then the task of retrieval becomes so much harder. To find documents about 'building', one will need to search for 'bilding', too, and in many cases you won't even be able to guess how someone with an accent very different to your own might have spelled the word you are seeking.
I shall continue to correct spellings wherever I think that an error is a barrier to understanding.
=================
I'd also like to add that the Austrians attempted a simplified spelling of German, contrary to the article stating that German is already simply spelled, and have reverted in considerable measure. Sorry, no citation for that.
I agree; the alphabet is crap (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a native English speaker, and I told my Spanish teacher how hard that Spanish was to read and write all the time
But, seriously, our alphabet does make things a pain. I'm trying to think of a scenario where the letter 'x' is actually something other than a replacement for 'ks' or 'z'. And then there's the confusion of what 'c' is supposed to sound like. There's a whole paragraph in the appendix of The Silmarillion clarifying how it's supposed to work, because you can't guess not knowing the word (ie, to figure out the pronounciation of a made up word using the English alphabet, you need to ask the person who made it up).
Re:Expand the alphabet - don't just change spellin (Score:3, Interesting)
An example might be some of the sounds coming from Welsh such as the double "d" which is not terribly close to modern pronunciation of "D". It was probably an outgrowth of the Anglo-Saxon thorn which, although it looks like the greek letter for "pi" is actually a semi-hard "th" sound.
Welsh, by many accounts, is the only language that can correctly and phonetically spell a sneeze.
Re:Expand the alphabet - don't just change spellin (Score:2, Interesting)
What you are missing here is that you will break nearly every computer or embbedded application ever written.
There is too much code out there that believes that all characters can be displayed using 7-bit ASCII chars.
We are constantly having fun (I am working in Germany) with umlauts and other special chars that users enter into our database application and they are not even remotely aware of the crap they are typing.
And while talking to english or american programmers I found this out: they are not aware of the fact, that it might be problematic to store user input in strings that consist of signed 8-bit chars and doing integer math like greater or lesser comparisons on the chars.
As far as we IT guys are concerned 7-bit ascii is enough, maybe we could even drop the uppercase chars ?