Spell gud? No wai!

Protesters target National Spelling Bee

Quote :

WASHINGTON – The nation's capital always draws its share of protesters, picketing for causes ranging from health care reform to immigration policy.
But spelling bee protesters? They're out here, too.
Four peaceful protesters, some dressed in full-length black and yellow bee costumes, represented the American Literacy Council and the London-based [color:14c3=#366388 !important][color:14c3=#366388 !important]Spelling [color:14c3=#366388 !important]Society and stood outside the Grand Hyatt on Thursday, where the Scripps National Spelling Bee is being held. Their message was short: Simplify the way we spell words.

"Cause learning's too haaaaaard!"

Quote :

According to literature distributed by the group, it makes more sense for "fruit" to be spelled as "froot," "slow" should be "slo," and "heifer" — a word spelled correctly during the first oral round of the bee Thursday by Texas competitor Ramesh Ghanta — should be "hefer."

So the kids are spelling the words correctly, and the adults can't be arsed?

Doesn't surprise me. You guys already simplified spelling once before.

Yes, there's a "u" in colour. You guys took it out because it was too hard and you don't pronounce it. Why not dumb it down further?

EileenK98 wrote:

Protesters target National Spelling Bee

Quote :

WASHINGTON – The nation's capital always draws its share of protesters, picketing for causes ranging from health care reform to immigration policy.
But spelling bee protesters? They're out here, too.
Four peaceful protesters, some dressed in full-length black and yellow bee costumes, represented the American Literacy Council and the London-based [color=#366388][color=#366388 !important][color=#366388 !important]Spelling [color:b21f=#366388 !important]Society and stood outside the Grand Hyatt on Thursday, where the Scripps National Spelling Bee is being held. Their message was short: Simplify the way we spell words.

"Cause learning's too haaaaaard!"

Bolding added for clarification.

ZoZo wrote:

Doesn't surprise me. You guys already simplified spelling once before.

Yes, there's a "u" in colour. You guys took it out because it was too hard and you don't pronounce it. Why not dumb it down further?

Not on this side of the Atlantic, there isn't. Hasn't been since you lost the Revolutionary War.

ZoZo wrote:

Doesn't surprise me. You guys already simplified spelling once before.

Yes, there's a "u" in colour. You guys took it out because it was too hard and you don't pronounce it. Why not dumb it down further?

Now that I don't mind so much, but I cringe when I see an "s" replaced with a "z".

Those were a series of small-scale changes through the nineteenth century. Around the turn of the twentieth, there were some fairly significant movements for massive simplifications, with changes to the alphabet (one of the most famous being proposed by George Bernard Shaw).

While English spelling if often illogical and redundant, major reform is simply impractical. It would require an international board with every major English-speaking nation signing on -- and staying on when the board has to select one accent in all the world to use in forming the template for vowels -- and a massive financial outlay to replace, well, pretty much everything with writing. Considering that Americans couldn't even be convinced to go metric...

Raine & Zo:

I may be missing the sarcasm (I'm bloody tired), but the major changes in AE (the examples you mentioned among them - the dropped silent "u" and the "z" replacing the "s" in some words) weren't at all about language simplification (like, for example, the fucking German spelling reform, which is a complete failure afaik), but about conscious distancing from the British and the remainder of the commonwealth. Check out some materials on Webster.

As for the Spelling Society, I've heard about them in some of my classes (not so much about the ALC, even though I think they were mentioned once or twice too). They may have some linguists among them, but the thing is that these people don't seem to look at examples of other nations trying to do this kind of thing and failing miserably. Again, German Spelling Reform. Many Germans, myself included, knew exactly how to spell stuff before it was enacted, and now no one does anymore except for the goddamn tools who thought this crap up. English may have some confusing spellings, but changing them is always, ALWAYS gonna cause even more confusion.

Honestly, I even hate it when I see words 'creatively' misspelled in slogans or names for products, like "nite" for "night" and so forth. Or numbers used for words, like "4" for "four". I just find it insulting to my intelligence.

Saleha wrote:

the fucking German spelling reform, which is a complete failure afaik

And a pain in the arse if you're trying to learn it. Quietly taking the ß out back and shooting it is one thing, but chopping bits off and sticking half of them back in backwards is just plain wrong. And it's not as though printed literature from the long-gone and ancient time of 1996 is particularly hard to find.

This whole thing isn't exactly new: people have been advocating for the simplification of various words for centuries. (Popular candidates include words like 'thru' and 'shud', IIRC.) To most of the English speaking world, though, it looks more like 'spelling like a goddamn four-year-old' than 'simplification'. ... Not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, though.

Incidentally—and correct me if I'm wrong—I think the French did some simplification-type thing back in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries that actually worked. The fact remains, though, that English is very much not a phonetic language, and changing a few words to be more phonetic will only cause more confusion. (That, and the fact that pronunciations change naturally over time—or did in the past—and what is 'simplified' now might not be fifty years down the line.)

Sutremaine wrote:

Saleha wrote:

the fucking German spelling reform, which is a complete failure afaik

And a pain in the arse if you're trying to learn it. Quietly taking the ß out back and shooting it is one thing, but chopping bits off and sticking half of them back in backwards is just plain wrong. And it's not as though printed literature from the long-gone and ancient time of 1996 is particularly hard to find.

The German spelling reform is a fucking crime. I'm very much against violence, but every time I see Brennnesseltee with three n or Delfin with an f or, god forbid, Stängel with an ä, I want to shoot someone. Preferably the assholes who thought it was a good idea to pass this reform.

A language should NEVER be violated like that just because a few idiots are too stupid or lazy to learn to spell correctly.

Adagio wrote:

This whole thing isn't exactly new: people have been advocating for the simplification of various words for centuries. (Popular candidates include words like 'thru' and 'shud', IIRC.)

See, "shud" for "should" makes absolutely no sense to me, since "shud" looks like it should be pronounced "s-HUD", sounding a bit like "hut" but with a d instead of a t. "Should" has more of an "oo" sound.

LEENY YOU BUFFOON, YOU SPELLED "SPELL" WITH AN UNNECESSARY L!!!!

Shisaiga wrote:

The German spelling reform is a fucking crime. I'm very much against violence, but every time I see Brennnesseltee with three n or Delfin with an f or, god forbid, Stängel with an ä, I want to shoot someone. Preferably the assholes who thought it was a good idea to pass this reform.

A language should NEVER be violated like that just because a few idiots are too stupid or lazy to learn to spell correctly.

Emotionally, I am right on board with you, but there have been spelling reforms before and the old spellings now seem weird to us- such as Brod and Thür- and people at the time were probably just as upset, so I just spell the way I know how to and keep my mouth shut.

You know, a phonetic alphabet wouldn't really help people who can't spell, because they usually also can't pronounce words correctly, either.

e: Yeah, the Romanian spelling reform didn't really work out either.

Adagio wrote:

Incidentally—and correct me if I'm wrong—I think the French did some simplification-type thing back in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries that actually worked.

The Irish language was simplified/standardised around World War 2, with a lot of silent/superfluous consonants dropped. Of course at that time hardly anyone spoke or read the fucking thing and you're also talking about a population of a few million as opposed to the populations of Germany or France.

Sutremaine wrote:

Saleha wrote:

the fucking German spelling reform, which is a complete failure afaik

And a pain in the arse if you're trying to learn it. Quietly taking the ß out back and shooting it is one thing, but chopping bits off and sticking half of them back in backwards is just plain wrong. And it's not as though printed literature from the long-gone and ancient time of 1996 is particularly hard to find.

But... But I like ß.
Can... Can I keep it?

Well okay, but I have to warn you it's not housebroken.

Verandering wrote:

But... But I like ß.
Can... Can I keep it?

We still have it. It's just limited to the double S after a long vowel (as in Fuß) whereas after a short vowel (as in Fluss) it's now a double S.

I know, makes perfect sense.

Just saying, but this reminds me of something that I just read on Not Always Right.

Raine wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

Doesn't surprise me. You guys already simplified spelling once before.

Yes, there's a "u" in colour. You guys took it out because it was too hard and you don't pronounce it. Why not dumb it down further?

Now that I don't mind so much, but I cringe when I see an "s" replaced with a "z".

Wait.
...I've been spelling these the British way?! That would explain why my spellcheck goes bonkers. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

The recent Portuguese spelling reform was pretty minor, but even then we didn't manage to get Portugal to sign it yet, making it a little bit on the "not useful" side.

Ah, incidentally, I've been wondering: are there significant grammatical differences between Brazilian Portuguese and, um, continental Portuguese?

(For instance, you can tell immediately whether someone's speaking a South American variant of Spanish as opposed to Castillian Spanish, because they have the tendency to switch adjectives around so they're closer to English. Like, a Mexican person might say, "Una espléndida conversación," whilst a Spaniard would be more likely to say, "Una conversación espléndida." They both mean the same thing, but the grammar makes it immediately obvious where each speaker is from.)