... English Spelling Reformation ...

Or how to Avoid all the Illogical and Idiosyncrasies of English Spelling

... Recommend this page to a friend.

All right, we all know that spelling in the English language can be very difficult, especially for people learning the English as a second language. Even I, born into the language, have to depend upon a dictionary (dictionary? what's that?), I mean, a spell checker, like the one I have here in "Word". Well, what can we do about it? Suggestion: A large amount of typing errors are caused by 3 reasons:

1. Carelessness
2. Spelling differences across countries (e.g. color/colour)
3. Nonnative English speakers trying to cope with illogical spelling rules

I now strongly suggest we should try to simplify the language. To try and do this in one attempt could be disastrous, so I think we should phase it in over a 5 year period. My suggestions are as follows, and I hope you will agree.

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will reseive this news with joy.

Also, the hard "c" will be replased with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. We will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgraful, and they would go.

By the forth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v".

During ze fifz year ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", so Soup will then be known as Sup and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz year, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trobls or difikultis and evrivum vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

MY AMAZING SPEL CHEQUER
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong or write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose before two long
And eye can put the error rite
It's rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
am sure your pleased two no
It's letter prefect all the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.


A BRIEF DISCUSSION ON ENGLISH SPELLING

Spelling is becoming more and more a challenge with students today. I'm sure there are many reasons but one must be the many instant messaging online and texting with cell phones. Another reason is the very nature of the English language.

Why does the English language have so many words that are difficult to spell? Maybe the most important reason besides little attention to spelling in schools is that English has 1,100 different ways to spell its 44 separate sounds. No other language has a discrepancy like that. Some of the results of this are:

  1. Words that have the same sounds but are spelled differently.

  2. Words that contain letters that have nothing to do with the way the words are pronounced.

  3. Words that contain silent letters; that is, letters that must be included when you write the words even though they are not pronounced.

  4. Spelling rules that have lists of exceptions - words that do not follow the rules and thus must be memorized separately.

This situation exists because English has adopted words from many other languages, or at least has partially adopted them. Very often, English has accepted the new words with their original spellings, but has not always adopted the original pronunciations, or pronunciations were changed by common habit or political expediency, but the original spellings were never changed to match the new pronunciations.

Surfing the internet, I find this gem of an ... English Spelling ... site. I'm sure with some googling by you, you'll find other sources of help ... Question: Should "googling:" be capitalized? I don't think so; not if it's become an acceptable English verb. And why wasn't I smart enough to invest in Google? I keep using it.

Nuf, wee rtrn to our ... Nvgatr ... it's z hart uv ths wbsit.