Posted on 05/30/2008 7:29:11 AM PDT by MissouriConservative
A fyoo duhzen ambishuhss intelectchooals, a handful ov British skool teechers and wuhn rokit siuhntist ar triing to chang the way we spel.
They are the leaders of the spelling-reform movement, a passionate but sporadic 800-year-old campaign to simplify English orthography. In its long and failure-ridden history, the movement has tried to convince an indifferent public of the need for a spelling system based on pronunciation.
Reformers, including Mark Twain, Charles Darwin and Theodore Roosevelt, argued that phonetic spellings would make it easier for children, foreigners and adults with learning disabilities to read and write. For centuries, few listened, and the movement, exhausted by its own rhetoric and disputes within its ranks, sputtered out. It's back.
Spelling reform is currently enjoying a renaissance in the U.S. and Britain. At a time when young people are inventing their own shorthand for email and text messages, the reformers see a fresh opportunity 2 convert people 2 the cause.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
This is simply not true. A large number of the children with learning disabilities that I work with have little to no phonics skills and are dependent upon the development of sight word vocabulary to learn how to read and write. Using a phonics based system would not help, but would certainly hinder their progress.
I’d hate to be the parent of a child who found this out the hard way. All it takes is for one child to observe the game in progress and claim they feel threatened, then it’s “Katie, bar the door!” And children are never vindictive, are they?
In her method, she used an entirely different form of notation based on numbers and dashes to represent fingers on the strings and length of notes. In fact, the method didn't even use any common musical terms. This was to be used for at least a year or more. By the time the students got to reading real musical notation, they had no idea what to do with it. My argument against that method is that if you are going to teach children some sort of notation, you should probably teach them the one the rest of the world uses.
As my former college adviser once said, "Kids are young. They aren't dumb."
We're dumbing down our society if we continue allowing the least common denominator to decide how we live.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not jumping on this band wagon do “dumb-down” our way of spelling, but it is interesting how the human mind can read even horribly misspelled words, and do so quite efficiently.
This floated around the internet awhile back.
Cna yuo raed tihs?
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
Why would someone want to destroy such a great and fascinating language?
National Spelling Bee Brings Out Protesters Who R Thru With Through
In the world of Architectural Drafting (construction blue prints) we've been using 'Thru' at least since the 1970's.
There isn't a lot of extra room on a 42"x30" print for notes so anything that can be abbreviated, is. This still holds true even with CAD. You can only make the font size so small before its useless in the field (construction site).
But for Formal / Proper use in English spelling .. fugetaboutit. (/s)
NO to Ebonics and NO to 'Thru'.
Please see Romalda Spalding’s “The Writing Road to Reading”. English is overwhelmingly phonetic if you are actually taught the phonemes and the phonograms that represent them. 70 phonograms (letters and letter combinations) and 30 usage and punctuation rules.
100 little facts and you can read, write, spell and speak the English language. Most people think English isn’t phonetic because they have never been taught the full code and the history behind it.
Instead they’ve learned a mishmash of various sight reading methods with a little bit of phonics and think spelling is impossible and illogical.
Miseducation at it’s best.
Mark Twain had a way of waiting until everyone was in bed and then farting under the covers. (So to speak...)
Hooray! I would also like to nominate the letter C for extinction from the alphabet. It serves no great purpose and wouldn’t be missed by anyone under the age of 30.
Speling reform is short-sited. We wud loos haf duh meenings we hav left.
That’s hilarious!
I respectfully disagree on the basis of the lifelong benefits of regimen; for instance, my dad taught me to spell so that I could write and in the process of spelling and writing, I learned to read; from there I went on to devise a way to keep these new tools organized so that they were always at hand and, in so doing I developed the ability to place an imaginary blackboard on the inner wall of my mind upon which I could draw, write, dissect and assemble any number of images as clearly as though chalk were in hand.
I went on to place all the choice pieces of my arsenal in boxes kept alongside this board in smaller boxes inside the larger boxes until I have now filled so many corners of my mind that stray fragments have begun to spill all about the floor.
Sometimes the more elusive and light-slippery of these take flight and flit from far to for naught, but time and patience and forebearance rewards as the errant arrive all tuckered but told - at last.
Twain had the greatest ability to write as though his hand was connected directly to his ear.
Cite me one case where the use of site words is institutionalized in plain sight.
In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.
Mixingly of adverb and adjective with verb become noun, I hold no object to a regimen of consistently regularized spelling. Object, do I, to those spellings which are zealous defying reasonable attempts to write them soundingly.
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