National Spelling Bee Brings Out Protesters Who R Thru With Through

The Wall Street Journal ^ | May 30, 2008 | Rebecca Dana

[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.

[Don Corleone]

A fyoo duhzen ambishuhss intelectchooals, a handful ov British skool teechers and wuhn rokit siuhntist ar triing to chang the way we spel.

These idiots would have had an orgasm reading the old (Col.McCormick) Chicago Tribune. You old time Chicagoans remember don't you?

[Eccl 10:2]

“Many schools now have geography bees. :)”

At least that helps when invading other countries.

8^)

[wastedyears]

Ah, that would explain Aleks.

[raybbr]

Ah, that would explain Aleks.

The sad part is that we call him Aleksander, we introduce him as Aleksander and we tell everyone to call him Aleksander but, like typical 'tards in the U.S., they MUST shorten his name because they are too lazy to call him by his full name. So, the people in the school have finagled the name Aleks and he seems to have accepted it.

It really fries me that people can't simply follow a parent's wishes.

[steveo]

If someone were to give out a free cure for cancer, some idiot would be protesting.

[Flightdeck]

“Cite me one case where the use of site words is institutionalized in plain sight.”

Are you asking about your screen name??

[Titan Magroyne]

self ping

[Titan Magroyne]

The irony of “phonetics” is its spelling. Maybe ole Sam Clemens came up with it! :-D

[Question_Assumptions]

Spelling phonetically introduces all sorts of problems into the written language such as phonetic “accents” and slang pronunciations.

While I agree, the problem is that the standard English spellings started to get fixed while people were still speaking Middle English rather than Modern English and while people writing grammar and spelling books spoke Latin and introduced forced Latinisms into English grammar and spelling. There is a good overview of the effects on spelling here. For example, "A gentle knight was once a gentleh kanicht." "But once upon a time (tim), some was pronounced som-eh." "Doute was not allowed to stand since in Latin it was dubitum; so it became doubt."

So I think it would make some sense to reform English spelling to remove the letters that nobody pronounces any longer (and in some cases never pronounced in English) and get rid of the silly grammar rules grafted on from Latin (e.g., the idea that splitting infinitives is wrong because you can't in Latin) and then go from there.

[AnimalLover]

bump

[mvpel]

He said that spelling bees are for the most part an English only event, since it wouldn't occur to non-English language speakers to make a contest out of spelling, since it is rarely challenging in any language other than English.

In Russia, I gather, they have contests on the radio for proper grammatical formation of large numbers.

[mvpel]

It really fries me that people can't simply follow a parent's wishes.

We observed something similar - our Russian son called us "Mama" and "Papa" from the beginning, but after a little too long in pre-school he came home saying "Mommy."

[spectre]

http://www.playhangman.com/

[Drawsing]

Note to everybody: “Looser” is pronounced with a hard “s” sound and is what happens when you untie your shoes, unzip your pants, take off your tie, or take a laxative. “Loser” is a person who tends to fail at everything.

[metesky]

Ben Franklin and Noah Webster tried it too. How’d it work out?

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

Spelling reform is currently enjoying a renaissance

Actually, tenured spelling Luddites are the ones enjoying. Renaissance Men and Women need to step up and thwack these fascist faddists about the head and shoulders with a series of unabridged dictionaries and thesauri.



From post 46 it appears that raybbr has quite a perceptive six year old with a genius for visual counterpropaganda (grin) ... (The kid gets it!)







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[Mr. Brightside]

Are they series?

[DieHard the Hunter]

That is classic! Thanks for the ping!

“Poor little fish is Chomp!” — there’s a new tagline in there somewhere. Thanks, Aleks.

[Popman]

Anybody who would protest a spelling bee needs to arrested for stupidity or mental deficiency.

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

If the argument for this type of spelling can be boiled down to the literalness being an advantage, why is not the literalness of basic arithmetic instantly grasped?

Hint: If it ain’t tot, it ain’t lurnt.