A Call For Simpler Spelling

AP ^ | 7/6/06 | Staff

[Millee]

When "say," "they" and "weigh" rhyme, but "bomb," "comb" and "tomb" don't, wuudn't it maek mor sens to spel wurdz the wae thae sound?

Those in favor of simplified spelling say children would learn faster and illiteracy rates would drop. Opponents say a new system would make spelling even more confusing.

Eether wae, the consept has yet to capcher th publix imajinaeshun.

It's been 100 years since Andrew Carnegie helped create the Simplified Spelling Board to promote a retooling of written English and President Theodore Roosevelt tried to force the government to use simplified spelling in its publications. But advocates aren't giving up.

They even picket the national spelling bee finals, held every year in Washington, costumed as bumble bees and hoisting signs that say "Enuf is enuf but enough is too much" or "I'm thru with through."

Thae sae th bee selebraets th ability of a fue stoodents to master a dificult sistem that stumps meny utherz hoo cuud do just as wel if speling were simpler.

"It's a very difficult thing to get something accepted like this," says Alan Mole, president of the American Literacy Council, which favors an end to "illogical spelling." The group says English has 42 sounds spelled in a bewildering 400 ways.

Americans doen't aulwaez go for whut's eezy — witnes th faeluer of th metric sistem to cach on. But propoenents of simpler speling noet that a smatering of aulterd spelingz hav maed th leep into evrydae ues.

Doughnut also is donut; colour, honour and labour long ago lost the British "u" and the similarly derived theatre and centre have been replaced by the easier-to-sound-out theater and center.

[Still Thinking]

Actually, it is. It is just difficult for us because we have always used the American/English system, but SI units make a lot more sense when one is converting from one unit to another.

But you do a lot more with a system of units than unit conversions, and everything else is easier in English. And I think many people can, in fact, do whatever conversions they have to do in their head, even in English.

I say this as someone who has been immersed in and completely comfortable with both systems.

[kittymyrib]

We have changed English drastically since the days of Chaucer and the King James Bible. A computer sould be able to clean up the archaic spellings we still have, and it would be another improvement for literacy. There is no way that "way" and "weigh" should sound alike, not to mention "wood" and "would." These relics from the dark ages need to be excised from modern English.

[Jille]

anybody talk about leet speak? That's fun.

[LongElegantLegs]

Stop damaging my self esteem!!

[toddlintown]

ebonics, part II.