I'm Alan Mole, President of the American Literacy Council, responding to your comments about our picketing the Spelling Bee. Since there were so many postings (116+) and most were negative, perhaps you'll forgive me if I take a little more space to reply than is customary.
Very briefly this is our position:
ALC actually likes the Bee, since it's a good way to make a hard subject fun for kids. But where the Bee glorifies the difficulty of spelling, we think it should be easy. Where the Bee finds the one student in ten million (literally!) who can master it, we want to make it logical so everyone can master it and millions more can read.
We have 22% functional illiteracy in America, some 40 million adults. In Sweden it's 7%, Germany 10% and Norway 12%. All those countries reformed their spelling, some several times in the last century. And their low illiteracy *is* due to their spelling. A paper in Science reports that Italians have just as much dyslexia as English speakers, as measured by trouble repeating syllables and by brain scans, yet there is far less trouble reading. The paper concludes that the difference is due to the spelling systems. (Italian has honest and phonetic spelling.)
Illiteracy often leads to poverty, desperation and crime. The USA has 2.1 million prisoners behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the whole world. Is this due to spelling and illiteracy? Well, 60% of our prisoners are illiterate -- judge for yourself.
Most European countries have reformed their spelling and lowered their illiteracy. It can be done. And it could be painless here in America because computers can transform documents, to or from reformed spelling, in seconds. So no one would be forced to read or write in reformed, nor is it likely that newspapers would change for a century.
But as a gradual start we want to take some dyslexics who have failed every effort to learn reading in regular spelling, and teach them in reformed. Perhaps some day one will hand you a note in SoundSpel. Would you deign to read it, knowing it made that man literate? Could you read it?
Well, SoundSpel drops silent letters ("no" not "know") and it spells long vowels (AEIOU) as AE (as in steak), EE (as in meet), IE (as in tried) and so on. Heer's a sampl. It is a litl shoking at ferst but being fonetic it's eezy with sum practis. Wuud U tri to reed it, to help a dislexic? To fiend out mor, see www.spellingsociety.org or www.americanliteracy.com/alc6.htm
In answer to typical comments:
1. No, we do not want to reform grammar, and I know of no one among us who likes Ebonics. Spelling is not grammar. Most of the nations of Europe have reformed their spelling; none that I know of their grammar. Norway reformed spelling four times in the last century but never adopted Norbonics.
2. Yes, it can be done, and is not a silly impossible proposal. Just as Arabic numerals replaced Roman numerals (a vastly inferior system requiring a university education to learn to add and subtract), just as Standard Time replaced every hamlet having its own time based on local noon, just as Sweden and Norway and Germany reformed their spelling, so we can reform ours.
3. "Reformers just want to coddle poor widdle kiddies, who should have to learn as we did." Other countries fixed their spelling to make it easy, barely harder than learning to count, which is the way it should be. They have far less illiteracy (7% Sweden VS 22% USA, 20% UK, 17% Canada...) Their children almost all become fluent in one or more foreign languages, while the U.S. performance is pathetic in this area. Of course it takes them two weeks to learn to read and write while it takes us two years. (A third of the first six years of grade school is spent on readin' and writin'.) There are far better things for children to learn than our corrupt spelling. Do reformers want to make it better for children? Yes. But why would *you* be against that? Do you hate children? Do like polio? ("I had to face that risk so they should too. And let's bring back diphtheria!")
4. "Everyone can learn to spell!" Yes -- in Germany. But here literally ten million children compete in the Bee and 9,999,999 misspell a word and drop out, before one is declared champion. If you think one in ten million is everyone you must have taken New Math.
5. "No responsible person would champion spelling reform." In 1908 most responsible people thought it would happen. Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Tennyson, Shaw and hundreds of college presidents, even the NEA (then more society than union) all vigorously supported it.
6. "Get a life!"-- Oh, I think T.R. had one.
These comments should have convinced you, yet somehow I suspect I can look forward to a vigorous debate. Well, it should be interesting...
Alan
Man, people would picket an effing rock if they thought it would give them some TV face time.
Go away.
Quickly.
Or I shall be forced to dine upon you.
Quick -- look out the window. Is there a full moon today???
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u ned two bee moore care full wif yur spillin.
bhumpp
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s," and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c," "y" and "x"--bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez--tu riplais "ch," "sh," and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
======================================================== So, I think I'll pass on mucking with the language. We have high illeteracy because we have an educational system that embraced "WHOLE LANGUAGE" and dumbed down an entire generation or two of our population... this combined with a system that believes a childs "self esteem" is more important than education further dumbs them down. Sorry the illiteracy is not a fault of the language... its a fault of the system that has been charged with teaching it.
And, might I ask a favor of you? When you get spelling fixed, can you take on the issue of gravity? Its damned annoying and unfair that I keep spilling coffee and other beverages on the front of my shirt in the morning. I mail my elected officials about this almost every week but nothing is done.
Hello!
Rubbish, it's a contest and as such is designed to be challenging.
If you want to work to increase literacy then do so, but don't do it on the back of an already popular and successful event. That's just pathetic and is considered coat tail riding.
Have some damn pride and succeed on your own.
By the way, your soundspel crap is just that, crap.
If the next generation can only read and write in this "new" method, all the current books printed in what is now standard English would be a foreign language. Are all the books going to be translated? Or, just a select few? Since they would have to be translated, perhaps they could be modified a little, you know, get rid of things people should not really know.
If I was paranoid, I would think you and your group had other motives.
"Moleymoleymoleymoley....MOLE! MOOOOOLE!"
Maybe they are illiterate because they are stupid, not uneducated. Or they are undisciplined. But the schools want to "mainstream" them which means they get a subpar education and no discipline. Create schools for the idiots and give them the best education AND discipline they can have.
If we can conclude that 60% of prisoners are illiterate and that leads to prison, what can we conclude from the statistic that 85% of prisoners are Black or Latino? Maybe that statistics are sometimes meaningless and make our heads hurt.
In the UK, there are so many different ways to pronounce a word depending on your region and class - some are wildly different phonetically. I'm sure the States is similar. I'm curious as to how you would work out which particular accent to base your phonetic spelling on?
I noticed that no English-speaking countries, i.e. England, Scotland and Ireland, were mentioned. What's the literacy rate in the UK? I'll bet it's better than here. What about Canada?
Why can't you people just admit that it's the horrible government school systems here that are keeping the population illiterate. Also unable to do basic math, little knowledge of history or science, etc. It isn't the language, it's the "skool sistem."
Inspector Clouseau's rules of speech (How to speak Clouseauese):
Rule #1: Any word with a 'ah', 'oh', or 'oo' sound, you must add a short 'eh' sound before it.Examples: bomb = "behm", phone = 'pheone', room = 'rheum'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rule #2: Any word with a 'uh' sound, you must replace it with a 'ih' sound.
Ex. monkey = 'minkey.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rule #3: Any word with a long 'ay' or 'ee' sound, replace it with a short 'ah' sound, but don't apply rule #1.
Ex. crazy = 'crahzy', repair = 'rahpair'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rule #4: For a past tense word ending with an 'ed', you must split the word in the wrong place or accent the wrong syllable.
Ex. solved = 'sol-ved', received = 'rah-ceived'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Review: "Yeuw have rah-ceived a bimp". Can you see the application of rules #1,2,3 and 4?.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rule #5: To reflect anger or dissatifaction with an object, animal or person, add the word "swine" before it.
Ex. 'swine' moat, 'swine' parrot, 'swine' maid.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rule #6: If you are ever presented with information or facts you are unaware of, immediately respond as if you already had knowledge of it.
Ex. "Yes, I kneuw that... I kneuw that". (remember to apply rule #1 to the word 'know')
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rule #7: Any person who does not understand a word you are saying must be referred to as a fool or an idiot.
Ex. "Yes, a rheumm... that is what I have been saying you idiot!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rule #8: Any reference to Kato must include the word "yellow". (Even though this may be considered politically incorrect, it was used affectionately)
Ex. "Kato my little 'yellow' friend, I'm 'heum!"'. (rule#1 again to the word 'home').
Got any sites for any of this junk? Never heard of "spelling reform" and I'd like to know when any European country supposedly did it. Last time I saw French written you still didn't pronounce half the letters, and I took six years of German which was nevera language that believed in silent letters but also isn't a language that believes in short easy to spell words. So that's two major languages and a few more European countries that apparently never "refromed" their spelling.
I'm one of the worst spellers I know, but I don't blame the language, I blame myself for always being in a hurry and never taking the time to get good at spelling, and I still manage to do lots of reading, have a good job, and never go to jail. I don't think literacy and spelling are as tightly tied as you're projecting, there's a difference between knowing what the word is when you see it written and writing it properly. You can be good at the former (functionally literate) and stink at the later.