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To: Spellfix
The English language is the result of the merging of at least 3 languages (Saxon, Danish, Norman French) and significant inclusion from Latin and Greek. Your proposal eliminates the history of our language from the language. Why don't you start your own simpler version of English for the lazy and call it Pig English. Oodany Uklay.

PS What are you going to do about the damn English who accent the wrong syllables?

140 posted on 07/11/2004 12:20:46 PM PDT by FreedomSurge
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To: FreedomSurge
>The English language is the result of the merging of at least 3 languages (Saxon, Danish, Norman French) and significant inclusion from Latin and Greek. Your proposal eliminates the history of our language from the language.

Is there one person in a million who gushes over finding a word stem that is Danish instead of Saxon? Or who cares? Scholars already look up most words in the dictionary to find their origins; looking up a few more won't hurt them. But every day there are forty million Americans who can't read and suffer greatly for that, and making our spelling honest will really help them.

Tradition is a similar reason not to change. England used that one as a reason to keep primogenitor and a host of other bad laws. Americans won the Revolution and exulted at being able to junk them, to start over and do things right. Tom Paine wrote "We have it in our power to begin the world anew..."

The British had a monetary system reflecting a lot of history too.(Aye, what a night it was when the King made this up! Never was a man so drunk, Never!) It was a little unhandy for calculations tho. 4 farthings was a penny, 12 pence was a shilling, 20 shillings was a pound, and 21 shillings was a guinea. (Now tell me quick, I give you a five pound note for a bill of 2 guineas, 19 shillings, 11 pence 3 farthings. What's the right change? Can you calculate it in five minutes? Can you do it in your head, or will you need pencil and paper?)

America adopted the decimal Dollar. (Change from a five for $2.97? Easy!) England stuck to their silly system and probably gave the same reasons you all do for keeping spelling unchanged -- Sacred Tradition, King Ug did it, *I* had to suffer so make the kids do it too, Change is impossible, Ha Ha, your system should be called Lazy-Pig-money!

They finally gave it up in 1971. Children got decimal pounds right away, but lots of old people had real trouble with 100 pence to the pound. Or said they did.

Bad systems *can* be changed. Changing them is very American. Just because the Picts never bathed is no reason we shouldn't. And if you don't want to smell like a Druid, why would you want to spell like one?
142 posted on 07/13/2004 4:59:11 PM PDT by Spellfix
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