Interesting newsbit below about the renewed push to spell words in English the way that we say them.

This is of course not new, and while it might help to change some spellings of words to make them more make sense, I think at this point in the evolution of the language it will just make things harder if everything is revamped. For ESL students and beginning readers/writers, the true phonics based spelling make a lot of things easier. However, books etc. would all have to be reprinted and everyone would have to learn how to read/write all over again! Don't forget the look-and-say readers [myself included] who never learned to read and write the phonics way, but by memorizing how words looked. In my opinion, children should be taught both ways of reading as together they help with fluency and speed.

Now to another point I'd like to make that the newsbit forgets...

The way English is spoken now does not match the way the words are said because the way that we pronounce words has mutated and evolved from what it used to be. English is a mixture and mutation of several languages including German, French, Spanish, Welsh, aboriginal UK languages and Latin just to name a few. Over the centuries, we have changed the way we highlight and or pronounce letters, and have undoubtedly added a lot more variations of the vowel sounds. Knife for example now has the silent "k" that used to not be silent. The word "the" has also changed to have more of a "da" pronounciation, rendering the "h" in the word to just be totally out of the picture

Another bubble to the mix: while the English language has slowly changed from the Canterbury Tales version, I believe the evolution of how we pronounce English is moving even faster with the rise of musical styles such as hip hop and rap. Today, "the" is defininitely pronounced "da" now... I think we can thank Fiddy cent for helping that along. New "cool" words like "phat" "fashizzle" [how ever it's spelled] and "fuhgeddabowit" are just more English goodies we are adopting every day from different cultural areas. None of them are bad things [with the exception of slang terms for private body parts and violent/mysoginist terms], but none of them truly fit the supposed "conventional" English spelling we have now.

In truth, nothing really matches the "conventional" or "traditional" English spelling rules some group of learned men decided upon years ago. We've changed, and we've changed their rules most probably, and everyday we all tests the conventions and norms of language in effort to express ourselves. Followers of e.e. cummings omit capitals, and l33t speak [Wikipedia article about l33t ] dominates the chat rooms and spills into our emails and our students' homework assignments.

The questions I would like to pose are these: 1) if we switch the spelling of words, what do we do with the non-English ones? 2) Should we be focusing on changing the spelling or should we look back on pronouncing things properly instead? and 3) Language is always changing... does that mean in following generations, will we have to change all the spellings all over again?

Perhaps we should just adopt additional letters like the Scandinavian languages do...
Oh, and I will always spell colour with a "u", and "z" is "zed", thank you very much! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yahoo News: Simple Words

Push for simpler spelling persists

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer Wed Jul 5, 5:23 PM ET

WASHINGTON - 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.

"The kinds of progress that we're seeing are that someone will spell night 'nite' and someone will spell through 'thru,'" Mole said. "We try to show where these spellings are used and to show dictionary makers that they are used so they will include them as alternate spellings."

"Great changes have been made in the past. Systems can change," a hopeful Mole said.

Lurning English reqierz roet memory rather than lojic, he sed.

In languages with phonetically spelled words, like German or Spanish, children learn to spell in weeks instead of months or years as is sometimes the case with English, Mole said.

But education professor Donald Bear said to simplify spelling would probably make it more difficult because words get meaning from their prefixes, suffixes and roots.

"Students come to understand how meaning is preserved in the way words are spelled," said Bear, director of the E.L. Cord Foundation Center for Learning and Literacy at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Th cuntry's larjest teecherz uennyon, wuns a suporter, aulso objects.

Michael Marks, a member of the National Education Association's executive committee, said learning would be disrupted if children had to switch to a different spelling system. "It may be more trouble than it's worth," said Marks, a debate and theater teacher at Hattiesburg High School in Mississippi.

E-mail and text messages are exerting a similar tug on the language, sharing some elements with the simplified spelling movement while differing in other ways. Electronic communications stress shortcuts like "u" more than phonetics. Simplified spelling is not always shorter than regular spelling — sistem instead of system, hoep instead of hope.

Carnegie tried to moov thingz along in 1906 when he helpt establish and fund th speling bord. He aulso uezd simplified speling in his correspondens, and askt enywun hoo reported to him to do the saem.

A filanthropist, he becaem pashunet about th ishoo after speeking with Melvil Dewey, a speling reform activist and Dewey Desimal sistem inventor hoo simplified his furst naem bi droping "le" frum Melville.

Roosevelt tried to get the government to adopt simpler spellings for 300 words but Congress blocked him. He used simple spellings in all White House memos, pressing forward his effort to "make our spelling a little less foolish and fantastic."

The Chicago Tribune aulso got into th act, uezing simpler spelingz in th nuezpaeper for about 40 years, ending in 1975. Plae-riet George Bernard Shaw, hoo roet moest of his mateerial in shorthand, left muny in his wil for th development of a nue English alfabet.

Carnegie, Dewey, Roosevelt and Shaw's work followed attempts by Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster and Mark Twain to advance simpler spelling. Twain lobbied The Associated Press at its 1906 annual meeting to "adopt and use our simplified forms and spread them to the ends of the earth." AP declined.

But for aul th hi-proefiel and skolarly eforts, the iedeea of funy-luuking but simpler spelingz didn't captivaet the masez then — or now.

"I think that the average person simply did not see this as a needed change or a necessary change or something that was ... going to change their lives for the better," said Marilyn Cocchiola Holt, manager of the Pennsylvania department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

Carnegie, hoo embraest teknolojy, died in 1919, wel befor sel foenz. Had he livd, he probably wuud hav bin pleezd to no that milyonz of peepl send text and instant mesejez evry dae uezing thair oen formz of simplified speling: "Hav a gr8 day!"

___

On the Net:
American Literacy Council: http://www.americanliteracy.com
Simplified Spelling Society: http://www.spellingsociety.org
National Education Association: http://www.nea.org

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