Friday, July 07, 2006

Speling Changus?

Simplr spellings 2 cum?

And my response:
First off, ow. Reading that hurt with all the misspellings.
That said, I think this is ridiculous and would cause much more trouble than it's worth. Yes, it's hard on our brains some times when spellings of words don't make sense (I've even had conversations about this recently), but changing the way we do everything would make things more confusing than that. My vote is for neither changing the system or keeping it the same. I say that we do what was mentioned in that article, alternate spellings. We can keep "tonight" but also have "tonite" as an acceptable spelling. Changing everything would take forever to do anyways. Everyone would have to learn how to read and spell all over again, not just little kids. What's the point in that? Yes, we helped the little children learn to read, but we inhibited everyone else; sounds like a Pyrrhic victory to me.

Also, our English language has evolved throughout the generations to give us what we have today. It started out as local dialects, eventually became Latin, which after awhile became English. That English has existed in England for centuries, and in the 18th century came to The United States where it became "Modern American English." So the spellings today have evolved, and whereas they have been getting shorter, they have not changed like this. Therefore a change this drastic would be stripping us of some of our culture and heritage.

So, in conclusion, keep the old stuff, but let some of the new stuff in as well. It'll help everyone in the long run.
----
All that being said, I feel compelled to say that I use colour, honour, and labour, as well as theatre and centre. I also subscribe to the SHIFT theory if anyone has read So Yesterday.

3 comments:

Jude said...

What is the shift theory, Jez?

Jez said...

SHIFT is an idea mentioned in Scott Westerfeld's So Yesterday. Basicly it's supposed to be a movement to get teens to start using capital letters and regular spelling again. Because in chatrooms, forums, and messengers, teens type with brb, ttyl, pir, and such, which I'm not against if it's in a messenger. But when they start forgetting how to use capitals and real words in everything else, it bothers me.

Jude said...

Thanks for the explanation :-)

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails