Pres. T Roosevelt on spelling reform

[Tom Zurinskas]

Perhaps I was wrong that Pres. T Roosevelt did not simplify a few spellings.  See site below:

Here is a letter sent by then US president Theodore Roosevelt to the
government printing office.
Oyster Bay, August 27, 1906
http://rethinktheworld.blogspot.com/2009/02/are-we-living-in-most-progressive-times.html

The best part of changing spelling is implementing phonetic regularity making English easier to read (Africa used to be spelled Aphrica).  The hard part is the need to respell books and dictionaries - modernization.  Hey wait a minute - economic stimulus!

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
see truespel.com













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> Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:46:17 +0800
> From: strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: ~ (UNCLASSIFIED)
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Randy Alexander
> Subject: Re: ~ (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 7:08 AM, Scot LaFaive wrote:
>>>There is a standard USA pronunciation.
>>
>> My vote for Tom's most incredible proclamation yet. Seriously, any bubble
>> gum chewing freshman in Linguistics 101 could tell you differently. I'm not
>> an elitist, but I have to ask Tom: have you ever taken even one course
>> (college or otherwise) on basic linguistics? I'm not trying to be hurtful;
>> I'm just in shock at the above statement.
>
> I'm not sure that a statement like that is so incredible. If one took
> the stance that there is no such thing as a "standard" American
> English, then wouldn't that preclude the existence of any
> "substandard" forms?
>
> Don't most people believe there is a "standard" American English? If
> most people didn't believe that, then why would there be "accent
> reduction" classes, etc?
>
> I think it's pretty well established that "standard" American English
> (or General American, or Broadcast English, or whatever you want to
> call it) is not very well defined, but that doesn't mean there isn't
> such a thing.
>
> I've often wondered how to go about defining it. One strategy that
> has come to mind would be to carefully examine the speech of Peter
> Jennings, Tom Brockaw, and Dan Rather, as they, having been heard by
> most Americans daily for over 20 years, perhaps are the considered by
> most Americans as representative of this "standard" American English.
>
> If I could make copies of myself, I would begin work on this right
> now. I think it would be of great importance to ESL students to have
> a clear model. Right now the only clear model for them is RP, which
> by my estimation probably only has about 1 million speakers worldwide.
>
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Jilin City, China
> My Manchu studies blog:
> http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>
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