Time to change how we spell wurdz?

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From  MSNBC.com

Time to change how we spell wurdz?
Group wants Americans to adopt phonetic spelling
The Associated Press


Updated: 3:22 p.m. ET July 5, 2006

WASHINGTON - When say, they and weigh rhyme, but bomb, comb and tomb dont,
wuudnt 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.

Its 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 arent 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 Im 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. Its 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 doent aulwaez go for whuts
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British u and the similarly derived theatre and centre have been replaced
by the easier-to-sound-out theater and center.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
were 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 cuntrys larjest teecherz uennyon, wuns a suporter, aulso objects.
Michael Marks, a member of the National Education Associations executive
committee, said learning would be disrupted if children had to switch to a
different spelling system. It may be more trouble than its 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 Shaws 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 didnt 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!

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13716134/?GT1=8307


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