English spelin iz to hard!

DBear

DBear

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4026451.html

excerpts:
July 5, 2006, 4:24PM

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?

Eether wae, the consept has yet to capcher th publix imajinaeshun.

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is donut; colour, honour and labour long ago lost the British "u" and the similarly derived theatre and centre have been replaced by the easier-to-sound-out theater and center.

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

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.

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.

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!"
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And people thought Dan Quayle was stupid :rolleyes:
 
I can't even read the parts that are incorrect. I say them differently than most other Americans would.
 
Cheezy the Wiz said:
This is dumb, whats wrong with just learning phonics and english, anyway?
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Because it slows down learning and such. Things ought be spelled in the way that they sound this would help english become more of a international language. As long as teachers agree to teach this way then it will gradually become adopted (like the new wrighting system in china) .
 
Elta said:
Because it slows down learning and such. Things ought be spelled in the way that they sound this would help english become more of a international language. As long as teachers agree to teach this way then it will gradually become adooted (like the new wrightingsystem in china) .
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But once you understand phonics and the english language, it does make sense. I come across new words every day in college, but that doesn't stop me from instantly knowing how to pronounce them, because I know the rules of English.
Other languges are the same way, when I was learning German, before I learned the rules of how to pronounce things, I got tongue twisted all the time, but once I learned the rules, it was rather easy. It only took a few months to do so, it's not as if toy have to be born speaking the language.
 
I do love the English language, but I will be the first to say that it is the most ********.
 
Cheezy the Wiz said:
But once you understand phonics and the english language, it does make sense. I come across new words every day in college, but that doesn't stop me from instantly knowing how to pronounce them, because I know the rules of English.
Other languges are the same way, when I was learning German, before I learned the rules of how to pronounce things, I got tongue twisted all the time, but once I learned the rules, it was rather easy. It only took a few months to do so, it's not as if toy have to be born speaking the language.
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I have a medical receptionist degree and a great deal of getting it was Transcribing (listing to recordings of doctors and typing out what they say) And I had to do a course in greek,latin and french; I'll be the first to tell learning the "rules" isn't so simple.



(as for me allways misspelling stuff ....I am either just stupid or have some sort of disorder ....haven't figured it out yet.)
 
better this than spanglish, or that vile stuff the japanese use.

one must remember that there are 2 versions of English:
the Right One, the Queens English
and - American!

just like spanish and italian. similar yet different languages.
 
soul_warrior said:
better this than spanglish
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Yo creo que spanglish is exagerated se usa when there is una nesssidar not when you feel like it, like awantate (spl? guantate?) there is no word in english for endurance your self , other than you'll have to make due, hold on , be strong ,buck up etc but there not a one word type thing that (with the same umph) which is why we will use them like that. + we only use it around people we know speak spanish and english.
 
i hope this is a joke. why would we care if its easy or hard for someone that doesnt speak the language to speak it? if they work at it, like anyone else that has to learn a new language then they will succed, im with cheezy in saying once you know the rules then its easy.
 
There's a whole lot of misunderstandings going on in this thread. English spelling and phonology does not "make sense" and it certainly does not follow any consistent rules, as some have claimed. If a word ends in "-ough", there are 7 possible pronunciations. The only way to know the pronunciation of a word with any certainty is to learn it for each individual word.

The only possible way you could come to the horribly warped conclusion that English spelling is easy, follows rules, is consistent or has any degree of logic, is if English was your first language and you never studied it in depth. When you teach it everyday to speakers of a language that doesn't have to worry about spelling as such, you come to realise just how insane it is. Yes, native speakers can predict pronunciations of new words, but there's a very significant chance that they will get it wrong, because there are no solid rules, only often broken patterns.

To those who remain unconvinced - I've just invented a new English word, care to tell me how it's pronounced: Zough.

Does this mean that English spelling should be reformed? The fundamental problem with English spelling is that the alphabet we use isn't phonetic i.e. the letters don't directly correspond to any one sound, the sound changes unpredictably depending on the context. To change this would be to completely alter the English language. This may or may not be desirable, but seeing as English is the worlds current lingua franca there's absolutely no realistic prospect that it's going to happen, so it's pretty irrelevant.
 
I was just trying to explain this to one of my coworkers today. He's a forgien exchange student from Japan and I was telling him how dumb the language is. Such as "wound", injury, and "wound", to wind, and well "wind". And then there is' "There", and "Their", and "They're" as well as "where" and "ware" and "wear"

And don't even get started on our equalling as stupid "figure of speech" ,such a dumb phrase right there.
 
Rik Meleet said:
Dutch gets a spelling-change every so many years. It creates more problems than it solves.
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Most problems are created because the Dutch and Flemish spelling experts can never agree on something, so they come up with a compromise that fits nobody.
 
it really is the same than any language, context plays a part in it, also how you pronounce it. there,their,they're, all have different pronounications also so cannot really be held up as a example.
 
ugh. the problem with spelling everything
like it sounds is that everyone has different accents.
ever heard a laois man speak? yee whuttent undrestaand
a bloody whurrud.the foreignors have a great deal of trouble
when there new to the language over here.
whos for making american a separate language?
that way yee could spell however crazy way you want.
Korner Koffeee Shoppe...:rolleyes:
 
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