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From: levy@fisher.UUCP (Silvio Levy)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Spelling reform does *not* discourage reading literature
Message-ID: <388@fisher.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Nov-84 20:45:50 EST
Article-I.D.: fisher.388
Posted: Thu Nov  8 20:45:50 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Nov-84 07:58:49 EST
References: <1310@ihuxq.UUCP> <2718@ncsu.UUCP>
Organization: Princeton Univ. Statistics
Lines: 22


The idea that phonetic spelling would make Shakespeare (or this century's
literature) hard or impossible to read is ridiculous.  We do not read
Shakespeare today as it was written four hundred years ago; we read him in
today's spelling.  Similarly, if we were to have phonetic spelling, we would
read Shakespeare, Thackeray, Thoreau or Maya Angelou in the new spelling.
It would actually make reading easier.  (Admittedly some of Ogden Nash's
punch lines would lose their punch...)

In Brazil and Portugal we had a spelling reform in the thirties that abolished
many etymological bugaboos, especially double letters (which are not pronounced
double in Portuguese).  As a consequence Portuguese is a fairly phonetic
language; from the spelling it is (essentially) possible to predict the
pronunciation, at least in each region of Brazil or Portugal, since the
pronunciation certainly varies with the region.  This reform came about by
common legislation to the two countries.  It was certainly not too painful,
except to some diehard reactionaries.  Now it would be unthinkable to revert to
the previous, presumable more learned, spelling.  The reading of the classics
was in no way harmed; people still read everything from Camoes to Machado de
Assis, in the new spelling, of course.

Silvio Levy