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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!mcnc!ncsu!mauney
From: mauney@ncsu.UUCP (Jon Mauney)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: The physical laws of spelling reform
Message-ID: <2718@ncsu.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Nov-84 09:26:09 EST
Article-I.D.: ncsu.2718
Posted: Tue Nov  6 09:26:09 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Nov-84 04:29:08 EST
References: <1310@ihuxq.UUCP>
Organization: N.C. State University, Raleigh
Lines: 26

> If it's worth modifying English spelling simply because it seems hard,
> why stop there?  There's lots of subjects that really are hard.  Take
> math, for instance.  We could start with PI=3.14159... --which is awfully
> tricky--and simplify it to 3.14, or maybe an even 3.

And since redefining pi causes trouble, we can expect similar problems
with changing the spelling of words. Right.  You can do better than that.

> Discourage literacy?  Hey, it's hard enough to read Shakespeare as it
> is, what with all those Elizabethan in-jokes, but it's clear at least
> what the words themselves are.  Get a new generation addicted to
> "nu-spel" and you can kiss literature goodbye.

OK, Mister Smarty-Pants Communist, Mister Wheelchair General,
how much of the world's great literature have YOU read its original
form?  Tolstoy? Kafka? Homer? Virgil?  Let's face it, ever since the
Bible was translated into the vernacular things have been going downhill.
And by the way, it is not at all clear what some of Shakespeare's words
mean. So what does it matter how those words are spelled?

-- 

Jon Mauney,    mcnc!ncsu!mauney
North Carolina State University

"An we be in choler, we'll draw"