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From: ken@ihuxq.UUCP (ken perlow)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Spelling Reform
Message-ID: <1310@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-Nov-84 00:07:45 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.1310
Posted: Mon Nov  5 00:07:45 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Nov-84 05:02:42 EST
References: <179@scc.UUCP> <2696@ncsu.UUCP> <4483@fortune.UUCP>, <2701@ncsu.UUCP>, <1287@ihuxq.UUCP>, <2709@ncsuRe: Spelling Reform
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 59

--
[I said] 
> ...  Why play with English spelling?  The only reason
> --and it underlies the whole "plain English" movement--is that so many
> people are so bad at it.  Well, that's what happens when you don't get
> enough practice.  The truly logical solution is to teach kids how to
> write...  I state that spelling is easy *IF* you just practice it.
> Look at the bizarre grammars of other languages, which even their
> respective national idiots master--because they speak it.  English is
> quite simple in comparison to Russian, or Icelandic.  You could claim
> that English spelling is really worse than convoluted European grammars
> because it's so arbitrary.  But so is life.  Our arcane orthography
> serves as a silent sentinel (you know, like the "m" in "mnemonic")
> against the most invidious threat to American democracy--the one Thomas
> Jefferson saw when he proposed free public education--illiteracy.

[Mike Huybensz]
>> Spelling IS easy if you practice it: however, with proper
>> modifications, less practice would be required.

>> Learning grammar and spelling are quite different tasks, that take
>> place in different ways.  It is inappropriate to compare the two in
>> your argument.

Not at all.  The tasks are indeed different, but the learning of both
comes through practice.  Kids everywhere get to practice the grammars
of their native tongues by speaking them.  But spelling practice
requires a lot of both reading and writing.

>> That life is arbitrary has nothing whatsoever to do with whether English
>> spelling should be improved.  That's the "tu quoque" (sp?) fallacy of
>> argument.

It has a lot to do with it.  I refuse to call something bad just because
it is difficult, or more to the point, because it appears to be difficult.
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.

>> I can only view difficult spellings as a means to discourage literacy.
>> Using your metaphor, perhaps we should make our "sentinel" even sharper-
>> eyed by making spelling still more difficult?  :-)

>> Mike Huybensz

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.

"Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler." --Einstein
-- 
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