<p>A British prof is suggesting we ought to accept variants on standard spelling: [Making</a> an Arguement for Misspelling - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1832104,00.html]Making”>http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1832104,00.html) What do you think? Must admit, I’m a word nerd…Last week the NY Times used “impact” as a transitive verb and I practically went into mourning. ;-)</p>
<p>Maybe the Dallas ISD will have an opening for him!</p>
<p>Perhaps, as implied by ‘[Why</a> Is Spelling and Grammer Importunt?](<a href=“http://www.davidlouisedelman.com/writing/spelling-and-grammar/]Why”>http://www.davidlouisedelman.com/writing/spelling-and-grammar/)’, the difficulties and variations in spelling are also perpetuated by design to delineate social groups.</p>
<p>It’s probably the case that both individuals that struggle with spelling and the [English</a> language itself](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform]English”>Spelling reform - Wikipedia) can benefit from continual improvement.</p>
<p>I think we should banish all non-Latinate words. :rolleyes: (It also makes for great Scrabble!)</p>
<p>Since when did the R in February become silent? I always pronounce it.</p>
<p>The idea of accepting “variant” spellings makes me faintly nauseated.</p>
<p>I think we should all spell like Shakespeare did, or was it Shakespere? Languages change, deal.</p>
<p>Hey, this is good news for my W and D. They couldn’t spell cat if you spotted them the “c” and the “t”. ;)</p>
<p>The spelling of English words has only about 60% correspondence to actual pronunciation. It makes learning to write English as second language tough (or tuff, if you prefer).</p>
<p>I mean, George Bernard Shaw proved that “fish” is actually ought to be spelled “ghoti” :)</p>
<p>This discussion brings to mind a cartoon that ran in the Chronicle of Higher Education several years ago. Shows a kid sitting on the sidewalk against a building, looking dejected, as adult walks by. Big sign propped up next to the kid says “HOOKED ON PHONICS…PLEASE HELP”.</p>
<p>Give me the exact time when English spellings became “right” and I’ll be all over it.
I love the language, actually spend hours reading about the source of different words, want with a passion for kids to love language, but I always get it all wrong with spelling.
Reminds me of a Letter to the Editor that National Geographic once published : “Please send me one copy of the Political Globe map once all changes are final.” I would guess that gentleman was still waiting for his map…</p>
<p>The Firefox built-in spelling checker is nice in that it corrects my spelling and eventually helps me to unlearn ingrained spelling errors. A built-in grammar checker would be nicer still.</p>
<p>Our language has and will continue to reflect accepted changes–dictionary publishers spend a lot of time monitoring this. But that’s quite different from “this is hard–make it easier by accepting (excepting?;)), whatever ol’ stab at it I make because I’m too lazy to look it up.”</p>
<p>spelling and pronunciation should probably go hand in hand yet are often so different.</p>
<p>To my Ohio ear: someone in Boston may pahk their cah. Is there no r in car?
Someone from the south may say “it’s fav” meaning one more than four.
Some urban dwellers may “Axe a question”. Do they mean chop it down, or ask it?</p>
<p>Grammer is a whole 'nother issue. I haven’t time to get into that. We be out of here.</p>
<p>I don’t think we should accept variants on spelling unless it differs by country (for example American “color” and British “colour”)
Orthography indicates how the language has evolved over time, what linguistic changes we have come to embrace and phonologically how we have come to understand the basic parts (such as morphemes) of a word. If we spell them simply by phonological interpretation we cannot expand our vocabularies as easily, nor can we expect the suffixes and affixes of words to maintain their original meaning.
I do think however that various accents - which is considered the most superficial way to separate speech in the linguistics world - do have differences that are striking enough to understand the phonological complications that could arise when spelling. At the same time, unless we all spell the same words correctly we cannot communicate with each other much more than basic conversation. This would be limiting our printed media to all cultures that read English.
That’s just my opinion as an English major.</p>