July 07, 2006

• I think all the replacementz of 's' with 'z' in wordz wud get confuzing.
• Maybe we should go back to hieroglyphics. Signed, The Bird-Eye-Pyramid Monster
• Ewe. That should have been "after the consonent, "not vowel.
• Any simplified spelling system, in order for it to stand a ghost's chance of being adopted, has to make the simplifications as similar to the existing words as possible. "But for aul th hi-proefiel and skolarly eforts, the iedeea of funy-luuking but simpler spelingz didn't captivaet the masez" This just isn't going to cut the mustard. I would submit that a simplified (but not over-deviating) version of the same sentence would be: "But for al the hi-profile and skolarly eforts, the idea of funy looking but simpler spelingz didn't captivate the masez." The problem is that attempting to align spelling with pronunciation is a vain effort -- what about dialects? What about regional variations?
• Dialect and regional variations are a big point. I stopped reading that article because the alternative spelling was getting to me - it'd be worthwhile if it actually made sense, but you might as well deregulate all English spelling entirely if you're going to cater to everyone.
• Every time I (and I'm sure many others) see 'funy' I read 'foo-nye' or 'fu-knee'... that is why this will never work. Unless you want to simplify speach and diction as well.
• masez == 'ma-say' ... must be French
• This makes a wonderful complement to the 'simplified thinking' we seem to be practicing. Why would anyone expect that people who can't or don't learn the present rules would learn the new rules either? It's really not THAT difficult to learn to write and speak English crecktly.
• 1) If the USA won't change to the metric system we won't change spelling. 2) The German Spelling Reform hasn't been all that successfull and it has been nearly a decade since it started. Moreover, it is rather simple consisting mainly of replacing most uses of ß with ss and doubling or trippling of letters.
• Can anyone say Esperanto?
• Somebody kick the corpse of Noah Webster, he'll want to see this.
• Maybe we should go back to hieroglyphics. We can all refer to ourselves as "The Artist Formerly Known As..."
• Pronounciation is not a constant -- it can differ wildly from plays to place to plaice.
• Why does the baby have to go out with the bathwater? Rough, tough, through, thought, night--ruff, tuff, thru, thot, nite--we could get rid of the major goofy G problems. Then dump the dum stuff like silent b and k, and get rid of that ph in foto. Most sensible changes are all ready/already in the works.
• Sounds like theatrical fish at Bee's place.
• theatre fish, you must attend to your director, and amend each one his part, and each note where your line's to be said, here or there you must not throw your lines away or there will come a reckoning day for little fish that attend not may end up in the chowder pot
• Bees is right. Do we change buoy to boi or boowee? Will the town of Worchester, MA change to Woosta? I think these crackpots should come back once they've thought this through a bit more.
• SMS text spellings will become the new standard given enough time. The we can all just give up and go home.
• Even if we change things, in fifty years time, spelling for some words will need to be changed all over again. Because that's the way language is -- it keeps changing, and even if you're the French Academy ye can't stop it doing so. Spelling reform predicated on how folk pronounce words now = futile.
• ach! = ultimately futile
• Basil Drak.
• Look, you lazy spellers (not any of you monkeys, but whoever thought this might be a good idea)! Language is sometimes hard, and sometimes a word has more letters in it than it stictly needs. Deal with it, learn to spell as well as you can and move on. Christ! do we need to be spoon-fed everything now? What next? Science is tough (or tuff, if you're a retard), so let's not bother? Not everyone can grasp modernism so let's burn all the art after Manet? Fucking hell! *adjusts bowler hat*
• Absolutely bleeding right, kit, if I may say. And I may. I think playing the "language is fluid so we should all write what we want" should automatically mean you have to swallow a dictionary. All ten volumes. It is evolving, but forcing it like this is like saying "I will evolve now!"
• *grows that prehensile tail I've been waiting for*
• The whole "simplified" spelling argument is predicated on a mistaken presumption: that all words in written languages such as English can be completely encoded by a finite number of phonetic elements - i.e. the letters of alphabet singly and in standard combinations e.g. th, ch, and so on. In fact, everyone knows that any written language of sufficient complexity contains within it pseudodipthongs, neocombinations and paravowels which cannot be established from the preceding axiomatic combinations, and yet which are undeniably "true". This important result was established by Godel, who was trying to justify spelling his name "Gödel" to look cool to his goth friends. The point is that since written languages are an open system, information can be contained within the visual signs that go beyond any formally accepted notion of how "e" sounds. This visual information - which is imparted in combination with the actual formal use of the elements within the system - leads inevitably to continual unorthodoxies that comment on the system and thus form a metalangauge of the system. That's why French Connection UK have such a funny logo - FCUK. So basically, this entirely justifies my continual misspelling of words - so let me give a big FUCK YOU to that guy who called me out on it in that thread – you know, that calling-out guy.
• I like kittens.
• English, being the amalgam of many languages, is bound to have spellings that are inconsistent with pronunciation. I say: make the conventions harder, so that people have to really work for literary competency. Let's dumb-up the language!
• I agree with nunia - viva stupidity, down with "truth"! Anyway, we have a formalized system for describing language sounds - the international phonetic alphabet! Why you people don't use it to signify your labiodental flaps, I'll never understand.
• Oi! izzat like the glo''al stop?
• x!yes
• simplified english is, imo, a worthy endeavour for a specific purpose (reducing ambiguity in technical manuals). this simplified spelling stuff? i say bollix. > the international phonetic alphabet! tango hotel echo romeo echo alpha romeo echo tango whiskey oscar oscar foxtrot tango hotel echo sierra echo
• Also, backbones make fish.
• there are two of those Oh, whatever, you bilabial voiced implosive!
• Dth t vwls
• Forget simplification, let's adopt the international phonetic alphabet. Doesn't everyone learn this in grade school anyway?
• Hello, am I on some kind of killfile here? HELLO CAN ANYONE HEAR ME ... TUNE IN TOKYO
• > Oh, whatever, you bilabial voiced implosive! i'm sensing some velopharyngeal friction.
• *gives kit a big smooch, because he's exactly right* *wobbles radio knob, smacks the thing a few times* Nothin' but static here...
• *blushes* Yes, kittens are lovely, aren't they? *swoons*
• Fricative YOU!
• The European Commission have just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German,which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish". In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"'s in the language is disgraceful, and they should go away. By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaiining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz year, ve vil hav a reali sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!
• My new slogan: One word, one sign, one nightmare!
• Um, Vertex. Is there a link?
• Link leads to ancient internet email jokeyjoke. FW to all your friends!
• Thnk w shld jst lmn8 vwls.
• Wouldn't that just make English into txt-spk?
• N mrnng th vwls flw w, and ppl wr lft t fzz and pp. Crtcs rptd nt jbbrsh ntl flk skd thm t stp. [One morning the vowels flew away and people were left to fizz and pop. Critics erupted into jibberish until folk asked them to stop.]
• That poem is hereby dubbed "Vowel Movement."
• In jr. high school I sometimes took class notes without the vowels because I got sick of writing so much. Once a friend wanted to borrow my notebook because he missed a few classes. He was seriously confused and from then on never borrowed my notebook.
• I oe i U e oe.
• U, I aee!
• aee or dsgr? a i e ueio whthr ts nblr i e i o ue th slgs nd rrws o ouaeou ooae r b slttg th thrts e eiu iee nd ths [agree or disagree? that is the question whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous orthographers or by slitting their throats let merciful silence end this]
• oooo, eeeeee, ooooo, aah ahh ting, tang, wallah wallah, bing bang
• dah winnah!
• Our spellings are exactly as the words are suposed to be said -- in middle English. It's all a load of hooey. Literacy rates have nothing to do with spelling, but with parental literacy and quality of education. Sweden has lower literacy by having good social programs, not simple spelling. And I am very skeptical that German and Spanish, as the article claims ("In languages with phonetically spelled words, like German or Spanish, children learn to spell in weeks instead of months or years as is sometimes the case with English, Mole said."), are spelled just as people speak, considering that both languages have dialects that very nearly other languages (and in the case of Catalan, recognised as such). How could someone speak Low German be spelling words phonectically and still write the same language as High German? The spellings may be closer to the modern language, having been established more recently, but I doubt they are so close for all people. I call hooey.