Spelling

I came across this news article and it kind of scared me.

"Spelling "truely atrosious," says

LONDON (Reuters) - Embaressed by yor spelling? Never you mind.

Fed up with his students' complete inability to spell common English correctly, a British academic has suggested it may be time to accept "variant spellings" as legitimate.

Rather than grammarians getting in a huff about "argument" being spelled "arguement" or "opportunity" as "opertunity," why not accept anything that's phonetically (fonetickly anyone?) correct as long as it can be understood?

"Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea," Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement.

"University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell."

To kickstart his proposal, Smith suggested 10 common misspellings that should immediately be accepted into the pantheon of variants, including "ignor," "occured," "thier," "truely," "speach" and "twelth" (it should be "twelfth").

Then of course there are words like "misspelt" (often spelled "mispelt"), not to mention "varient," a commonly used variant of "variant."

And that doesn't even begin to delve into all the problems English people have with words that use the letters "i" and "e" together, like weird, seize, leisure, foreign and neighbor.

The rhyme "i before e except after c" may be on the lips of every schoolchild in Britain, but that doesn't mean they remember the rule by the time they get to university.

Of course, such proposals have been made in the past. The advent of text messaging turned many students into spelling neanderthals as phrases such as "wot r u doin 2nite?" became socially, if not academically, acceptable.

Despite Smith's suggestion, language mavens are unconvinced. John Simpson, the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, says rules are rules and they are there for good reason.

"There are enormous advantages in having a coherent system of spelling," he told the Times newspaper.

"It makes it easier to communicate. Maybe during a learning phase there is some scope for error, but I would hope that by the time people get to university they have learnt to spell."

Yet even some of Britain's greatest wordsmiths have acknowledged it's a language with irritating quirkiness.

Playwright George Bernard Shaw was fond of pointing out that the word "ghoti" could just as well be pronounced "fish" if you followed common pronunciation: 'gh' as in "tough," 'o' as in "women" and 'ti' as in "nation."

And he was a playright."


Oh hell no! Ken Smith must be an utter moron if he thinks that this is acceptable. All of these people who spell dude like dood or cool as kewl all give off the appearance of complete dipshits. How sad are you that you feel the need to gain attention by bastardizing the English language?

I wonder if Mr. Smith would let his accountant get away with the same principles? You know, when he does his taxes that they are close enough. I am sure that law enforcement would be close enough in how long they locked him up as well. Or what if his boss adopted his feeling with regards to his paycheck? I bet he would change his tune then.

One wonders if this is the way that Ken Smith really feels, why should we continue to educate our children? Why grade? Like little league baseball, the score is always fun to fun. Yeah why not.

And let’s put this way of thinking into effect in every class. World War II was from 1780 – 1999. Close enough! E=MCHammer, works for me! What is 20% of 200? Apple. Why not!

This close enough idea would make cross word puzzles interesting. And I guess that Saturday Night Live would have to revamp all of their Jeopardy! skits.

Is there a global outbreak of dumbass or something going on? It’s beginning to look like the whole world is about to OD on stupid pills.

Don’t get dead (And learn to spell!)