Is the English language being "dumbed down", and if so, why?

[opebo]

I've dumbed my usage of it down tremendously in speaking to all these foreigners.

[opebo]

And a far more logical spelling system than what we have now.

Ðat iz trū, but ðat iz bēkuz ðār wuz nō sistem, sō evrāþīŋ had tū bī speld fonetiklī.

Wič wœd bé (ænd wuz) muč beter ðæn wut wé hav now.

If we consistently used k for /k/ then there would be no need to accent c for /tʃ/. 

Are you guys all linguistics majors?  Who else would know how to use that bizarre esoteric script - whatever it is called.  I've noticed a lot of people using it on here these days - is it something people normally study in school nowadays?  Because I've never seen it before in my life, and it seems entirely useless. 

[opebo]

it seems entirely useless. 

It has uses, but not for what they're doing with it. 

There are many things we never encounter outside this forum.  This is one of them.  If you read articles in newspapers in magazines, they all have much more intelligent ways of passing along pronunciations in textual environments.  "Tomato.  Middle syllable same as middle syllable in godfather or middle syllable same as first syllable in apron?"  Done.

Yeah, its not entirely useless, it just suffers from the problem of being uncommunicative, since so few people know about it.  And considering how rarely (if ever) we have to communicate textually (or even at all) about pronunciation, it seems a waste of time for most people to learn this 'phonetic script' or whatever it is.

I rarely teach English, but when I do, I certainly don't make any technical comments about either pronunciation or grammar - I simply give examples and do repetition.  (I don't really know any of the terms for grammar either, which I think is normal)

For example a Thai English teacher friend had to explain to me yesterday what a 'preposition' or 'prepositional phrase' is (something about on, in, under etc.) because I had no idea.  No need to know when you already speak and write perfectly.