Spelling Reform

[Sol]

I'd support English spelling reform in theory, but in practice, it's basically untenable and would have huge unintended consequences (mass loss of literacy, hurting reading abilities for folks with dyslexia, etc.)

[WalterMitty]

sounds like an elitist issue.  will democrats be putting this in their 2016 platform?

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

lolno

[ElectionsGuy]

Nope.

[7,052,770]

Other languages have done it without any real problems, right?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Sounds pointless. Kinda like switching to the Metric system.

[Maxwell]

What do you mean by spelling reform?

[Deus Naturae]

lolno

What do you mean by spelling reform?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_spelling_reform

[Maxwell]

lolno

What do you mean by spelling reform?

English_language_spelling_reform

No, I know which language, but what is the reform of? Are we moving to spell like the brits or something?

Anyway, no.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Yes, tho in principle the changes that could be done are fairly limited.  As I already do, we could eliminate the silent gh's. But because different dialects of English treat different vowels differently, we can't really do much to make them more fonetic. But as I just did, we could eliminate the "ph" digraph by replacing it with "f". It only serves to mark the origin of the word as Greek using "φ".  Similarly "ps" used to mark Greek "ψ" could be simplified to "s" and "ch" used to mark Greek "χ" could become "k" without us being required to consult sykiatrists.  There are additional things that could be done to simplify consonantal spelling, but getting agreement on them, in particular which order to do them in, would be problematic.  It would be overwhelming to do them all at once and a few can't be done without causing problems for some dialects, such as those that have not merged "w" and "wh" to a single sound.

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

While some subtle changes would be good, most of this "reform the language" stuff is simple racism. A lot of the issues are the fact that many Americans don't like the French and African influences on our language so they want to purge them. If we forcibly change change languages to make things easier, then what stops us from changing words to support bad politics. What stops people from, say, changing segregation or genocide to "somewhat apart" and "endgame?"
This is a very dangerous threat, especially because many language reformers have racist motives.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

African influences?

[politicallefty]

No, I think English is fine as is. I refuse to adopt even some of Noah Webster's spelling reforms, other than that I prefer offense and defense over offence and defence and use -ize spellings instead of -ise (though, from what I understand, -ise was actually a British spelling change).

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Yes, to some extent.  I don't think they should get rid of the current spellings, but they should probably offer some alternatives.

On a related note: ever heard of ghoti?

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

African influences?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English
Much of African American English has influences from Africa and those influences bleed into general American English. Many racists want to remove those influences like "Kwanzaa," "OK," and "swag."

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

African influences?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English
Much of African American English has influences from Africa and those influences bleed into general American English. Many racists want to remove those influences like "Kwanzaa," "OK," and "swag."

Okay and swag aren't African or even African-American in origin.  Also, spelling reform isn't about pruning the vocabulary of such Africanisms as "trek", "lager", and "commando".

However, English spelling has been adversely affected by French, most notably, tho not only, by the replacing of Old English "cw-" with "qu-" during the Middle English period under the influence of French.

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

African influences?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English
Much of African American English has influences from Africa and those influences bleed into general American English. Many racists want to remove those influences like "Kwanzaa," "OK," and "swag."

Okay and swag aren't African or even African-American in origin.  Also, spelling reform isn't about pruning the vocabulary of such Africanisms as "trek", "lager", and "commando".

However, English spelling has been adversely affected by French, most notably, tho not only, by the replacing of Old English "cw-" with "qu-" during the Middle English period under the influence of French.

I think Old English is different enough from current English that it is a totally seperate language. In fact, I would say English didn't become English until the Normans' savage latinization of Old English.

[Sol]

lolno

What do you mean by spelling reform?

English_language_spelling_reform

No, I know which language, but what is the reform of? Are we moving to spell like the brits or something?

Anyway, no.

Typically, it's proposed as reforming English spelling to be more in line with pronunciation. Of course, Ernest is completely right: English vowels are so different from dialect to dialect to make such an exercise very difficult.

While some subtle changes would be good, most of this "reform the language" stuff is simple racism. A lot of the issues are the fact that many Americans don't like the French and African influences on our language so they want to purge them. If we forcibly change change languages to make things easier, then what stops us from changing words to support bad politics. What stops people from, say, changing segregation or genocide to "somewhat apart" and "endgame?"
This is a very dangerous threat, especially because many language reformers have racist motives.

Changing words doesn't come from the top down- words change based on how speakers use them. A cadre of racist language reformers aren't going to be able to turn segregation into "somewhat apart".

Anyway, even if the word for genocide was changed to "endgame", that would have very little effect on the beliefs of speakers. Newspeak and the like are not very scientific.

[H. Ross Peron]

No although I support the revival of certain archaic spellings such as "to-day" along with adopting British spelling.

[Reginald]

No although I support the revival of certain archaic spellings such as "to-day" along with adopting British spelling.

Why? How would that not cause way more trouble than whatever it's worth?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

No although I support the revival of certain archaic spellings such as "to-day" along with adopting British spelling.

Is this part of some long, drawn-out plan of having America re-assimilate into the British Empire? Regardless, I reject all attempts or seeming attempts at such a thing and can not support this on principle alone.