Spelng Refrm: A Good or Bad Idea?

By Flickr user Northern Xander
You may have seen an email or blog post that begins with the sentence: "If yuo can raed tihs, you hvae a sgtrane mnid, too." The whole point of this paragraph is to make you stop and think about the inner workings of your mind, and the fact that your brain actually doesn't read each letter by itself, but the word as a whole. The paragraph also implies something deeper and more radical: some letter combinations in the English alphabet are simply, well, unnecessary.

I can't stop thinking about an article in September's issue of The Believer that discusses this very point. The article follows a few spelling reform organizations as they protest outside a spelling bee in Washington, DC. Yes, a spelling bee. Why would anyone want to protest a gathering of awkward whiz kids who know how to spell words such as duumvirate and endoradiosonde? But hear these organizations out—their reasoning is quite interesting.

The Spelling Society is a UK-based organization that's been around for over 100 years raising awareness about simplified spelling, and striving to improve literacy. Alan Campbell, president of its New Zealand offshoot Spell 4 Literacy, sums up the main motivation for a reformed spelling system quite humorously and succinctly: "Any spelling system that has a B on the end of dumb has to be dumb itself." He raises a good point. How come "comb" and "bomb" don't rhyme? Or similarly "dough" and "rough"? I experience the confusion all of the time living here in Argentina, as my local friends and co-workers constantly emerge from their language classes to ask me with a perplexed look, "But why?" Complications such as silent letters make it difficult for dyslexics and non-native English-speakers to learn the language. Also, these organizations argue, marginalized communities such as immigrants and the poor would have more chance for success were the language simpler to grasp. And by simpler they mean each word remains true to its phonetic sound.

Back on this side of the Atlantic, the American Literacy Council is a national nonprofit that provides resources, methods, and concepts for those interested in improving literacy, including re-formulating the English language. In the United States, this isn't a new thing. Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, and Melvin Dewey (who you can thank for the methodical ordering of books in your library) were big proponents of this progressive change. After reading about the low literacy rates in America—42 million Americans can't read at all according to the National Right to Read Foundation—the idea begins to make sense. It's no secret that higher literacy leads to more opportunity.

Obviously, there are reasons as to why simplified spelling might not work. Critics raise the good point that an overhaul would cost a lot of time and money, not to mention coordination across continents. And what about the hundreds of millions of people who already have a good grasp of the English language? It could create a potential rift, not that far from of Civil War times, with those who believe staunchly in tradition on one side and those for reform on the other. There's also some people who rather bluntly argue that a phonetic-based system looks ignorant, that simplifying it would dumb it down somehow. Finally, there are complicated reasons within the syntax itself—which I confess I don't know how to properly articulate—that would make such a change likewise extremely difficult.

Wat r yr thawts?


This entry is by Celeste, who also blogs at Idealist in NYC.