On 7/1/07, Ralph Shumaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
James G. Sack (jim) wrote:
>
> Ya want more?
>
When I was looking lightly into middle english and olde english, I found
that the reason for our attrocious spelling in today's english came
mostly as a result of the printing press. When typesetters from other
language backgrounds came to try to print english, they had only the
letters from their own language. So they used approximations to try to
get close to the actual pronunciation in accordance with the limits of
the sounds of *their* letters. The bottom line here (for me) is that
they didn't let the customary spelling get in the way of trying to
approximate the actual pronunciation with what they had available.
If only we, today, would be daring enough to let go of the customary
spellings on at least a *few* of the most common words and just spell
them more like they sound. I have chosen to do exactly that with words
like tho and thru. These "mistakes", at least, are common enough that
they don't act as speed bumps for the brain. I suppose "enuf" should be
a candidate, as well as "altho" (among many others). But even if we can
get enough people to do this, of course there's going to be differences
of opinion as to which ones to do it with. And that's all right. The
popular ones will catch on better than the unpopular. And I'm going to
do my part.
Tho I do *not* hold to the idea of carte blanch replacing with "z" every
part of every word that sounds like "z". I saw an article (I think by
Mark Twain) with this kind of approach. He would introduce an obvious
and simple change and procede to implement that change for the duration
of the article. Each change was perfectly logical, tho each
implementation made the resulting text progressively harder to read. I
think this approach would create too much backlash and the result may
end up worse than the start.
Spelling drift *has* occurred in english. But then it stagnated, not
because it was good, but because people got used to it. I think it can
change for the better if enough people start agreeing on better
spellings for some of the words, and implementing them. "Tho" and
"thru" may never catch on. But I think they should. I think the guy
who made the claim that we should be speaking Olde English (the only
english that is correct) made a very good point. Today's english is
correct for today. But that doesn't mean that it has to be correct for
tomorrow.
I like what Mark Twain said about someone being dim if he could not find
more than one way to spell a word.
Do read "Meihem in ce Klasrum"
< http://www.english-zone.com/index.php?page=1114&pid=81 >
While you're at it, notice that the web page has a Y2K bug in the
upper right corner.
carl
--
carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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