Lerning to spel cud be much kwiker if things wur difrunt.
It certainly couldn’t be any more difficult, with all the ridiculous rules we must learn, like i before e except after c. Stray letters seem to abound, as do oddities like silent k’s and g’s.
What makes the most sense is to spell words as they sound, phonetically, and it’s hardly a new idea. Spelling reformers through history have included George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Franklin and William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper tycoon of the early 20th century, and more recently The Chicago Tribune.
But as much sense as it might make, as logical as it all sounds, the idea of actually doing it typically sets off a storm, as we've seen in recent days in Britain after a university professor wrote an article calling once again for spelling reform.
Ken Smith, senior lecturer of criminology at Bucks New University, noting the annoying trail of misspelt words in student papers, argued that the spelling rules should be loosened to include a range of spelling variations.
“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,” he writes in the Times Higher Education Supplement. “University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.”
He proposes adding a variant spelling to the dictionary for the top 20 most commonly misspelt words (including the word misspelt).
Take “their,” for instance. Why not let folks get away with “thier?” That, he believes, would be more consistent with the i before e rule. Better yet, we could drop the word their in favor of there.
Or how about February? Dropping that first r would save a lot of fun and games during spelling tests back in the elementary school. Ditto dropping the d in Wednesday.
"We spell the word February the way we do only because it is taken from the Latin word februa, the Roman festival of purification. Similarly, the correct spelling of the word Wednesday comes from the Old English Wodnes daeg, or Woden's day. But why should we still pay homage today to a pagan god or a Roman festival of purification?" he asks.
Take the word "opportunity." Why not accept "opertunity?" Why not “truely" for "truly?"
There are lots of reasons, it appears, judging from the volumes of letters to the editor that flowed in and the spate of follow-up stories. While some supported some modifications, most were dead set against change. The sense: Geez, we’ve struggled all this while to get all the rules down, why toss them out now?
But behind that argument lurks another prejudice against change: English is a vital, changing, ever-growing language that needs to free to continue evolving, which means avoiding setting down a bunch of rules, no matter how well intended. In that way, English is like the old Greek, a true living language but highly irregular, and unlike Latin, whose growth was tightly controlled, leading to a much smaller vocabulary.
For all the grammar books that have been written that describe how English ought to work, the language works as it pleases, through the centuries steadfastly resisting regulation. At best scholars work to keep up with its evolution, and with middling success.
Back in the 1770s, in putting together the first U.S. dictionary, Noah Webster made some changes in spelling, including dropping superfluous u’s in words like color and harbor.
President Theodore Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to bring in 300 new spellings in 1906. And Andrew Carnegie gave money to simplification efforts at one point. Hearst came up with a whole slew of words with simpler spellings and insisted that editors at his papers adopted them.
In 1934, The Chicago Tribune came up with its own list of simplified words, adding through the years thru for through and altho for although. The Tribune’s efforts fizzled out in 1975.
***
Meanwhile, elsewhere in popcult, “The Dark Knight” topped the box office for the fourth weekend in a row, bringing in another $26.0 million in ticket sales and upping its four-week total to $441.5 million, No. 3 all-time.
On iTunes this morning, “Disturbia” by Rihanna was No. 1 for the second straight week, followed this week by M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes.”
And in books, “Moscow Rules” by Daniel Silva remained at No. 1 on The New York Times’ hardcover fiction best-sellerslist for the week ended Aug. 2, its second week in a row on top, although it fell out of the top 10 on USA Today’s book chart for the week ended Aug. 3.
|
TOP MOVIES
Weekend Box Office Estimates
Weekend of Aug. 8-10, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
MOVIE
|
Engagements
|
Box office (millions)
|
|
1
|
The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.)
|
4,025
|
$26.03
|
|
2
|
Pineapple Express (Sony)
|
3,072
|
$22.40
|
|
3
|
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Universal)
|
3,778
|
$16.11
|
|
4
|
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (Warner Bros.)
|
2,707
|
$10.77
|
|
5
|
Step Brothers (Sony)
|
3,182
|
$8.90
|
|
6
|
Mamma Mia! (Universal)
|
3,194
|
$8.08
|
|
7
|
Journey to the Center of the Earth (New Line)
|
1,970
|
$4.86
|
|
8
|
Hancock (Sony)
|
2,258
|
$3.30
|
|
9
|
Swing Vote (Disney)
|
2,213
|
$3.12
|
|
10
|
WALL-E (
Buena Vista)
|
2,144
|
$3.05
|
|
Source: Yahoo Movies
|
|
ITUNES TOP 8 SONG DOWNLOADS
for week ended Monday, Aug. 11, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
|
1
|
Disturbia, Rihanna
|
|
2
|
Paper Planes, M.I.A.
|
|
3
|
A Little Bit Longer, Jonas Brothers
|
|
4
|
My Life, The Game & Lil
Wayne
|
|
5
|
Burnin’ Up, Jonas Brothers
|
|
6
|
I Kissed a Girl, Katy Perry
|
|
7
|
Forever, Chris Brown
|
|
8
|
American Boy, Estelle feat. Kanye West
|
|
Source: iTunes
|
|
NEW YORK
TIMES BESTSELLING BOOKS
Week ending August 2, 2008
|
|
Fiction (hardback)
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
Last week
|
Weeks on chart
|
|
1
|
Moscow
Rules by Daniel Silva
|
1
|
2
|
|
2
|
The Bourne Sanction by Eric Van Lustbader
|
-
|
1
|
|
3
|
The Host by Stephanie Meyer
|
3
|
13
|
|
4
|
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
|
2
|
8
|
|
5
|
The
Guernsey Literacy and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
|
-
|
1
|
|
Nonfiction (hardback)
|
|
1
|
The Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi
|
-
|
1
|
|
2
|
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
|
1
|
9
|
|
3
|
Stori Telling by Tori Spelling with Hilary Liftin
|
4
|
10
|
|
4
|
Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler
|
5
|
15
|
|
5
|
Fleeced by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
|
6
|
6
|
|
Fiction (paperback)
|
|
1
|
The Shack by William P. Young
|
1
|
11
|
|
2
|
Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand
|
4
|
8
|
|
3
|
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
|
2
|
48
|
|
4
|
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
|
3
|
48
|
|
5
|
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
|
5
|
47
|
|
Nonfiction (paperback)
|
|
1
|
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
|
1
|
79
|
|
2
|
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
|
2
|
80
|
|
3
|
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
|
4
|
32
|
|
4
|
Big Russ and Me by Tim Russert
|
3
|
15
|
|
5
|
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max
|
-
|
44
|
|
Source: New York Times
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
USA
TODAY BESTSELLING BOOKS
Week ending August 3, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
Last week
|
|
1
|
Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer
|
-
|
|
2
|
The Last Lecture by Randy Rausch and Jeffrey Zazlow
|
5
|
|
3
|
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
|
1
|
|
4
|
New Moon by Stephanie Meyer
|
2
|
|
5
|
Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer
|
4
|
|
6
|
The Shack by William P. Young
|
3
|
|
7
|
Playing For Pizza by John Grisham
|
6
|
|
8
|
Turbulent Sea by Christine Feehan
|
-
|
|
9
|
Left to Die by Lisa Jackson
|
-
|
|
10
|
The Manning Brides by Debbie Macomber
|
-
|
|
Source:
USA Today
|
