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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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benj clews 
"...."
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 Posted - 08/07/2008 : 13:38:24
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What a prat!
Whilst we're at it, I've always found a lot of words quite difficult to spell so instead of me sitting down and learning them can we just spell them all C-A-T? Also I find it requires a bit of effort to add two numbers together- can I just make up a number and we'll agree that's correct?
Language has to have some kind of consistency (no matter how hard the spellings of some words may be to grasp) otherwise nobody will be able to tell what anyone else is saying. Would it really make it easier to learn a language if we were being taught 10 different spellings for each word?
The end is nigh I tell you!!!
P.S. Twelfth- didn't know that one!  |
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Wheelz
"FWFR%u2019ing like it%u2019s 1999"
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 13:44:43
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"University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell."
Sure -- and when I get some recent graduate's resume containing these "variant spellings," guess who isn't getting a job? |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 13:53:12
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As a reporter and editor myself, I want to shoot this guy right in his big fat stupid face.
Then I'll apologize and say I was actually supposed to shoot someone else with a similar name, but someone wrote it down wrong. |
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w22dheartlivie 
"Kitty Lover"
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 14:03:37
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I agree with the author that part of the problem is the text messaging universe. I rarely respond to emails/PMs that say "U OK 2nite?" It irks me to no end and reeks of ignorance. While the article addresses the British issue, I promise it is no better in the US. I have also noted that the issues of learning disabilities and ADD/ADHD, which I do not discount as problems, greatly increased with the advent of the cable television, computer and video game era. The more these became the standard, the less children seem to be reading. There is a program here called RIF - Reading is fundamental. Well, yes. Yes, it is. Years ago when my roommate's sister prevailed upon me to help tutor her sons, who were in danger of failing in grade school, I told her to turn off the TV, hide the computer, throw away the Nintendo and get library cards. This nation, which tends to use those things as the babysitter, is suffering for it. I am suffering for it - it's much harder for me to sit down with a good book and become absorbed. I blame that on the computer as well.
I absolutely do not agree that we should just go with the flow. Perhaps that is becoming more the vogue in high school, but at the university level, the zero tolerance issue had damned well better extend to poor spelling. I spent years remembering "WE are WEird", "NIce NIece", yada yada, and there is no reason why that rote learning shouldn't extend to today. If an education from a university is worth anything, then it should not reflect poor spelling tolerance from what should be considered our brightest minds. Ridiculous. |
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 14:20:06
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As a dyslexic who often has problems with spelling, I truly resent anyone thinking that it is in the least bit acceptable to allow people to misspell things these days. There's just no excuse for it, especially with spelling checkers available to anyone who uses a computer. And I don't accept the "SMS" spelling as the cause since there's almost always predictive texting available as well. Let's call a spade a spade and admit that our educational system is sub-par and we've turned our kids into lazy spellers because of some misplaced sympathies for not wanting to "hurt the child's feelings" or "lower their self-esteem" by telling them they're doing something wrong and making them learn it the right way.
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Whippersnapper. 
"A fourword thinking guy."
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 14:52:21
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This idea spells disaster! 
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Wheelz
"FWFR%u2019ing like it%u2019s 1999"
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 15:15:11
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quote:
Originally posted by Whippersnapper
This idea spells disaster!
No... It spells dezasstur. |
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Beanmimo 
"August review site"
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 16:20:41
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Why don't we just let students make up the name s for countries in their Geography classes while they're at it...etc. |
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Chris C
"Four words, never backwards."
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 18:45:56
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This man talks out of his backside. Has he made his comments in connection with this and similar stories? The next thing you know, the pass grade for various SATs and exams will be lowered, and the Government will turn round and praise everybody for reaching record levels of attainment. At the same time, business and industry will be laying on remedial classes for those emerging from school waving their A-grade certificates above their heads looking for a job.
Mrs C is employed by the Police and tells me that an application to become a police officer can be rejected if there are too many spelling mistakes on the application form.
Next thing you know, there will be a huge software update for Windows Office just to replace the dictionary.
I wholeheartedly agree with comments made previously by Wheelz, WHLivie and Choccie. This kind of attitude just encourages laziness, aided and abetted by spellcheck. |
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turrell 
"Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh "
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 18:50:13
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quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
Oh NO! 'They' are winning!!!
I think you meant to say whining. |
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RockGolf
"1500+ reviews. 1 joke."
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 19:37:31
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Odd man out here.
I work at a place where probably 60=75% of the people did not speak English as a first language. And I'm in an industry where precision of words is critical - information technology. Most correspondence is better than you might expect from a spelling or grammar viewpoint, but occasionally, there are minor spelling errors. If I can unquestionably determine the writer's intent from the context, I'm frankly not that worried about text that doesn't face the public.
If English were a more consistent language in spelling, I could understand, but it's the first and only language in which I'm fluent and even I make regular spelling mistakes.
Near the start of the 20th century, President Theodore Roosevelt started a process that was supposed to normalize American spelling. Hence, Americans use "tire" instead of "tyre", "center" instead of "centre", "color" not "colour", etc. Much of that caught on in Canada, some didn't.
Personally, I'd like to see the letter "C" banned. Exsept for the "ch" sound, it kould be kompletely replaced by "s" or "k". Perhaps we kould have the third letter pronounsed as "CH". That would be ric musik to my ears. |
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chazbo 
"Outta This Fuckin' Place"
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 22:03:26
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As I teach university English classes (often for non-English majors), I often have to deal with such misspellings. It irks me when students write "reoccurring" for "recurring," "weather" for "whether" (and sometimes even "wether"--a castrated sheep!), "then" for "than," and so on. And it seems no one (or is that noone?) is able to make their nouns and pronouns agree. These are all bad habits they pick up early, and by the time they reach university it is quite hard to get them to mend their (or is that there?) ways.
Perhaps we'd better start mispelting people for misspelling words.
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Sal[Au]pian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 08/07/2008 : 23:53:30
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quote:
Originally posted by R o � k G 0 1 f
Near the start of the 20th century, President Theodore Roosevelt started a process that was supposed to normalize American spelling.
Hhmmm, I don't think he started it, and a significant part of the motivation of those who did (e.g. Webster) was to change/standardise spellings to reflect the words' classical roots better, not just phonetics.
quote:
Personally, I'd like to see the letter "C" banned. Exsept for the "ch" sound, it kould be kompletely replaced by "s" or "k". Perhaps we kould have the third letter pronounsed as "CH". That would be ric musik to my ears.
So we would have electrik and electrisity, statistiks (or statistix?!) and statistishan? Very sensible. While we are at it, we had better amend the vowels. It's so confusing that they are the same in photo, photograph and photography when various ones are pronounced differently.
People are always going on about English spelling being irregular, but it's just (almost) regular according to a system of patterns. It's not that it's irregular because people were not very good at making it consistent -- it's that pronunciation has developed (in particular with the Great Vowel Shift) since it was extremely consistent. Apart from it being awesome that we are connected through orthography to our history, both for its own sake and making it easier to read things like Chaucer, it means that etymological connections within English and with other languages are retained -- not just in cases like the above examples but in words that are less consciously linked. Further, if people spelt words as closely as possible to how they pronounced them, geographical variation would be a barrier to written communication and learning -- sometimes a very major one. (And if spelling were reformed uniformly, rather than this academic's suggested free-for-all, it would have to be biased towards one pronunciation.) All text already existing would become harder to read. Deaf people would have no idea which variations to favour. English also has a very high number of non-homograph homophones, so a massive amount of ambiguity would be pointlessly created.
The academic is a... criminologist! He's not even in the arts, let alone in the study of language. Poor spelling is already much more likely to be overlooked in the sciences. He also does not seem to realise that people can already spell however they like -- it's not illegal, and there's not even a ruling body on English (thankfully). It might be (barely) different at school level, but any academic department can already choose to disregard spelling if it wants to. So his invalid point is not even relevant to anything. |
Edited by - Sal[Au]pian on 08/08/2008 13:21:42 |
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lemmycaution
"Long mired in film"
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Posted - 08/08/2008 : 02:59:14
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Phuk foe akademix.
OK. I know that someone who can't spell would not use the word 'faux'. |
Edited by - lemmycaution on 08/08/2008 03:01:01 |
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Sal[Au]pian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 08/08/2008 : 03:16:33
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quote:
Originally posted by lemmycaution
Phuk foe akademix.
OK. I know that someone who can't spell would not use the word 'faux'.
Before reading the second line, I thought you actually meant enemy (of reason). My point proven. |
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Oh NO! 'They' are winning!!!
