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Hav U Had Enuf?

June 01, 2007 9:11 AM

NITYA VENKATARAMAN WRITES:

After covering the spelling bee for two days, I've run in to my fair share of characters.

None, this go-around, left an impression on me the way the sign-wielding spelling reformers did. (LINK)

They were the combined forces of the London-based Simplified Spelling Society (LINK) and the American Literary Council. And on the crossroads of 11th and H Streets NW, they looked a little bit like a rebel force of librarians and English professors rallying behind a cause of linguistic proportions.

They argue that there are too many spellings for identical sounds. That 'friend' should become 'frend', 'doughnut' should become 'donut', and 'you' should become 'u'.

They claim a few big names: Charles Darwin, Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie.  The fact that the big names also all happen to be dead and therefore unable to join them with signs and pamphlets at the intersection of Revolution and Merriam-Webster seems to be of little consequence.

I interviewed a professor of linguistics, Dennis Baron of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who described the movement's history as storied but "totally ineffective". He said there was no mechanism in place to put something like this into action.  You'd need someone to back it, of course, and considering the current climate combined with the fact that Theodore Roosevelt tried to issue an executive order back in the day to reform the spellings of a few hundred words and eventually withdrew it because it faced so much opposition, it seems unlikely. (LINK)

And while Baron was talking about the actual rules of language, all I could think about when I walked to work this morning was how simplified spelling would change the streets around us. After so much time spent bemoaning the destruction of language through IMs and chat and text messages, imagine a world of signage, marketing and branding viewed through the lens of a 14-year-old operating your cell phone.

Kan u imagin wat lif wood bee lik?

-- Nitya Venkataraman

June 1, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

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Posted by: chuck | Jun 1, 2007 10:10:38 AM

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