N Serch of Literusee
By HERB WILLIAMS
For the Daily Facts
As a writer and former high school English teacher, I have a vested interest in spelling, but I, like many others, suffer some degree of spelling impairment words are not always spelled as they sound, or vice versa, exemplified by George Bernard Shaw's insistence that the rules of spelling in English are so inconsistent, "that the word fish could conceivably be spelled ghoti' if the speller used the sound of gh' in enough, the sound of o' in women, and the sound of ti' in the suffix -tion."
I holehartudlee ugree, Amerikan Englush speling iz diffukult, n the ruls ar not alwaz purfeckt, but thinking thut we cud komunikate betur if werdz wer speld thuh wa thay sownd haz itz own inbilt problumz, includn chusing a unavursul spech paturn. And if we change from our present spelling guidelines to a purely phonetic method, whose pattern shall we use?
Most kids in school would love to get rid of the rules and the practice, but would we end up with communication as illustrated in a 1985 Oliphant cartoon? "Dere America sivel Libbtiz onion, Hep I are being held agens my wil in this sckool and the teecher keep serching me and tak away my Pot and my Sigeret papers and my Drugs also my nife and my Gunn and tel me shut up and lern you pimply ofe. How can a persen lern under this hear sercumstanses they has take away my rittes and libbtiz now i can-not grow up And bee a lawyar or a anker man on TV is this a sckool or a prissen?"
Regional dialects also put a strain on establishing universal phonetic spelling. Consider the following poem from the East Coast: "Spring has sprung, the gras has riz, I wonder wher dem boidies is? Well dat is clear, the boids are on der wing, but ain't dat absoid, der wings is on da boid."
Also ponder the following story from the deep South: "Several daze ago, one moaning while drivin my cour I got lust and jist whan I was fixen to tarn round, I hed a flat tar. I seed thuh wheel was runt but lukly I haid a spar. Later I stoped at a gas station n bloat my hone. One men looked ovar a faints whil nother walked up to my doh. I axed him, Can-chew hep me, I is lust.' He pinted me in the rite direkshun. After I rived at the motel I was a serchun fo, I wint to breckfuss. I haid beckon n egs n tostud braid. Later, afer I unpaked my close, I wint to coat a hering fo a frind. Whan he seed me, he gived me a hog and axed hominy yars we be frinds. He than set down and jist stared at the flo, while the jedge sayed my frind was a lar and full of debble-mint, and lesson he cud prove otherwise, he was a gwine to jell. My frind says he is jist an ornery parson but is po and had no chince. Afer thuh tral, I haid launch and later cause I was tarred I went toad my motel rum and rusted a spell."
Some help might be available in the form of George Orwell's "newspeak" in the novel, "1984." He suggested that we could reduce our vocabulary, considerably, if we just used one word to stand for something instead of many words, and we could simply place the prefix "un" in front of the same word to show the opposite meaning. For example, the opposite of "love" would be "unlove." This process would eliminate thousands of synonyms and antonyms (and these two hard to spell words, as well), but we would still be stuck with "homnims" (homonyms).
Maybe we ought to just leave well enough alone, since I had one "hail" of a time in this column spelling phonetically, and since, as time goes on, fewer people will have to learn to spell because of computers with spelling checkers, which by the way, will go nuts, as mine did, in trying to decipher phonetic spelling.
By HERB WILLIAMS
For the Daily Facts
As a writer and former high school English teacher, I have a vested interest in spelling, but I, like many others, suffer some degree of spelling impairment words are not always spelled as they sound, or vice versa, exemplified by George Bernard Shaw's insistence that the rules of spelling in English are so inconsistent, "that the word fish could conceivably be spelled ghoti' if the speller used the sound of gh' in enough, the sound of o' in women, and the sound of ti' in the suffix -tion."
I holehartudlee ugree, Amerikan Englush speling iz diffukult, n the ruls ar not alwaz purfeckt, but thinking thut we cud komunikate betur if werdz wer speld thuh wa thay sownd haz itz own inbilt problumz, includn chusing a unavursul spech paturn. And if we change from our present spelling guidelines to a purely phonetic method, whose pattern shall we use?
Most kids in school would love to get rid of the rules and the practice, but would we end up with communication as illustrated in a 1985 Oliphant cartoon? "Dere America sivel Libbtiz onion, Hep I are being held agens my wil in this sckool and the teecher keep serching me and tak away my Pot and my Sigeret papers and my Drugs also my nife and my Gunn and tel me shut up and lern you pimply ofe. How can a persen lern under this hear sercumstanses they has take away my rittes and libbtiz now i can-not grow up And bee a lawyar or a anker man on TV is this a sckool or a prissen?"
Regional dialects also put a strain on establishing universal phonetic spelling. Consider the following poem from the East Coast: "Spring has sprung, the gras has riz, I wonder wher dem boidies is? Well dat is clear, the boids are on der wing, but ain't dat absoid, der wings is on da boid."
Also ponder the following story from the deep South: "Several daze ago, one moaning while drivin my cour I got lust and jist whan I was fixen to tarn round, I hed a flat tar. I seed thuh wheel was runt but lukly I haid a spar. Later I stoped at a gas station n bloat my hone. One men looked ovar a faints whil nother walked up to my doh. I axed him, Can-chew hep me, I is lust.' He pinted me in the rite direkshun. After I rived at the motel I was a serchun fo, I wint to breckfuss. I haid beckon n egs n tostud braid. Later, afer I unpaked my close, I wint to coat a hering fo a frind. Whan he seed me, he gived me a hog and axed hominy yars we be frinds. He than set down and jist stared at the flo, while the jedge sayed my frind was a lar and full of debble-mint, and lesson he cud prove otherwise, he was a gwine to jell. My frind says he is jist an ornery parson but is po and had no chince. Afer thuh tral, I haid launch and later cause I was tarred I went toad my motel rum and rusted a spell."
Some help might be available in the form of George Orwell's "newspeak" in the novel, "1984." He suggested that we could reduce our vocabulary, considerably, if we just used one word to stand for something instead of many words, and we could simply place the prefix "un" in front of the same word to show the opposite meaning. For example, the opposite of "love" would be "unlove." This process would eliminate thousands of synonyms and antonyms (and these two hard to spell words, as well), but we would still be stuck with "homnims" (homonyms).
Maybe we ought to just leave well enough alone, since I had one "hail" of a time in this column spelling phonetically, and since, as time goes on, fewer people will have to learn to spell because of computers with spelling checkers, which by the way, will go nuts, as mine did, in trying to decipher phonetic spelling.
Just imagine getting a typed business letter spelt that way.....ack [confused]