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Mansi.
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There was a thread on a message board *ahem* that deteriorated somewhat and ended up being about people not spelling properly and such. So many people who DIDN’T have learning disabilities would complain that we ought not be so harsh on misspellers, think of those unfortunate ones with problems learning. Then there were people who spoke up who DID have said disabilities, and I noticed that most of their posts were more coherent and had fewer errors.

I think that standardized spelling has probably helped create a more literate society. How much more difficult will it be to learn a language when things aren’t spelled the same way? If we allow two spellings of a word, will those learning the “easy” way understand when others among us choose to spell it the “difficult” way?

(And please forgive typos, my keyboard is acting up a little.)

@Melissa–It IS true. Those of us who can write more or less correctly DO look better compared to all the illiterate slobs out there. (Not that all of them are slobs, of course. The ones who are illiterate without recourse have my absolute sympathy, it’s the ones who had all the opportunities and just blew them off that irritate me.)

Oh, and I don’t get “colonel” either, but addressing a military person as “Kernel” sounds a little corny. (Get it? Corny? Like a kernel of corn? … Um, never mind. It’s still early.)

–Deb’s last blog post..Do We Need New Spelling?

First: While the grammar geek in me screams at improper usage and spelling, the plain fact of the matter is that – for most of linguistic history – there was no standard spelling. That has only come about in the last couple of centuries, with the collections of words that eventually developed into the dictionaries we know and love.

Second: I started screaming about this back when people started claiming that it was too difficult to understand how to use a semi-colon; I saw that as the first step down a slippery slope, and I still do.

Third: If I recall correctly, the first country to start doing away with punctuation in addresses – and in print in general – was Great Britain, so I find it difficult to swallow when someone from there now complains that spelling is too difficult.

Fourth: Anyone who thinks the primary aim of the American education system was really to educate people well is fooling themselves. It was designed to shape a very diverse group of people into a relatively homogeneous workforce. It succeeded in doing that for a while, but is not even succeeding at that small aim these days, sadly.

Fifth: I do realize that what seems to me to just be laziness might very well be a real difficulty with learning the rules. I work in a school (and, no, I am not a teacher) where most of the student body are immigrants or the first generation children thereof, and I can understand the difficulty a lot of these kids have with English (even our watered-down American version). In fact, though, many of these kids are illiterate in their native languages as well. And since I do not believe that all of them were born stupid, I’m not sure how this can be dealt with.

Did I want to sit and parse sentences as a kid? Heck no. Am I now glad I had to? Absolutely. However, the sad fact is education has become even less about education than about making kids feel good about themselves. My questions are: If it will hurt a kid’s self-esteem to fail a subject or lose at a gym activity now, how much more will it destroy his or her self-esteem to not be able to get a job that pays more than being a counter-person at a fast-food joint? In a society moving ever more rapidly toward information services and technologies, how will a person who cannot effectively communicate survive?

Standard spelling and grammar evolved for the same reason manners did: to ease interactions between people of a society. Should we toss that away just because it might be difficult for some to master? I think not.

(For the record, I am planning to expand on this comment at my own blog, http://www.thedanglingconversation.net, later today.)

In any case, I don’t support pandering to the lowest common denominator and prefer to allow the language to evolve naturally over time. We do have some words that could use a little spelling reform, however, like colonel. Never could understand that one.

Great post!

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