Benjamin Franklin's Strategy for a Phonetic American Alphabet
The alphabet can be found here.
Memes in the Watson category “/hobbies and interests”
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The Costs of Our Complicated Spelling System
A short list of the problems caused by the irregularity of English spelling starts with children being taught the alphabet and finding that it is a poor guide on how to reliably pronounce the written form or reproducing spoken words in writing. This leads inevitably to poor results in other areas of learning, as…
Benjamin Franklin's Reasons for Reforming the Alphabet
Franklin's own impulse in creating the alphabet was quite different. He was a man who looked closely and with curiosity at the world around him, seeking ways to improve it wherever he saw the opportunity. His alphabet was conceived in the same spirit as his less smoky, more fuel-efficient house-heating stove, or his…
Examples of Phonetic Spelling Failures in English
With spelling erratic, many English words become ideograms that must be learned as a whole, with its parts giving no clue or, worse yet, false clues. If you don't know in advance and just judge by the letters, can you know that "through," "coo," "do," "true," "knew," and "queue" all rhyme? If you don't know in advance…
13 Percent of the English Language is Not Spelled Phonetically
I received a letter today from the "Reading Reform Foundation," which tells me that "23 million (American) adults are functionally illiterate, unable to read an advertisement, a job application, directions on a medicine bottle." They say "30 percent of all schoolchildren have serious reading difficulties." I rather…
How a Lack of Vocabulary Can Turn a Child Off to a Subject
Consider the case of a child I observed through his eighth and ninth years. Jim was a highly verbal and mathophobic child from a professional family. His love for words and for talking showed itself very early, long before he went to school. The mathophobia developed at school. My theory is that it came as a direct…