Phonetic Spelling Saves Time and Effort Through Fewer Let...

Simplified spelling means shorter spelling. Of the 32 Rules printed in Part 3 of this Handbook, 27 drop letters from words as now speld; 3 involv trans- positions of letters to reconcile conflicting analogies; and 2 involv substitutions of one letter for another, with the same object. In no instance has the Board recommended a change involving the addition of a let- ter to a word. Further simplifications wil result in fur- ther abbreviations. A completely fonetic sistem of notation, ...

 Simplified Spelling is Good for Americanization of the World

Foreners, when brought into personal association with those who speak English, easily learn to speak English themselvs. Its grammar is simple. It has great flexibility, due to its richness in terminology and its abundance of sinonims. It has an unsurpast litera- ture, making a knowledge of it desirable by those who hav no call to speak it. In every respect, except one, it is best fitted to be the language of sience, commerce, and international communication. The desirability of havi...

 English Spelling Risks Becoming Like Chinese Ideograms

Indeed, the present tendency in the scools is to dis- regard the fonetic basis of English spelling, and to treat the written and printed words as ideografs like Chinese the pupils being taught to recognize a word by its appearance as a whole, rather than by a f util attempt to analize the supposed sounds of the letters composing it. Vast amounts of mony and incalculable years hav been spent in efforts, never wholly success- ful, to teach children to memorize the intricate and unreaso...

 The Printing Press and Dictionaries Crystallized Spelling

English spelling was at first practically fonetic, like the spelling of Latin, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and most other languages, and changed as pronunciation changed. In its case, however, various causes com- bined to interfere with this orderly process. Among them wer the variations in the early dialects, the dif- ferent spelling sistems of the Norman conquerors, the later different spelling sistem of the imported Dutch printers, the bungling attempts during the Renaissance to mak...

 Eccentric English Spelling is the Result of Dictionaries

The eccentric spelling of the English language is preserved because of a pervasive meme that there are right and wrong ways to spell words. This meme has all kinds of support, including dictionaries, computer spell-checkers, and children's spelling bees. But before the Use a dictionary strategy-meme became prevalent during the 18th and 19th centuries, people spelled words any way they wanted. It's not True that there's one and only one correct way to spell a word-it's just a meme. As Mark Twa...

 13 Percent of the English Language is Not Spelled Phoneti...

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 believe this, judging from my own limited experience with people. But why is this? Can it be that part of the reason is the matter of English spelling? The letter tells me that "87...