
Is Spelling Reform, Ten Years Old, a Success? (1916) - pfooti
http://sundaymagazine.org/2016/08/is-spelling-reform-ten-years-old-a-success/
======
madaxe_again
Language changes, as does spelling, both through drift and deliberate action.
Even the morphology of letters changes - see "ye", where "y" is actually "th",
and the old "s" which looks to modern eyes like an "f". An interesting one is
the distinction between yay and yes and nay and no (negatory vs affirmative),
which has utterly vanished at this point.

In terms of deliberate modifications, the most recent I'm aware of is French,
which has seen a rapid anglicisation over the past decades (Le weekend, Le ice
tea, l'office de tourisme), and had a spelling update last year -
[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35496893](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-35496893).

As with then, plenty of purists get their pantaloons in a knotte when they
zyxt phantastique new words and spellings, but time ultimately makes the
change whether they like it or not.

Notable is that the words in the article which _have_ changed are the commonly
used ones. "Woe" isn't in common parlance so hasn't drifted or annealed.

~~~
csense
> the old "s" which looks to modern eyes like an "f"

I always thought they looked like that because before modern dentistry,
everyone spoke with a lisp.

~~~
mhurron
ftupid fhithead.

It's a Futurama (Suturama?) joke that I absolutely love.

------
helloworld
There's been recent controversy about President Obama's executive orders, so I
found it interesting that this article describes the impact of an executive
order by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 (which was subsequently
overturned by Congress).

I hadn't known that executive orders began with George Washington:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order)

And President Obama has issued relatively few executive orders compared with
his predecessors.

------
shirro
I find it fascinating that the US could change colour to color which seems a
completely useless and trivial change but still hasn't managed to adopt the
international system of units.

I suspect both the spelling change and resistance to unit changes have far
more to do with protectionism than anything. Both isolate the US and stop them
from importing books, particularly textbooks. Someone has probably made a lot
of money from that.

------
wilwade
From the 1916 article:

"These teachers knew better than any one else how much valuable time was
wasted in getting by heart long lists of words."

This is perhaps an interesting argument for simplifying spelling. Namely to
give en-US children a competitive edge on the world education scale by
increasing the amount of time that is able to be devoted to other subjects.

~~~
tzs
It's not clear that it would give much of an advantage nowadays. English has
become the de facto international language for now, and so currently the
difficulties of learning English, such as spelling, are also being inflicted
on students around the world.

For most of them English is a second language and thus they have to deal with
the spelling on top of the difficulty of dealing with a foreign language. I
think that makes it so English spelling is a bigger hinderance for them than
it is for students where English is their first language (such as the majority
of the US), and so spelling reform would help them more than it would help US
students. In terms of competitive edges, spelling reform would lessen the edge
of US students.

Of course, that doesn't mean that would be bad. As you note, less time on
spelling is more time for other subjects. If spelling reform led to US
students getting, say, 1% better in science or math, and led to foreign
students getting 2% better, yes that worsens the US position relative to the
foreign students, but looked at another way _everybody_ improves.

~~~
tjl
I think a bigger problem than spelling is people using the wrong words.
They'll use defiantly instead of definitely, heal instead of heel, too instead
of to, and a number of similar mistakes.

~~~
aries1980
Indeed. But also strategy instead of tactic, culture instead of way of
working, engineer, architect and many other have a ambiguous meaning these
days, so if you want to precise, it is better to use something else.

------
pfooti
A century on, the National Education Association is getting their wish: we're
spelling it as 'tho' instead of 'though'. Linguistic engineering is
fascinating.

------
xupybd
I see the logic in this but am frustrated that the web uses American color not
the colour I was taught in school.

