- 40% of adult Canadians, age 16 to 65 – representing 9 million Canadians – struggle with low literacy. They fall below level 3 on the prose literacy scale (Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey, Statistics Canada and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2005).
- 60% of immigrants have low literacy, compared with 37% of native-born Canadians (International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey (IALSS), 2003).
- In 2003, nearly 3.1 million Canadians aged 16 to 65 were at proficiency Level 1 on the prose literacy scale (below middle school skills), while another 5.8 million were at Level 2 (below high school skills)(International Survey of Reading Skills (ISRS), 2005).
Most people do not realize that most languages have about 50 spellings or spelling patterns (link between a sound and a letter or a group of letters). Finnish has 28 or so! Masha Bell indicates. English has 91! That would not be so bad, she notes, compare to the average of 50, but the problem is that 69 of them have several words that don’t follow the pattern. In fact, she concludes her analysis with this shocking statistics:
“There are 2008 divergent spellings out of 4206 (which occur in 3700 words out of the 6800 most commonly used [words in the English language]).” Masha Bell
So, more than 1/2 of the most commonly used words in the English language have an irregular spelling! It means that a learner might as well flip a coin to know whether or not a word will follow the pattern! (By the way, there are are tens or hundred of thousands of irregularities if one uses a complete corpus of words and longer words, whose spelling and reading are problematic because of the unstressed schwa syllable[s]* as well!). Check the “y” in Dr. Jekyll. Because it is unstressed it defaults to the schwa sound. One must know where the stress falls. Yes! There are rules for that! And, yes, there are just as many irregularities! I detect a pattern: whenever there are rules, there are items that do not conform to the rules! Sorry! That’s the best pattern can offer you! In any case, Masha Bell goes on to write (this is an example):
Spelling it out (Masha Bell) The blog page |
Dr Davies, a person who learned Finnish, indicates that:
In fact, Finnish students must only learn 1/3 spelling rules (since it has about 30 phonemes represented by 30 letters). No wonder it takes in 1/3 less time for Finnish kids to learn their language compare to English-speaking students! Of course, if English was really simplified (more so than just regularized), there is no reason to think that English-speaking students could not be able to decode ALL English words in one year too! Imagine all the new notions they could learn much earlier than they are now … like the Finnish or Italian kids can! No need to reform the education system, teaching, find new methods.
As you will read later, the state of the English spelling system has not changed effectively in 400 years and that is one of the reasons it is such a mess! Here is a preview!
So the way English is, I mean iz, is artificial or artiffishial or artiffishul, caused by a number of events and people, as we shall see later on! Many languages and many people of many countries have understood that a language is artificial! In fact, even the Chinese, whose language is anything but phonetic, have adopted a phonetic transliteration, Pinyin, to make learning it easier! Is it arrogance or ignorance or … greed that have brought us to keep spinning our wheels or go backwards, in fact? When will educational leaders (ministers, superintendents, teachers, union leaders,…) understand this? Right now, they are leders (as in lead [the heavy metal that is hard to move] or as in pen … so do write to … them) ! Are paradigm shifts for us, but not them? Is thinking outside the box something that WE should be doing, but not them? Why is everyone else supposed to bend over backwards to change, but they can dictate some changes, but not others, for some people, but not them? Why the discrepancy? We are not advocating literate people to learn a new code, we just want to make the educational system more efficient! Are they against efficiency too? Of course, some will state that it will be very hard to get all Commonwealth countries to agree on this reform (or any reform). Granted! It is not going to be easy! I am no politician, but it will take a few courageous leaders to get things rolling. The regularizing of the spelling system is the smallest common denominator and many linguists or reformers appointed by the countries should agree to it. Politicians are not linguists, so let’s leave that decision to the ones who know like Dr. Yule, Dr. Betts, Masha Bell, and others who have proven over time to be expert in the field. It is true that maybe political leaders are unaware of this issue and are willing now to take the bull by the horn? I guess it will take editors of newspapers and journalists to give this movement a little bit of momentum, but maybe editors and journalists are afraid of losing their jobs or their position as “experts” of the language! Who knows?
But, even if cost was not an issue, one must consider the loss of time used to teach (memorize) all of those irregularities What about the parents who must hire tutors to help a kid unable to read and often spell. Governments use a lot of smoke to make the mirror look good! In fact, Canadian kids are not immuned to being labelled “disabled” in spite of all of the expenses and in spite of a system that seems to set them up for it! Other Commonwealth countries are failing too!
Well! Well! Isn’t that strange? Not really! In fact, Wikipedia articles in Italian and Finnish on the subject matter are much smaller in scope and length. Is it because their language doesn’t cause “learning disabilities”?
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Are students really disabled, are the teachers really bad teachers, or is it the language? The preponderance of the evidence seems to point to one and only one logical answer and solution! Just for fun, did you know (do you remember that) there are 24 ways to spell the “oo” sound as it is found in the word moon. But, there is more insane! Of all those words that are pronounced “oo”, say, using the “ou” spelling (as in through), the “ou” spelling is irregular: it is “”, “through”, … but it is “through” (schwa), through (trɔf), “your” (/o/ phoneme), but “flour” (/awer or flaʊər) or “harbour” (Schwa), and “pout” (/paʊt/). There are thousands of examples like these for other letter combinations. Many people know that you can pronounce “ough” 7 different ways, for instance! So, how are learners going to know when a word spelled with “ou” vowels is READ or DECODED? In fact, English has 91 spelling rules.
AND, MANY, contain more exceptions that elements that follow the rule! (Stats are from Masha Bell’s Spelling it Out.)
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By the way, how many spelling rules are there for Finnish?
Speaking of 1, guess who is # 1? Canadians? Australians? Americans? Brits? (For those who know about the PISA tests and know that Canadians do quite well on them, you are probably smirking right now, but I will have the last smirk! I will prove you wrong! Do you like foreshadowing?) So, GIVEN THE SAME BUDGETS, THE SAME AMOUNT OF HOURS OF INSTRUCTION, and THE SAME SERVICES (I will be less subtle later!), who is going to be smarter? Who is going to be more competitive? Guess which teacher is going to have an easier time teaching Language Arts? Guess how much time Finns will spend on learning spelling rules and their exceptions? Guess who will learn more advanced notions faster? Are educational leaders asleep? Are they dumb? Are they lazy? Can’t they read? Are they le(a)ders? That’s right you read right! Leders (like leaded or deader, I suppose!) 🙂 It is true that I would not be able to play on the word if the spelling was … regular! 🙂 They are just regular “leders”, I suppose, then! 🙂 Hopefully, not all of them! Time will tell!
(* There are about 28 spelling patterns, though, since there are 28 letters + 1 spelling rule, which states that if a sound is long, double the letter. IN total, then, 29 + 3 rare exceptions! A far cry from English spelling’s mess!)
In Chapter 28 in her handbook on Orthography and Literacy, Usha Goswami, a professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience at Cambridge (UK) declares what seems so obvious: that the complexity of a language’s orthography (its spelling system) makes reading more or less complex depending on how regular the mapping of symbols to sounds and sound to symbol is. Learners of English want to use what most learners of more phonemic languages like to use (phonemic decoding), but they end up relying on more logographic “decoding” (whole word) to unable them to read words correctly:
Moreover, many studies link English irregular orthography to the epidemic number of “learning” disabilities found in learners of English as their first language:
(Masha Bell, Spelling it out, 2012) |
In fact, the evidence is incontrovertible, unless you are blind or … cannot read this! The English spelling system is not only disabled, but probably disabling. No wonder learners have problems reading! I invite you to read “Spelling it Out” by Valerie Thomas. It is a reading book that would be used to help students with reading. It does indicate how a child might feel when he or she is asked to write (and read) in English. So, studies show –and current education practices show also– that the only way to master the system (if you can call it that) is to force students to memorize all of those words like Chinese learn all of those ideograms. What a waste of time! The guided reading remediation programs that are in vogue is just acknowledging that memorizing is pretty well the only way one can learn to read and spell in English. Is that a solution? Wouldn’t it be simpler to solve the underlying problem and regularize the code! Well! No, of course! Let’s keep the status quo! Kids MUST learn it! And if they cannot, well, they are disabled! But, is it them or is it the language? Most people have this attitude: “Hey! I learned it! So,…!”, “Hey, I fetched the water to the river! So,…” The truth is English spelling is very inefficient, in that if it were a car, it would not sell; if it were a paper, it would get a fail; if it were an invention, it would never get off the ground! If this was an Apple phone, do you think people would buy it? So, everything else needs to improve to get … market-share, to be more efficient, to be better,… to survive, to grow, but why is it that English is allowed to be the exception to that rule or law? One thing is certain: the law of capitalism don’t seem to apply to English! It has not changed in 400 years! 400 years! Do you know anything that has not changed in 400 years? Even other languages have changed! Everything has, but English! Is it complacency or arrogance! The English spelling system is far from efficient! Students are not “dumb”; they know English is (its spelling system)! 🙂 Anyone with a half brain should accept the evidence!
And, then, you have those people who cannot fathom ANY change, but who don’t like paying higher taxes! 🙂 Guess what? WE are not asking you to change! Books using the old system will not vanish! Don’t worry! We are the phonetic police! 🙂 Could it be that the language that underpins every single aspect of learning be the cause of some of the headaches (and the heartaches) that besets the Commonwealth systems and, more importantly, besets most learners of English? But, maybe there is something even more sinister at work here! Education leaders and anti-teachers can always ask teachers to work harder and, basically, ask them to accomplish an impossible task consider how complex the spelling system is! It is a perfect system to keep every teacher busy and everyone else frustrated or illiterate!
In contrast, there is Finnish! It has one and only one rule: a letter has one and only one sound attached to it! It has 38 spelling patterns and virtually no exceptions! Which would you like to learn? You can call they dumb, but who is going to read the harder books first? Which is the most efficient system? Finnish students do not have to learn 91 spelling rules which have more exceptions than items that conform to the rule! And, predictably, Finnish students (and even Estonian students) beat many English-speaking students of many Commonwealth countries (see DATA page) on an international test called PISA. Is this really surprising? Of course, it is hard to ascertain that “the” language “did it” because there are so many variables that can influence language acquisition (start of schooling, socio-economic factors, teaching methods, nutrition, budgets, support, time spent on language acquisition,…) and these tests are conducted on students who are late in their language acquisition development (age 15), so a country school system can over time or with added support, compensate for the difficulty. That is what happens! They pour money into their language programs and, bingo, they do better! Anyway, these tests take place at 15. It is a too late to know what is really going on! However, if logic and intuition do not work for you, as luck would have it, one comparative study in early language acquisition (Seymour et al., 2003) shows that after one year of instruction, English children show the lowest percentage of correct word reading on a scale in comparison to other European countries, with only 30-40% correct words compared to German, Greek and Finnish, with close to 100%.
If all this was not enough to convince you that most English educational systems are just patching holes instead of fixing the underlying abyss, there is yet another proof indicating that there is a problem with English! A careful analysis of the previous diagram will reveal that all of these countries have a more regular spelling system than English, if you refer back to the first diagram provided above. Is that a coincidence or is there more to it than that? Well, I wish we could “hide” this little piece of information under a rug somewhere. Actually, to obfuscate matters, many Commonwealth countries spent inordinate amount of money and time to make teachers teach and student learn about those 91 spelling rules and to acquire fluency in reading where Finnish kids can focus on matters like critical and creative thinking earlier and therefore, at the end of schooling, learn more important skills that will help them compete as individuals (and as a nation). Commonwealth countries spent more if they want their students to outshine others, but they have a tough time competing with the Finnish students! Finnish kids learn to read much quicker and much more often than English students learn to read English! Literacy issues are nowhere what they are in the US, for instance. Worse, English-speaking kids are sometimes even labelled as reading disabled, when, I think, if they had been born in Finland, not so many would be. Not only does it damages many kids’ ego (and possibly his or her life), but demands a whole host of special services, teachers, and material to remedy the problem. Is the kid disabled or the language disabling? There is data that shows that the rate of “dyslexia” (which is sometimes used to speak about reading/writing disabilities) in English speaking countries is much higher than in countries that have a language that is easier to learn! Please follow the link to the page DATA. In any case, I wonder how certain interest groups (publishers, remedial reading services, English learning schools,…) are feeling about a reform! Do you think they would love it? Actually, there is an event in the history of the language were some of these groups derailed a reform. Suffice it to say, learning English is big business (and the more complex reading and spelling are, the better it is for them)! Innovation? No! Status quo? Yes! We have the quintessential VHS-Versus-Beta issue or, as I would like to put it, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde problem! Read below!
Check this table! While the purists will indicate with a smirk that Canadian students aren’t doing badly, thank you very much, this result does not indicate how much money they must spend on their education budgets (much more, as in hiring more teachers, learning disability teachers, aids,…). In any case, where do Swedish-speaking Finnish students stands in terms of phonemicity compare to all the Finnish students? Are you connecting the dots? (And, in this experiment that the PISA test reveals, the Swedish-speaking Finns belong to a higher socio-economic group)! And, of course, the “Finnish” data includes the Swedish-speaking kids, so the gap is even more important between the 2 groups! But, the Swedish-speaking Finns should do better than their Finnish-speaking counterparts. Studies after studies demonstrate that one’s background gives you an advantage (Karl Alexander’s study in Marita’s bargain in Outliers does)! What do you think the education budget of Finland is (per capita) compare to, say, the one of the US, or England? Would it surprise you if I were to tell you that Finland spends less on education than English-speaking countries, would you be surprised? Are you connecting the dots? Go to Finglish to read a more thorough analysis on this topic. Finglish? What’s that? Don’t be afraid! The new code is not going to look like Finnish! Don’t worry! We are not radicals! We are not as radicals as to impose to billions of people a system that is completely illogical! We wouldn’t want to do that to anyone! You would be surprised how reasonable and how kloes thu niue koed iz and more importantly how logical or lodjikul.) It is worth noting that many reformers (because I am not the only one behind this unless Dr. Yule and Dr. Betts, both distinguished linguists are inept) don’t advocate for radical changes. There are many others! Masha Bell has written many books on the subject, detailing all of the irregularities of English. Check also all of the videos below and the Children of the Code website. It is also worth noting that many people from many nations (Chinese, Dutch, German, French, Estonian, Irish, Japanese, Romanian, Portuguese, …) have undertaken some reforms to make their language simpler to read and learn in the last 300 years. That has not happened with English in 400 years! Is English perfect? Even Chomsky, the famous linguist, says that a reform would be beneficial, according to a private conversation I had with Dr. Yule.
Actually, I think there is a crisis now in Commonwealth countries, but it is well … “hidden”. I think literacy issues in Commonwealth countries are more severe that are being reported (even though there is lots of data to suggest that there are crises).
http://www.thecourt.ca/2012/03/10/at-the-court-moldowan-revisited-and-learning-disability-human-rights-claim-considered-at-the-scc/comment-page-1/#comment-452095 |
Again, these crises are mitigated –as best as one can afford or want– by all kinds of measures that are very costly (higher budgets: more support and more hours devoted to language acquisition, for instance). All things being equal, English-speaking students would be appalling low in international assessments! I guess we owe it to the amount of money being poured into the system and the brave teachers who day in and day out makes English make sense to the kids, if indeed that is possible! For many, the reality is that they will have to learn English almost like Chinese kids have to learn Chinese! I will explain that little bit of information in my Finglish page!
I would be remiss if I did not address the one important objection that reformers must answer, namely that most children learn to spell and read well. First, they do, but how long does it take them? There is the rub! Some quickly, but some not so quickly, especially if we compare them to the proverbial paragon of student: the Finnish-speaking Finn. The study above show that many English-speaking kids learn English, but not very fast (and some not at all). Why do some learn to read and spell and some don’t, anyway? ANSWER: VISUAL memory VS logic! I think it is probably safe to say that a parrot could learn English! I am being facetious, of course! But, people who have a great visual memory (or who are reading often and early in life, with literate parents urging them) will do okay! Sadly, the ones who have no books at home, illiterate parents, and a visually-impaired memory, will have a tough time. The ones who tend to rely on logic (trying to find the logic behind the system) will come out more confused and frustrated, as we known English to often having rules and within a rule, more exceptions than elements that fit the rule! In some ways, English is like languages like Chinese or Korean, where one has to memorize many characters or ideograms to learn to read and write! The distinction about not including speaking is important and will be explained later. Also, if you know Germanic or Latin languages, reading and spelling in English might not be so hard because you can rely on the one of the 2 main languages from which English was based on. Both of those languages being more phonetic would make spelling and reading much easier! So, depending on your abilities, English will be relatively easy to learn or impossible to learn. One thing is very sure, it takes for most people more time to learn to master reading and spelling English than many languages! If it is not completely intuitive, there is lots of data to suggest that this is so!
To be sure (and this will be addressed more thoroughly later on this page), there is the idea that, even though there is a problem, the way to fix this would be overwhelming; in effect, a reform is impossible. There are many reasons that would make a reform difficult, but can we afford to be playing the ostrich? Oddly, though, the digital age has opened up that window a little bit wider. Teachers should not feel threatened by this. Government shouldn’t either. And, the public at large, the literate people, will not have to learn a new code. I offer a compelling and elegant way to solve this crisis and reform English below. Clearly, 400 years of neglect does not make it easy to cure the depth and spread of the disease, but what is the relative pain of a preventive medicine delivered to new patients administered by a doctor who will no longer be hiding from its past! However, it is quite possible that the dark side of capitalism will raise its ugly head and prevent a better product from being created, but are governments and the rest of the industry not belonging to those vested interest groups going to lie down and take it? Here is just one example that indicates how difficult this is going to be!
Will they eventually not see the merit of progress and the lure of better efficiencies or productivity? Does money corrupt the most loyal of enterprises? The gains will take a generation to … register (pun intended), but a generation is unfortunately not a word that parties like to look at, unless you have someone with a vision who comes in: a true leader! There are many vested interest groups wanting to keep the status quo!
Finally, we do not pretend to offer a solution that will solve all the problems in the educational systems. Teaching, school facilities, management, quality of the material used, diet, parenting,… all of those elements do ALSO affect educational outcomes. That is absolutely clear! What is also absolutely clear is that the way a language is structured does impact outcomes too. That should be absolutely clear too! Are Commonwealth leaders unaware of those realities? Probably! Probably so because many educational leaders are too! Even so, where is the leadership? Is that ship sinking or thinking? Maybe we should read le(a)dership not leadership! Millions of kids (and foreign language learners) are hoping for a significant paradigm shift, not patching holes with rags ! And, remember … we are not advocating that literate adults learn a new code if they don’t want to! Read on!
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and, considering English reading is not that compelling, I thought the following video couldn’t highlight some of the issues better!
INFUSION, FUSION, DIFFUSION, and CONFUSION
The first and most important event is the conquest of England of William the Conqueror of France. He (and his soldiers) conquered England in the 11th century and, for about 300 years, the French conquerors “imposed” indirectly or directly Latin and Norman French as the language of the court, while commoners spoke English and those who wanted to climb the social ladder spoke both, which meant that eventually elements of both languages got fused, often duplicating the lexicon. In other words, this act of slow infusion created a slow fusion which proved to create confusion, as a result! Confused? Read on! Things will become clearer! 🙂
Second, when eventually Henry the fifth came to claim back England and English as the national language, it looks like clerks, who had written in French and Latin before, had to invent ways to write English words now, often “latinizing” words, with no central authority to guide them in that regard. The word “some” used to be spelled “sum” before the French came and the word “quick” was spelled “cwik”! The old system wasn’t perfect. As you can see the “c” has the same sound of the “k”! But, the French influenced messed things up! There were also the inconsistent copying issue. At the time, monks, left in badly lit rooms, were copying books written in Gothic font, which is excrutiatingly difficult to read, as this example shows.
Third, when the printing press came to the fore, a set of characters/letters designed for Latin was used to represent English sounds and words, forcing again to “latinize” English because there weren’t enough symbols or characters to represent the sounds of English AND Norman French words (which meant that sometimes 2 or 3 letters were needed to represent a sound). English’s inconsistent spelling became fossilized.
Adding insult to injury was the peculiar change of the pronunciation of the English vowels for the next 300 years after the French had left. This great vowel shift compounded the issue of the fossilisation of writing because irregularities as they occurred in time became fossilized. I cite from pg. 167 of the “Origins and Development of the English Language” by Thomas Pyles and John Algeo (1982):
The 15th c., following the death of Chaucer, marks a turning point in the history of English, for during this period the language underwent greater, more important phonological changes than in any other century before or since. Despite these radical changes in pronunciation, the old spelling was maintained and, as it were, stereotyped. William Caxton, who died in 1491, and the printers who followed him based their spelling norm not on the pronunciation current in their days, but on the usage of the medieval manuscripts. Hence, though the quality of every single one of the long vowels has changed, the graphic representation of the newer values remained the same as it had been for the Middle English ones. (The Modern English Period to 1800: sound and spelling)
Finally, in the middle of the 18th century, Samuel Johnson was given the task to make an English dictionary, but it appears that he either was inept at regularizing the spelling system or felt he just could do as he wish. He kept many unnecessary irregular patterns and thousands of exceptions to these irregular patterns, all of which had been put in the books 150 years earlier when the printing press came to existence and Caxton fossilized it! 1476! Most of the problems originate there and Johnson immortalize them! English became a dead language. He had the chance to reduce patterns and exceptions, but he didn’t. His dictionary became a standard, sadly, and would create problems for learners for centuries to this day.
It is now quite apparent that the result of this fusion, this fossilization, this shift, this dispersion, and Johnson’s machination or this affection for what is complex made it almost impossible to clean up a language, which overtime, because its orthography was so irregular and its pronunciation, ever changing created gaps between how words were pronounced and how they were spelled, across all of those Commonwealth countries, which might explain the difficulty to reform its spelling. Granted, differences between accents are waning, thanks to the infiltration of the television and the globalization of entertainment! Speaking of which, did you notice that Mr. Hyde is spelled with a final “e” that is not pronounced, but “might” doesn’t have a final e? Also, the “i” sound is written with a “y” or with an “i”. And, finally, “gh” doesn’t sound like “g” or “h” or “gh”! Isn’t that weird? Or, should I write weerd as in beer? Or, weard as in fear? Or wierd as in achieve? Are you getting the picture?
This Change is not for you. We Agree!
There is no denying that spelling makes reading and writing excruciatingly difficult in English. The facts are incontrovertible. Nonetheless, there are people opposed to this reform. But, I wonder! Are they also opposed to the invention of the shoe, the bicycle, the car, the plane, the jet engine, all of which made travelling EASIER, if I am not mistaken? Do those people long for the times when human beings had to spend hours to create tools and arms out of stone, when their ancestors chased for days mastodons, when their grand-parents went to the river to wash their clothes? Wasn’t it more difficult? The same can be said about reforming English. English has to evolve. There is no need for anyone to be upset or be concerned, however. People who can write and read current English will never be required to learn, read, or write the new code. They will not be impacted. True, their children or grand-children will be impacted, if nothing is done about improving English! Do they like them to suffer? Do they like them to fail or to be labelled learning disabled? Do they want countries to spend billions in literacy programs? Do they want more people in jail? Do they want to pay more taxes? I mean. There are some good arguments (13 to be exact) that can be made against reform. To make things short here, I did not want to address them all, but this reformist tackles each and everyone of them and, you guessed it, dismisses each and everyone of them too. If after reading all of this you are still opposed to it, please leave a message! I would be interested to know your arguments. But, remember, YOU will not be impacted,… if you can read and write now, that is!
Seeing 20 … 20!
Millions of kids and adults suffer from low self-esteem because they cannot read or spell. While spelling is a minor issue, being illiterate is not. It costs billions. Is it any coincidence that English-speaking kids have 10 to 20 % of students who need special learning assistance programs in reading? It costs lives too. Is it a total coincidence that 80 % of prisoners are illiterate? This needs to change, but you will not be impacted negatively on a personal level. You will not be required to do anything. This reform would be a silent reform. It will take decades. You and I will never need to learn the new system! For that and that reason only, you should support this movement. We owe this to the next generations of kids. It simply does not make any sense to keep the old system. Read this article for more info and or watch this video:
So! The cure to all of those literacy issues is a new spelling system! It is that simple! Except that won’t make those ESL schools or publishers too happy, but have their programs worked in the past? Except that there are other issues that might be more important, but our kids (you as a kid maybe) were cheated! And, except that there are many debates has to how this new spelling system should look like. No matter what, a reform is long overdio! Overdioo? Overdew? Overdue, … no matter how it is spelled or spelt! 🙂
References
(2) The American Literacy Council
(3) The American Literacy Council
(4) Ibid
Courtesy of Children of the Code
Courtesy of Children of the Code
Courtesy of Children of the Code
Courtesy of Children of the Code
Courtesy of Children of the Code
Extremely insteresting proposal, I completely agree!
Such a comprehensive expose !
If English is “simplified” what will happen to all its literary treasures ?
Every human being has a right to keep his/her native tongue, the one which carries their culture.
If English keeps spreading the (approx.) 6800 surviving tongues will disappear, while English will disintegrate, as did Latin.
And there is a need for inter-national communication. Why not use Esperanto ? (It can be learned very quickly and easily) but allow each group on Earth to use their own language/idiom/dialects within their own “home”.
http://www.worldlanguage.info
lernu.net etc…
Thanks for the interesting comment!
I think English will keep its traditional literary treasures alongside the new transcoded version. Keep in mind that we are just changing the spelling code, not the content. I think that was your question.
Under the title of the blog it clearly states that people who are literate in English today will not be forced to learn a new code if they do not want to. The reform –as I see it– is for a new generation of kids who have still to learn to read and write English!
Esperanto, as I see it, is more Latin-based than English. I think it is easy for Spanish and Italian speakers, relatively so for French speakers. I think it would be easier to reform English than to force a population to espouse a new language altogether. Parents could still talk (and even write and read) to their kids! We are only changing a few elements. At least I am! There are too many English-speakers and users. BTW, we are not forcing English as the lingua franca of the world, but if it simplified it probably will be. By all means, people can keep their own languages! No problem! But, English as it is written today is a mess and it could use a review! 🙂
A nice site to visit, thanks for sharing
Thanks, Mustofa, for the kind comment! All the best!
There are more than 7 ways of saying -ough actually, so it's even worse than you've said. Though I must say, the suggestion that EL school children disobey rules because their language's spelling system does too is just so unbelievably ridiculous.
1. Are EL students any more misbehaved…?
2. There are loads of other languages which have irregularities.
3. Why not blame the English past tense as well then? That breaks rules? Why not propose EVERY verb must end in -ed?
4. The education situation in Finland has nothing to do with spelling, Spanish is just as orthographic, as are many languages. The Finnish education system is revolutionary and has nothing to do with the language's orthography…
Thank you for your comment. I am sorry that you did not find anything in this blog of any value. Could you please indicate to me the other way(s) “ough” is pronounced. Thank you.
1. Are EL students more misbehaved? I guess I wasn't clear and I will clarify the matter. I was just merely indicating that the “establishment” wants everyone to follow rules (in and outside schools), yet they are not willing to tidy up their language, namely a spelling system which has thousands of instances were the rules are broken, a system that increases the time to read by 3 years or so. They also claim that efficiency is extremely important. What a bunch of liars and hypocrites!
2. You are right in saying that all languages have irregularities. Italian, Finnish,… for instance have many rules and exceptions as it relates to grammar. French has a FEW spelling quirks, but fortunately they do not interfere with reading so much as there is some consistency (ain, in, ein, im graphemes are relatively easily decoded since they all have the “i” as a clue + the annoying silent ending in French words does not interfere with reading). However, English has THOUSANDS of words that make learning excruciatingly difficult.
3. About the past tense and correcting other quirks in the English language. Good point! However, I believe in baby steps! Beside, compare to the tens of thousands of “unphonemic” spellings –AKA errors– one hundred or so irregular past tense occurrences are negligible and not worth fighting about.
4. You claim that the Finnish school system is revolutionary. That's not so as explained in Finglish! I urge you to read it.
If English is “simplified” what will happen to all its literary treasures ?
They will still be in the library and on-line. 20 years after the reform there will probably be fewer and fewer readers of TS (traditional English) in the original just as there are few readers of Old English and Middle English.
Most books have already been digitized. They can be easily converted into any new orthography.
Things published in the new spelling will also be available in digital format and can converted back to TS if that is what the reader prefers.
In Sweden, the regularized spelling was pushed thru largely with the support of teacher organizations. Teachers preferred a teachable orthography rather one with many spellings that were not phonemic and had to be memorized.
Thank you, Steve! Oh! Teachers supporting the reform in Sweden! You would not happen to ahve the reference handy? Thanks!