2 ms·
If anyone is interested in the history of spelling reform, I recommend Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell.[0] It's light and f
by Taikonerd 1y ago
If anyone is interested in the history of spelling reform, I recommend Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell.[0]
It's light and fun -- good beach reading, if you're a word nerd. And it does cover the ITA, from the article.
One thing I thought was funny: English spelling became more-or-less standardized in the years after the printing press made it to England in 1476. And almost immediately after the spelling was standardized, 15th-century Englishmen started complaining that the new system made no sense. ("Why is there a b in 'debt'?")
More than 500 years later, we're still complaining ;-)
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0063360217/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/0063360217/
- navark 1y agoIt's too bad that none of these reforms have succeeded. English has become the Lingua Franca due to the influence of the British Empire and American culture, along with it's ability to incorporate loanwords, but not because of it's spelling. Helping my kids learn how to read struck me by how insane English spelling really is. I recently found out that Theodore Roosevelt had signed an executive order to adopt new spelling rules from the Simplified Spelling Board in 1906, but backtracked when the press began mocking it. If it had been a better organized release it could have succeeded but now it's a cautionary tale. The future timeline extends out forever, if humanity is going to continue to primarily use an English-rooted language we need to make intentional improvements or we will be stuck with increased entropy, see the introduction of emoji's into text for example.
- Taikonerd 1y agoAgreed! It's sort of perverse: the more people speak English, the harder it is to reform it.