I’ve received enormous amounts of email from readers about spelling reform. One reader sent me this essay from 1946: Meihem In Ce Klasrum By Dolton Edwards.
Another reader sent me this essay he gives out to his community college students:
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).
In the first year, “s” will be used instead of the soft “c”.
Sertainly, sivil servants will reseive this news with joy. Also, the
hard “c” will be replaced with “k”. Not only will this klear up
konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced by “f”. This will make words like “fotograf” 20 per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent “e”s in the languag is
disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing
“th” by z” and “w” by ” v”.
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords
kontaining “ou”, and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer
kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be
no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand
ech ozer.
Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
The more I think about it, My initial enthusiasm is cooling. In my gut I think I want to do a 180 (“Well, there’s enough maneuvering room in there to do that!” — The Couch.). Yes, our words are spelled weird. Sure there are inefficiencies. But was there ever a champion of, say, Esperanto, that was one of the good guys? Please: No references to the movie Incubus.
I’m thinking we should take it a bit slower. Maybe we need a committee?