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This article talks about "habits and lack" of governments. Somehow, these two do not belong together for the Netherlands, where the 1955 Spelling Reform was only made because: - in 1947 it was announced that another reform would come. - it had become a habit to change the spelling.
By the way, further scientific research has proven that: - People learn the word-pictures, even with alphabetical. This has some serious consequences:
It has thus been proven, that the English spelling isn't too bad. It is very stable, as practically all documents follow the standard spelling, and differences between the US and the UK are very small. It also follows the morphological principle quite good (day-daily is one of the exceptions).
So the only case where spelling reform would be useful, is when morphological structures are not clear, or when the correspondance between speech and writing have become too large. But also this last thing does not apply to English spelling, as 85% of all spellings is completely regular! There is no case where "cat" would be spelled as "dog".
y wunder how that „studdy“ with 85% reguler spellings was made, but y'm quite shoor tha studdy maker wanted ta proove by all means that inglish spelling is reguler. y wunce made a „skeam“ that followed all patterns and sub-patterns y cood find, and as ew can sea, fewer than 85% ave tha spellings ar reguler (till this point 34 reguler spellings and 23 not reguler, wich means 59% reguler werds). ok, this is running text and not a werd list. but even in werd lists the proportion ave reguler spellings never reach 85%. amung the 100 most frequent werds, 58% ar reguler. if y take tha middle ave a list with tha 10000 most frequent werds, y cum ta 61% reguler werds. and werce: menny werds mite be considered ta have a reguler spelling, like 'have' (the E must be considered reguler becaus V requires a following vowal). but this „reguler“ spelling is just reguler for tha speller, not for tha reader, who will read it with a long vowal, riming it with gave, pave, shave, etc. the same aplies for a werd like 'lost': thare is no uther way ew cood spell it, so we wood have ta consider it reguler. still the most likely way ta pronounce it wood be with long O, riming it with most, post, etc, acording ta tha sub-pattern that OST is pronounced with long O). thats quite uneek in tha werld, y gess: if ew followed all the patterns and sub-patterns (hundreds av them) ew'd get hundreds or maybe even thousends ave misspronunciations. consistent/inconsistent ar ajectives like 'tall' or 'fat': to say that a person is tall or fat makes wun presume that the person is taller or fatter than at least haf tha population. so ta be considered consistent a language shood be mor consistent than the majority ave tha languages, and i cant sea how that cood be tha cace, at least not amung languages that use tha romen alfabet. english mite be mor consistent than tha keltic languages, but thats all (if thats tha cace). even french is altogether mor consistent: it mite be as hard for tha speller as inglish, but it is much mor easier for the reader. y gess ew can pronounce mor than 95% ave tha french werds tha rite way, if ew sea them ritten. wich will never be tha cace with inglish. this text was ritten in an inglish spelling that follows inglish patterns and sub-patterns.
With a degree of erudition, one might come to appreciate the English language as a mélange of bits & pieces from many different times, places, cultures; each spelling carrying with it a whole history, a world of subtlety & nuance. Phonetic or simplistic re-casting is like a bad cover-version of a favourite song. Memethuzla ( talk) 05:28, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
It's probably worth pointing out a difficulty for spelling reform based on pronounciation. The pronounciation of words varies significantly between regions (in English, at any rate), and historical distinctions which have been lost in some dialects persist in others. Thus, a system which might be more "logical" for one group of speakers could be less logical for others.
-- Paul
Several words are described as "anachronisms". This label was incorrectly applied to "thru" and "nite". Both of these spellings are common in informal writing, and "thru" is often seen in "thruway" because it fits on the road signs. I don't know what the author was getting at by labeling them as anachronisms, but perhaps there is another word that describes them better. Obscure? AdamRetchless 22:31, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Those sections are perhaps inevitably pretty subjective. It currently states that "cigaret" never caught on but that "agast" did (a bit), which I find to be pretty much backward. It could also use the addition of some more of Noah Webster's successful whims - for instance the dropped silent e in judgement/acknowledgement/abridgement/lodgement. Unfortunately I don't know where to put these chronologically - they were certainly in place by the 1913 edition (which rather coyly notes that the full spellings are "sometimes" used "in England" ;). Theatre/theater is also missing - they're now in about equal use, though the popularity of the revised spelling seems to be waning (a section on the sociological forces that popularise or revile reformed spellings might be interesting in itself). -
toh 20:43, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)
There is an error - I believe, in classifying American English spellings under dominant spelling; I think it better to place them under "variant spellings" while making clear that they are the dominant spelling for American English, instead of insisting on something that is not true for the vast majority of the English-literate world. User:anonymous
I've noticed that "tyre" -> "tire" is not on the list. It's interesting because the "tyre" spelling is never seen in Canada and "tire" (for the rubber wheel) is never seen in Australia. Also "program" is the only spelling for computer program whereas "programme" coexists with "program" for older uses in Australia.
The distinction between programme (never a computer program), and program shows how nonphonetic spelling differences can be used to increase clarity. And the attmept by most spelling reformers to spell "come" as "cum" is an obvious example as to why these reforms will never, ever, get the backing of mainstream America. User:Anonymous
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Wile it's tru that vowels change considerably from region to region, consonants are pretty consistent and a minor reform would be great. Cameron Nedland 21:33, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Adam, several years ago I ran across that '85% regular' stat. Couldn't find any sources or data. Looked as if the writer (forgot who) pulled it out of his ass. All you need to do to show that it's total balderdash is compare the spelling of a few dozen words and see how many different letters are used to represent each sound and how many sounds are represented by each letter.[[User:JO 753| JO 753]
Functional literacy is usually defined as an ability to read at the 9th grade level or so, with sophisticated materials such as medicine instructions, tax forms and the like which someone might encounter in day to day life. It primarily a vocabulary standard rather than a gauge of whether or not you can read at all. It is a standard based on an ability to function in an industrialized literate society, not the baseline literacy that comes into play at the stage of education when children are learning to simply spell at all.
Most people who are functionally illiterate can still read street signs, the headlines in a typical daily newspaper, and so on. In short, most can spell, albeit, often not terribly well. Ohwilleke 19:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
As of this year, it would seem the reform might finally see the light. Publications, while not yet in the mainstream, now exist, including a lexicon of the modifications ("le millepatte sur un nénufar", showcasing two of the components of the reform, being a simplification of the rules for composite nouns and the rectification of some words which had what was considered as an anomalous orthography. Associations in the rest of the Francophony have been formed during the period after the adoption of this rectification, and are trying to spread it usage. From the little I know on the field, it is at the very least presented to teachers in colleges and universities in Quebec (and that I'm suggested to take a little time to introduce to students during my peer-to-peer tutor work), and I seem to have heard that teachers in Switzerland are considering its adoption. I'll check for copyright issues however before, but from what I heard the Academy is relatively prompt to answer, so it could be done in one or two weeks. David
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Texts distributed freely on the web are not necessarily considered public domain, am I wrong? David
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Removed and inserted into the Manual of style as suggested below by Cadr.
I think it's all about things like beauty and efficiency. If a poll here was moved to the Manual of Style I can't find it. Etaonsh 21:57, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there a neutral way to say that reformers can be very nitpicky, while ignoring larger issues of language planning? Something like anathematizing sexist language while ignoring grave cases of sexism?
I assumed (perhaps wrongly?) that he meant that spelling reformers bang on endlessly about the nitty-gritty of spelling reform proposals without exploring the more key issue of why the world seems to be irrevocably biased against them/us(?). Etaonsh 21:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there a neutral way to say that reformers may be on the wrong track? The acceptance of correct spelling as somehow being more important than what is written has always appeared to me to be nit-picking and elitist although often cited in UK Media as a reflection of declining standards of education. Spelling is a skill like any other and like any other skill, some people have a knack for it and other's don't - Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald are often cited as poor spellers. Mighty Antar 11:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I dont think you have to worry about saying it neutrally; its a plain fact. Most reformers get into the whole linguistics / IPA mindset and forget that there are billions of people of widely varying backgrounds, intelligence and educational levels who need to write every day. The majority of these potential customers of the reform proposal dont have a clue or give a hoot about 'upper velar fricatives', 'bilabial plosive' and other such academic blather. Tell the average person that J is really D+G or i is really a+e and all you will get is a blank stare. JO753 11:12, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Here are some rough thoughts of what is missing in this article in the non-English field.
Doubtless there is more - this is just off the top of my head as it's a field I've been interested in for some time but not in a very organised way. — Hippietrail 17:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Even as an American, I had no idea that "catalogue" and "cancelled" were supposed to be spelled "catalog" and "canceled".Personally, I think that the English language is fine as it is; to change it would be to tarnish the sterling silver of linguistics out of which it is made. Many of the reforms made my Melville Dewey are totally absurd. If he spelled "lodge" as "loj" would he spell "lodged" as "lojd"? That's my take on things. --Amrun en' Sinta
The "list of leading spelling reform proposals" is a misleading title. This is certainly not a list of the most popular or well-known proposals, so the extent to which these are the "leading proposals" is arguable. For example, I have seen no material about Nuspelynh except for the Nuspelynh website itself, and even that is extremely unlikely to succeed relative to other proposals for two reasons: firstly, it makes no attempt to represent sounds not found in Western American English (e.g. the vowels in the words cot, caught, and calm are spelt identically), and secondly it uses letters like "c", "q" and "x" and vowels, which I think most English speakers would find unacceptable. I don't think at this point we can set out a list of criteria that makes a proposal inherently more likely to succeed, since it will take a long time to even make people aware of spelling reform and willing to go through with it, and their attitudes about "acceptable" and "unacceptable" proposals could easily change in that time. For example, what if North American speakers become more receptive to the idea of using diacritics as Spanish becomes increasingly spoken in the US? By the way, why exactly does the list say that North Americans in particular do not favor diacritics? I haven't met any British, Australian or Indian speakers who advocate diacritics any more than Americans do. Certainly there is a place here for a discussion of how radical a scheme can get before it's too unrealistic, but it's a bit premature to be singling out specific schemes and setting up boundaries between what will and will not be accepted by the general public. — Ливай | ☺ 02:14, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This article makes no mention of President Theodore Roosevelt's efforts to reform spelling in the U.S at the beginning of the 20th century. Other Internet sites that I have visited do mention it, but suggest it had no long lasting effect. However when I was working for NASA as a summer intern in 1966, there were two lists of words in the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual that mandated certain spellings. One was the familiar list of U.S.--British differences (e.g. color vs. colour). The second was a list of reformed spellings that were only mandated for U.S. Government documents. I was told the lists dated back to the Teddy Roosevelt administration. One word I remember in particular was "align", which came up all the time in my work on guidance systems. In the U.S. Government, the word was required to be spelled aline (also alinement). Our section secretary had to retype (pre-word processor) a long technical memorandum I had authored to change those spellings. -- agr 17:36, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
re: The sub-heading List of leading spelling reform proposals... Is unclear wrt to which historical initiatives, versus current politicking (err.. politicing) among the COGNIZATI. No historical 'feel' is given to us readers for current versus past efforts, nor is there a distinction clearly made as to which are US proposals, or those of other English speaking countries. Which fact augments the very point made just above, WHERE IS TR's Letter to the Public Printer of the United States, and mention of the Simplified Spelling Board (Columbia Univ... and for all I know, Mark Twain), or the SSB's newsmaking 'Circular number 6'. Pultzer prize winning British historian Edmund Morris spends several pages (paperback, pp460-461, in Theodore Rex) discussing the impact of Teddy's guidance which targeted 300 words, and kept the press 'buzz' but implies that there was a rare partial failure here by a man who was 'winning everything' at the time. Some historical discussion of where he prevailed, and where he and the SSB did not is surely in order! Fabartus 16:26, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
It should probably be noted that, at least for the "analog" and "catalog", these words are the dominant forms in American English in some cases.
In my experience,
with some crossover in both directions; non-US usage favors "analogue" in all cases.
Also in my experience,
This might have something to do with the awkwardness of trying to produce the -ing form of "catalog". In any case, there is again some overlap between these uses, and the whole thing seems to be in flux. Non-US usage still favors "catalogue."
Here's what L. Craig Schoonmaker http://www.geocities.com/sswordday/ has to say about the ferry-furry distinction:
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
To my limited knowledge German simply didn't have any codified and unified orthography before 1901; each school used its own (though similar) rules.
While I am at it, I'd like to comment the quite short-sighted opinion against a spelling reform for English. Please read this.
Er... yes, English has the least logical orthography of all languages that use an alphabet, it's even worse than Mongolian written in the Mongolian alphabet and Tibetan, and that by any criterion -- phonetics, etymology, morphology, whatever.
David Marjanović david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at 00:34 CET-summertime 2005/8/7
I changed "thru" to "through." Someone changed it back to "thru." And then someone else changed it back to "through." I see "thru" on signs at fast-food restaurants, but I've yet to see it in prose except in students' poorly written papers and here. Perhaps my experience is deviant from that of the majority, but I guess it should be put to a discussion. "Through" is standard, and even on a spelling reform page it seems appropriate. Savantpol 17:39, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't agree with the listing of the word hiccup in this article as a 20th-century reformed spelling of hiccough. Hiccup is in fact, the older form—the spelling -ough arised owing to a popular etymology linking it to cough. The O.E.D. says that hiccough "ought to be abandoned as a mere error" and hiccup appears in quotations as far back as 1580. I'm going to remove it from the list.
In the section on spelling reforms for the Portuguese language, someone wrote the paragraph:
"All this is moot in Brazil, where apart from some enthusiasts the reform is being thoroughly ignored, as most people do not see any problem with the current orthography and many linguists argue it would enforce uniformity where Brazilian usage is actually more regular or reflects local pronunciation."
Is this assessment based on some kind of opinion polls, or does who wrote it believe he can speak on behalf of the 180 million Brazilian citizens? I think such broad sweeping generalizations should either be backed up by statistical data, or not written down at all.
I have attempted to clarify this issue with the user who wrote the paragraph, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Leandrod#Portuguese_spelling_reform.
He replied to me once, then stopped, so I am going to openly challenge his paragraph. Everything in it is either personal opinion, unproven, or unclear.
"All this is moot in Brazil, where apart from some enthusiasts the reform is being thoroughly ignored, as most people do not see any problem with the current orthography and many linguists argue it would enforce uniformity where Brazilian usage is actually more regular or reflects local pronunciation."
The spelling reform was stalled for over ten years due to legal impediments: it needed to be ratified by all signatary countries, which had not happened. Then, in the summer of 2004, a change was made to the text, allowing the agreement to go into effect in the countries that had already ratified it. One of these was Brazil. Although a year has passed, not much has been done yet to implement the proposed changes to spelling--in Brazil or elsewhere.
The phrase "All this is moot in Brazil" seems to suggest that Brazil's situation with regard to the spelling reform is special, which is not the case.
"most people [in Brazil] do not see any problem with the current orthography" This seems like unsubstantiated opinion. Furthermore, it is irrelevant. Whether or not most people see a problem with the current orthography tells us nothing about whether or not they will adopt the new orthography when the time comes to do so.
"many linguists argue it would enforce uniformity where Brazilian usage is actually more regular or reflects local pronunciation" This sentence is difficult to understand. Who are these "linguists", and how do we know they're "many"? What does "enforce uniformity" mean, and why do those linguists see it as a drawback of the agreement? What is a "more regular" spelling? How does the current orthography "reflect local pronunciation" in a way that the new orthography does not?
Dec. 4 2005.
-- As a brazilian, i'll try to give my opinion on this. First, a rational spelling seems a good thing, and portuguese spelling is relatively good. However, our spelling has been reformed too often. The last one was in the 70's, so there are many people who learned the old spelling (the one that used the circumflex (^) more often) and they still confuse some words. Fortunately, the even-older-spelling (the one with y, ph, etc.) is dead, i could not find much information about it.
So, imagine if they change things again! That would be a lot of confusion, wasted money and the spelling would still have its known quirks (c or ss? g or j? x or ch?). I would also like to point out that (1) the proposed reform isn't widely known here (i can only find small notes about it once in a few years) and (2) some points are dabatable, at least in my humble opinion (Do we really need to change the rules for hyphens to something else that is equally complex? Do we really need to get rid of the trema (¨)? etc. etc.). If they really want to reform our spelling, they should wait at least 70 years and then come up with something that's really easier for us, and not cosmetic changes that go nowhere. --
143.54.13.75 18:10, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I took off portuguese from the languages with a reasonable spelling. I dont know who had that idea. Of course it is more regular than english or french, but most european languages have a more consistent spelling. We can mesure consistency by assigning one letter to one sound (basing it on the statistical count) and then say that evrything that deviates from that is an inconsistency, a negativ point for the language. Then the pronunciation (in european as well as in brazilian portuguese) is quite far from the spelling, and english is lite yeers away... but then another way of counting is considring all the patterns and sub-patterns, in this case portuguese doesnt hav such an irregular spelling (for instance knowing that final O is an (almost silent, sometimes compleetly silent) /u/, all the words with final O become regular. And heer english becomes a lot mor reggular too, altho stil very irregular wen comparing with other languages. Heer we can make the count as if teeching a non-nativ speeker who doenst know the language or as if teeching somebody who knows the language (at leest the spoken form): if yu teech english to a nativ speeker, yu can tell him that content words with 2 sounds beginning with a vowel hav thare consonant dubbled, so that the word has at leest 3 letters. A nativ speeker will know that /aed/ is a verb, thus a content word, and so the D has to be dubbled: ADD. A non-nativ speeker wont know wat /aed/ meens, so he cant know that it is a content word and cant spel it rite. The same aplies for a word like /flVSt/, wich for the nativ speeker can be only the past tense of 'flush', so it is certainly 'flushed', wile a non-nativ can only spel 'flusht'.
Ennyway portuguese is in the middle feeld, together with german and perhaps danish. But it is much less consistent than the other romanic languages exept french, less consistent than dutch or the other scandinavian languages and less consistent than slavic, baltic or finno-ugric languages. In brazilian portuguese, A has 4 pronunciations (má = /ma/, banana /ba'nâna/, faz /fais/, nao /nuN/ (the 3 first ones obey patterns, the forth one dusnt), B is silent in 'também' (no pattern), /s/ can be speld with S, C, Ç, SS, X, Z, (thare ar rarely patterns for it - it is the area with the moast mistakes), DE/DI ar /dZ(i)/, E can be /E/, /e/ or /i/ (final E is a pattern, in uther cases u just dont no), G needs U to be pronounced as /g/ befor E or I (pattern), on the uther hand the U in 'linguiça' is pronounced (no pattern), H is silent (the pattern is that it is silent, but the riter who heers a werd with H wont spel it becaus he didnt heer it), the sound /Z/ can be speld with G or J (no pattern), L wich is not folloed bi a vowel is a semivowel /u/ (mal, nacional = /mau/, /nasjonau/), final M is /N/, thus 'bom' is pronounced like english 'gong' (with B, of corse), final O (and sumtimes meedial O - final O is a pattern, meedial O is not) is /u/, R has 2 sounds, actualy 3 (beginning R and rr is /h/ ('real' = /he'au/), intervocalic is tongue /r/, and offen it is silent), S can be /s/ or /z/ but that has its patterns, TE/TI is /tS(i)/ (with pattern), X has 4 sounds /S, ks, s, z/ (sumtimes with a pattern, sumtimes not). Ennyway, such a languaj cant be considderd as havving a consistent spelling.
I'v herd sum brazilians complaning about the reform, on the uther hand menny peeple wernt uzing the diferential axents ennyway (especialy the ü in werds like 'freqüente, lingüiça'). Zé do Rock, june 2012.
Deutsch (German) is cited as a language "which use[s] an anachronistic or overly complicated spelling [system]". First of all, the use of 'anachronistic' does not work here. Perhaps 'archaic', 'obsolete' (which I still don't like, as they are still usable), or perhaps even 'vestigial'. Secondly, and perhaps, most importantly, it's not true! German spelling is incredibly regular and phonetic, perhaps not quite as Italian or Spanish, but it's certainly a fair sight more regular than French or English (although that's not saying too much). I beg for examples to show me otherwise. I'm fluent in German, and I cannot think of an example that isn't an obvious French or English loanword (e.g.-"Genre", "jogging"). 64.122.95.110 20:40, 15 February 2006 (UTC) ColinKennedy 20:40, 15 February 2006 (UTC) (sorry, I got logged out)
Since when, exactly, has catalogue been spelled as "catalog" in American English? I'm an American, from Ohio, and I can only ever remember it being spelled "catalogue." I'm 23, by the way, so it is not due to my old-timey nature or anything. ChildeRolandofGilead 15:08, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't see how Hebrew is classified in one category when Arabic is classified in another. I have no idea how favorable Hebrew spelling is, but it is very similar to Arabic spelling so they are either both good or bad. Removed reference to Arabic.
"consistent (and preferably phonetical) spelling systems -- like Finnish, Russian, Italian, Spanish or Hebrew". Hebrew spelling for Ivrith is a traditional spelling, which is far from being consistent or even phonetical. I removed it. Metron 12:10, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
The August 2006 issue of Computer references this article. I know there's some template to put on the talk page for it but I haven't a clue what it is or where I saw it. Cburnett 18:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Make sure to mention the pinyin battle on Taiwan. jidanni.org/lang/pinyin -- Jidanni 2006-12-12
"languages which use anachronistic or overly complicated spellings -- like German, French or English."
I'm not sure that German should be used as an example of this. German uses consistent spelling and is entirely phonemic. At least this is my experience. Morrad 20:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I find it a little strange that there is no mention even in passing of the Hungarian linguistic (and spelling, which is relevant) reform which occurred at the end of the nineteenth century. 140.142.175.94 05:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
'Because the Bible was the first English book to be read by large numbers of people, its spelling errors had a large effect on English spelling. People regarded them as God-given and copied them.[citation needed].' No citation is in fact needed, because the reasoning is quite valid in itself; altho perhaps it could be better phrased, e.g., for the latter sentence: '...For most readers, this would inevitably have endowed them with a seemingly God-given validity.' Having said that, perhaps a citation is, in fact, required, i.e., giving specific examples of said 'spelling errors'(?).
A citation is definitely required. While 'God-given' spelling errors sounds vaguely plausible, this is not an argument that I’ve come across anywhere else and in fact, falls down pretty quickly when you consider the significant number of bibles identified as faulty (see Bible errata#KJV) because of various spelling mistakes within them. I think this whole paragraph should be removed ref WP:NOR Mighty Antar 10:45, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Actually, you can find this in at least 1 place I know of. Its in The Story of English by McCrumb, and he was refering to some earlier work. JO 753 16:30, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Does it cite what the earlier work was? Given the English Bible only had about 8000 different words, it shouldn't be hard to cite any consistant errors said to have been established by this practice. Mighty Antar 18:06, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
"The aim of spelling reform is to make spelling easier for learners and users by removing its difficulties. It attempts to remove irreflections between what is written and spoken"
What in the world is an irreflection? And since this word does not exist, how are we simplifying spelling by adding words that no one else in the English speaking world knows? Pray, tell. Homely ( talk) 15:58, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
I think not enough attention is paid here to the circumstances in which language reform generally takes place. Isn't it interesting, historically, that many of those who have pushed for reforms tend to be political radicals also? There might well be a hidden agenda as well as an impatient desire for change and simplicity.
It is certainly true that it does not require a political push for a language to evolve, it will do so on its own (though whether that is an advance or dysgenesis is moot).
Leaders of major political revolutions (or invasions), particularly the more oppressive regimes, waste no time in "simplifying" the spelling, grammar, vocabulary of the lingua franca, ostensibly to make it more available to the poor ......, but certainly to impose a
Newspeak of their own, to insinuate the new culture into every cranny of their subjects' new existence. A mere side-effect of all this generous help is that, very shortly, most old literature and guidance in the old ways becomes almost completely inaccessible to the new generations, & a cultural paradigm can be completely shifted in double quick time.
For that reason alone, those of us who value our liberty should be very suspicious of educational (quiet) or political (noisy) initiatives radically to change our mode of basic communication.
Think about that the next time you are offered something "for free"; a subtle
semiotic variant of "in return for you freedom".
Memethuzla ( talk) 06:20, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
'Simplified spelling' should not redirect here, but it does, at the time of writing. To those in the know, the two concepts are far from interchangeable. Simplified spelling has been implemented repeatedly, not only in the writings of private hobbyists and historical genii, but in the secret communications of companies, as well as learning simplification programs such as the I.T.A. and Sayspel. The current redirection arrangement also seems to mitigate against both Simplified Spelling and Spelling Reform. For one thing, it results in simplified spelling schemes not being properly documented, despite their limited historical successes and implementations. Additionally, I raised the subject of 'spelling reform' with another ordinary working class gent, recently (a caretaker at Charlton House, in fact) and noted that he responded with much greater enthusiasm to the concept of 'simplified spelling,' which, despite involving a longer word, sounds less hifalutin. Arguably, the confusion between simplified spelling and spelling reform is among the historical reasons for the failure of the latter. The failure to appreciate, treasure, and use simplified spelling, once devised, itself mitigates against its acceptance, but an instant, assumed equation of examples of simplified spelling with spelling reform, or an attempt thereat, sets it up for something it is unlikely, in any given instance, to achieve. Many simplified spelling schemes are devised, in many written languages, but the number of historical instances of spelling reform is minute in comparison - this becomes clear early on in the study of the subject. Some schemes may be 'born to fail,' in that respect, in the sense that there was never any intention for them to replace traditional spelling - I.T.A. is an example of this. Many are doomed, in this sense, simply owing to the obvious difficulty of instituting changes which will meet with the approval of large (and sometimes, even, comparatively small) language communities. Said confusion therefore leads to expectations unlikely to be met, and a failure, at the time, to appreciate the beauty and worth of any individual simplified spelling scheme for what it is - an experiment in design.-- 86.31.105.33 ( talk) 06:59, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
I've removed from the article the part where it seemed to state that switching Moldovan spelling from Cyrillic to Latin was accompanied by a phonemization of the orthography. The same part also was saying that Moldovan is a variety of Romanian. Both statements are false. I didn't bother labeling the passage as lacking sources, since I know for a fact that there aren't any.
Moldovan is in fact Romanian. The language was given a different name (and a different script) in Moldova for political reasons and no other. There is no linguist stating they are different languages, or dialects, or anything of the sort. It's one language.
Its Cyrillic orthography was in fact about just as phonemic as the Latin orthography that was used before and after. There is an almost 1 to 1 correspondence between the two scripts (somewhat like the two spellings of Serbian), with only a few exceptions that are regular and depend on the actual pronunciation. As such, the transition in 1989 from Cyrillic to Latin in Moldova was not, and cannot be, justified as a means to render the spelling more phonemic, but to reunite the orthography of the language. — Adi Japan 07:52, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
There's a dialogue on the talk page of English-language spelling reform about the definition of spelling reform ( here). Your input is appreciated. Throughme ( talk) 20:59, 5 June 2013 (UTC)