Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

ne1 bothered? y?

I heard that the National Spelling Bee earlier this month was picketed by the American Literacy Society, who are calling for a modernization of English to make the spelling rules more logical and easier to learn.

I'm a pretty bad speller, and I keep a dictionary next to my desk at home and at work. I'm also lazy, so now I frequently type words into Word or Goggle to see if I've got the spelling right. I'm not unsympathetic to the concerns of the American Literacy Society.

I don't know that they need to lobby for it, though, they just need to be patient. Language will continue to evolve (or devolve, I guess, if you are the type that gets freaked about such things.) If language didn't change, we'd still write things like this:

But nathelees, whil I have tyme and space,
Er that I ferther in this tale pace,
Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun
To telle yow al the condicioun
Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,
And whiche they weren, and of what degree,
And eek in what array that they were inne;
And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.

...which I understand slightly better than I understand IM and chatroom shorthand.

Posted by Nic at June 14, 2004 03:12 PM