What the flying FUCK?
Jesus Fucking Christ. Hang on, I must have read that wrong. Let me look again.
No, I was right. There are actually learned (pronounced “lern-ed”, by the way – two distinct syllables) people out there who recommend “that the spelling of English needs simplifying so children’s literacy can improve.”
Example phrase: If u hav a por memmory yor chances of becumming a good speller ar lo.
Fuck. That. Noise.
If that’s what you think, move to the USA* and get down with “thru” and “donut”. I’ll stay here and speak English.
–c.
* Apologies to any USAnian readers out there – I’m not anti-American at all, I’m just a bit anti-”American English”.
Speaking as someone for whom the spell check function in Word is a blessing, I STILL couldn’t believe that anyone would advocate a “dumbing down” of spelling. I’ve spent to many damned years trying to get the hang of the word “phenomenon” to let some asshat tell me it’s actually spelled “fennominon”.
Yeah, silly sods.
I’m sure I remember reading something (back when I was doing linguistics at Uni) that kids who are brought up bilingual tend to develop much better language and literacy skills. Which kind of makes a nonsense of the “simplified spelling” argument.
While on the BBC News site, go here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6290302.stm and read from the 11th paragraph. You would think they would check their acronym before maning themselves. Imagine trying to find their web site …