Let pupils abandon spelling rules, says academic

Example, I no what you r talking about. OR I want two go with you.
Mispellings are bad.

U astonish me, foneticly, Plain.

According to U,
the word "thay" does NOT have a LONG A in it????????




I 'm DUMFOUNDED!!!!!!!!

UNbelievable.





David

The "poor" spelling is the atavistic throwback to the Germanic roots of English.
Such use was fine, when English was pronounced, spoken, a lot more like German.

Good spelling is logical, modernized, updated spelling.

Fortunately, all of today 's texting will serve to show
the easier, faster, better way; the old way will fall by the wayside.

Simplicity n logic will prevail.

I mean only to point in the right direction,
not to apply the final polishing touches.
I 'll leave that to fonetic lexicografers.





David

First, the greatest heritage of the English language in its earliest days was from Frisian, not from "German," which, as an independently existing language, did not exist at that time.

In the second place, English spellins contain phonemes that have never existed in German, such as the two pronunciations of "th," and the spelling distinctions of that can be seen in their, they're and there. Other such examples exist which have no reference to your dubious claim about "atavistic" throwbacks--such as yore, your and you're. A spelling system which does not distinguish between words such as these risks obscurity or even incomprehensibility.

Texting will have to fight uphill against the demands of expertise, which will favor those whose spelling is ttraditional, as being evidence of a good education.

Finally, your own spelling silliness often serves to show how useless many of your ideas are. Does "n" mean and, or does it mean in?

Theodore Roosevelt attempted to reform spelling when he was President, and used his idea of simplified spelling in his corespondence with government departments. He could not enforce any changes, though, he knew it, and he didn't attempt it. His attempt to impose allegedly rationalized spelling failed in the face of traditional inertia--which will doom silly, self-congratulatory efforts such as yours.

That is why I do not read David's posts.

given the changes in pronunciation regionally, and over time, it's unlikely you and Chaucer would be able to understand each other's phonetic scribblings.

http://www.forvo.com/languages/en/



over 48,000 people offering their English pronunciations

pick one and use them as your phonetic guide and see how many agree with you - you'll probably get 508,999,990 English speaking people to disagree.

David just makes things up to support his silly argument. For example, English derives from a blend of the languages of the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes and the Danes, with a heavy influence from the Brythonic and Goidelic Kelts--these were mutually incomprehensible languages. Furthermore, the Picts and the Frisians were the merchants and pirates of what the Romans called the German Sea, and what we call the North Sea. Therefore, Frisian was the lingua franca of the region. But what is most hilarious about David's silly, fabricated story is that these people were almost universally illiterate, and those who were literate were literate in Latin--their own languages were not then written. It took the combination of them forming a united front to overrun the island, and the influence of monastic christianity to produce Anglo-Saxon as a written language.

But over time is the real point. As well as Chaucer, Mallory's The Death of Arthur, first publised by Caxton in 1485, was the best seller of its day. Despite the continued majority opinion that the author of The Death of Arthur was the Thomas Mallory of Warwickshire, the language of The Death of Arthur was Northumbrian English, what we could call today Yorkshire. The speaker of that dialect and a denizen of London (or any part of East Anglia, where modern English arose) would have been almost unable to understand one another. Once again, the majority of the English speaking world would have been either functionally or absolutely illiterate.

I suspect that he is also completely ignorant of the Great Vowel Shift, which makes his fairy story claims even more hilarious.

David, you really shouldn't just make **** up.

I wonder how David would translate this phonetically?

This is pretty much nonsense. Old English had much different spelling, which, today, would be considered poor spelling. It's not incomprehensible.

for most modern English speakers/readers Old English IS incomprehensible.

There are some nerdballs out there (like most posters in this thread <including myself>) who can read Old English, but we are far outside the standard on this.

Not nonsense at all. How many people today can read and understand old English?

Of course, i'd never have read JTT's bullshit if it hadn't been quoted here. I suspect he is as ignorant (or was until he read my post) of the Great Vowel Shift as i feel confident David was. But here, let's test his bullshit thesis:

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
5
monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra
10
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning!
Ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned,
geong in geardum, þone god sende
folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat
15
þe hie ær drugon aldorlease
lange hwile. Him þæs liffrea,
wuldres wealdend, woroldare forgeaf;
Beowulf wæs breme (blæd wide sprang),
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.
20
Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean,
fromum feohgiftum on fæder bearme,
þæt hine on ylde eft gewunigen
wilgesiþas, þonne wig cume,
leode gelæsten; lofdædum sceal
25
in mægþa gehwære man geþeon.
Him ða Scyld gewat to gescæphwile
felahror feran on frean wære.
Hi hyne þa ætbæron to brimes faroðe,
swæse gesiþas, swa he selfa bæd,
30
þenden wordum weold wine Scyldinga;
leof landfruma lange ahte.
þær æt hyðe stod hringedstefna,
isig ond utfus, æþelinges fær.
Aledon þa leofne þeoden,
35
beaga bryttan, on bearm scipes,
mærne be mæste. þær wæs madma fela
of feorwegum, frætwa, gelæded;
ne hyrde ic cymlicor ceol gegyrwan
hildewæpnum ond heaðowædum,
40
billum ond byrnum; him on bearme læg
madma mænigo, þa him mid scoldon
on flodes æht feor gewitan.
Nalæs hi hine læssan lacum teodan,
þeodgestreonum, þon þa dydon
45
þe hine æt frumsceafte forð onsendon
ænne ofer yðe umborwesende.
þa gyt hie him asetton segen geldenne
heah ofer heafod, leton holm beran,
geafon on garsecg; him wæs geomor sefa,
50
murnende mod. Men ne cunnon
secgan to soðe, selerædende,
hæleð under heofenum, hwa þæm hlæste onfeng.

Read that out for me, Bubba. Read it aloud . . . it would be hilarious if we actually could hear you stumbling over that text. It's the prologue to Beowulf.

For anyone interested, that's from the web site of McMaster University's Humanities department.

Untrue. Diagramming was done only in Catholic schools when I was an elementary school student and Catholic school students had an easier time writing well. Montessori school students still diagram, but, according to the Montessori method. Those students are stellar writers.

So, where do you teach English?

No, you are totally wrong. How do you know it is a long A and how do you represent that sound in print.

Your comprehension is dicey as your response amply demonstrates.

By the way, if that gobshite JTT tries to claim that that is Anglo-Saxon, which it assuredly is, and not Old English, which is assuredly bullshit born of ignorance . . .

The Wikipedia article on Old English

The Old English article at Omniglot-dot-com

The Dictionary of Old English at the University of Toronto's Centre for Medieval Studies

. . . and i can find hundreds, even thousands of more support for the FACT that Old English and Anglo-Saxon are one and the same.

Reading Chaucerian English is not a walk in the park.

Students who are taught to write become stellar writing students. The diagramming doesn't help. You still operate under the mistaken assumption that students don't already know parts of speech. Listen to kids talk. They know the parts of speech and they know how to order them.

Kids at five years old know the majority of the grammar of English.

If diagramming was such a great thing, how do you explain that Strunk and White and Wallace and a whole large number of English professor and teachers are grammatical incompetents?

The petulant child is now trying to guess at what I write. Why don't you just grow up and address the issues, Set. Sixty is as good an age as any to stop being juvenile.

I call bullshit, Setanta, major bullshit. You could avoid those just as easily as you could a full post.

Let's not forget to mention unbelievably whiny!

I misspoke. There are older forms of English where the spelling is different than that of today.

Om Sig's posts are not incomprehensible. They can be obscure but everyone's writing can be obscure at times. That's often, not always, because the reader lacks the necessary knowledge to grasp the meaning.

Set's notion is nonsense. It's just another of his old, and worn out "I'm a great judge of writing ability and English usage".