I’m sure that most of us have had to write English or Social Studies papers this past week…and because of that fact, I was reminded of an article I read a while ago about spelling.
“English spelling “truely atrosious”, says academic“
This article basically highlights how…unique (to put it nicely) the English language is. Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoy English…but I do have to agree that the rules on spelling can be a little ridiculous at times.
Writer George Bernard Shaw was fond of pointing out that the word “ghoti” could just as well be pronounced “fish” if you followed common pronunciation: ‘gh’ as in “tough”, ‘o’ as in “women” and ‘ti’ as in “nation”.
In a nutshell, one side can argue that it’s okay to accept change, that society tends to be ruled by majority anyways. But then on the other hand, if there is leniency on different ways of spelling the same word (not taking into account Canadian, American, or British spellings), then how do we know where we stop accepting the endless ways? Do you guys have any thoughts on this?
Jeanette Walls actually brings this up in one of her books, either "Half Broke Horses" or "the Glass Castle", I can't remember which. Either way, I thought it was funny when I first read it, and am surprised to hear other people talk about it 🙂