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January 31, 2017

For yearz eye culd knot spel stewdent. Nowt eye r won.

aspeler.jpg

Founded in 1908, the “Simplfied Speling Soesiety” were certainly not the first such group (despite the title of their journal).
The desire to whip the oddities of English spelling into some kind of more logical order can be traced back to the 16th and 17th centuries, and gathered particular pace in the late 19th century with the efforts, for example, of the American Philological Society who, in 1876, recommended the adoption of eleven reformed spellings for immediate use — are→ar, give→giv, have→hav, live→liv, though→tho, through→thru, guard→gard, catalogue→catalog, (in)definite→(in)definit, wished→wisht. One major American newspaper, the Chicago Tribune — whose editor and owner, Joseph Medill, sat on the Council of the Spelling Reform Association — actually began to use these new spellings. The Pioneer ov Simplified Speling, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1912) | The Public Domain Review

Posted by gerardvanderleun at January 31, 2017 10:04 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

A PLAN FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF ENGLISH SPELLING:

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet.

The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.

Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.

Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Mark Twain

Posted by: Donald Sensing at January 31, 2017 1:52 PM

Lojikl,kohirnt,dam fain.Werld ridandant.Wil dun.

Posted by: Nori at January 31, 2017 7:25 PM

I think it would be a good thing if future generations were able to read important historic documents such as the United States Constitution and the Magna Carta as originally written.
What a boon and opportunity to change history and the content of these documents it would be to revisionists if the English language were 'improved'.

Posted by: Speller [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 1, 2017 1:58 AM

Looks like current Swedish spelling.

Posted by: ghostsniper at February 1, 2017 3:49 AM

Looks like the results of two generations raised with Spell Check.

Posted by: Rob De Witt at February 1, 2017 6:30 AM

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