The death of spelling?

[andysetra]

I was reading digg today on my lunch break and ran into this article (Link). So a professor from the UK wants the English speaking world to lower itself to text messaging standards...

I think we would lose the artistic side to the English language, as well as the ability to present ourselves through words (there was a great post in the digg comments comparing writing to dressing for a date...)

So... wut arr yor thots? Shood we just giv in tu spelling foneticallee?


Also... I know I'm not one who should be criticizing others for their spelling, but nobody's perfect

 

[Pojo]

Either I've read something like that before, or I'm having Deja Vu...But anyways...I think as long as we teach spelling and grammar in schools, it shouldn't deteriorate much...People should know when to type correctly, and when they can tone down on it (Correct examples: essays, letters[who even writes those >.>], other little things...)...(Toned down examples: internet, notes, everything else...)

 

[ballucanb]

If it is faster the world will do it, anything to save time, years ago, everything was spelled out no matter what there was no Coke, just Coca cola, same with Pepsi, and as things moved on everthing was reduced to a few letters.

So that probably will happen someday, I doubt if I will ever use it, but the younger generation who are now useing it will just use it everyplace for everything.

 

[Charlie]

Countdown would be a shambles.

Anyway... as a terrible speller (I think I may be dyslexic) who has had problems with spelling in school, I agree that he has a point about the burden that using proper English can have on kids... Although the idea of spelling things phonetically and getting rid of the apostrophe sickens me.

Teach kids Latin is all I can say! Or just make learning spelling and grammar more interesting. Dumbing down the language certainly isn't the way.

 

[recovery]

I am with Charlie in that we shouldn't dumb anything down. We spend years in schools, lets try and make the most of it. But thats not to say we should shove English and other subjects down their throats. But the last thing we need is to have people who can't read or write. Its such an important skill!

I personally hate all this lazy text the make these days. Heck trying to read a text from my mum is hard enough! Its another skill in its own. I sware its harder to learn that than anything else.

Since the advent of technology, I think text has be a mainstream comunication tool. With SMS, IM, email and Social networking sites brought to a young age of people where their english is still in a bit of development. Make themselves take shortcuts and teach themselves bad habits. No one could type over 40WMP when they first started using a keyboard. But please, Learn it the correct way first. Otherwise you are making it difficult for yourself in future to unlearn the wrong way and re-learn the proper way.

Thats one of the main reason why our English is so bad among young people. How to get round it? I don't know. Maybe we should add typing skills as well as handwriting? I think thats a bit extreme.

 

[andysetra]

I guess I've never really had trouble with spelling, so I find it hard to relate to those that due have trouble. In fact, I would say I'm worse at spelling now than I was 10 years ago. Sad, isn't it?

Besides that, most of the people I know who are bad spellers are either dyslexic or not very literate(ie: have read 1 book in their entire life).

 

[starshine]

No, don't dumb anything down.

next thin yew kno then ppl will jus start to not care about punctuashun or stuff either

I have to say, being out of school for 2 years basically, and spending ample amounts of time on the computer, I find myself slipping up quite a bit. That's what I get for using a spell checker, it's ridiculous.

 

[daria7483]

Anyway... as a terrible speller (I think I may be dyslexic) who has had problems with spelling in school, I agree that he has a point about the burden that using proper English can have on kids...

He has a point, but the burden of being bad at anything can take a toll on kids. I was uncoordinated and sucked in physical education. Some kids are horrible at math. But that doesn't mean we should get rid of PE or math in schools. Schools need to ensure that their teaching methods reach all kids and not just the ones naturally gifted in a particular subject. And teachers do teens a disservice when they allow text-message type speak in school assignments.

 

[Takashi]

After reading that I kind of understand were he is coming from because the English language is hard to learn but I don't think it's a good idea to dumb ourselfs down to text talk for wrting an essay for a class or something.

 

[Pramrider]

If it is faster the world will do it, anything to save time, years ago, everything was spelled out no matter what there was no Coke, just Coca cola, same with Pepsi, and as things moved on everthing was reduced to a few letters.

You see that with many company names, banks especially. A bank name might have started out as "First National Bank of (Somewhere)" and been called that for ages. With the move towards shorter names it would shrink to FirstBank, and if that wasn't short enough, "Bank1". Just an example...

Yep, us old fossils will keep using full, written out English to our dying day no matter whether shorter forms of writing becoming commonplace in the future.

~Pramrider

 

[Jewbacca]

There was a language invented recently (within the past 40yrs) that is completely phonetic, and completely removes ambiguity, and all the words are like on 3-5 letters long (it's a constant number, except there are a few that are 2 letters). and I can't remember the name of it right now (rep point to anyone who knows it).
oh yeah,
. makes a breathy h sound and y is a vowel.

 

[chevre]

ooga booga! ... ooga.. ooga!

 

[mizzycub]

I think HypnoToad's language might be Lojban. I've looked at it. Humans don't think like that, computers do. It isn't like any human language and very difficult to learn. It's meant to be logical, but we forget that neither humans nor human languages are logical.

We shouldn't dumb down language teaching. Languages develop and change naturally. Just let English develop on its own lines. Spelling and vocab reforms rarely do much to improve a language and can cause lot's of problems.

As for people not performing like they should be, that is stupid government aims that are unfair on people - because people are different. We target people that are 'below average' and say stuff needs to be done, but everyone is below average somewhere. What we need is more adaptive teaching methods, so that people get the best help in areas they are bad at and are able to excel in areas that they are good at. Someone works better listening to music - let them listen. Someone needs to be constantly fiddling - let them. It is as simple as that.

 

[Pramrider]

ooga booga! ... ooga.. ooga!

:laugh:Chevre, glad I wasn't taking a drink of something when I read that! I'd be cleaning spray off my computer screens right now.:laugh:

~Pramrider

 

[ballucanb]

Pramrider that just reminded me of a song, "I can't stop this feeling", your old enough to remember the way the song started.

 

[Pramrider]

Pramrider that just reminded me of a song, "I can't stop this feeling", your old enough to remember the way the song started.

LOL Yep, I remember that one quite well......ooga shaka....ooga, ooga, ooga shaka

~Pramrider

 

[weswissa]

I doubt something as small as text messaging ruin thousands of years of spelling correctly.

~Weswissa

 

[IncompleteDude]

500 years ago things were spelt phonetically, at least in English. You can often find multiple spellings of the same word on the same page in books from that era. We evolved past this because it's a bad idea.

 

[Martin]

Some countries are small enough that they have 1 way of pronouncing everything, which means you can do stuff phonetically, English has so many different dialects etc that that is impossible.

Also dropping stuff like apostrophes sounds like mutilation to me.

 

[betagame]

yay i wish that wuz aceptable so i dont have 2 remembr speling
I wish every1 talked in engrish.