Thingkin about Langwudj, Part 2

Musashi Sez:

OK! I noe that mos of yu don’t intrest in langwudj unless somboddy tell yu how it help yu or mebbe hurt yu. (I lern this from mai mom whu is a wrytin perfessr, that is lik thingkin perfessr, egsept mor on payper.) Anywae, las week, I tell yu about mai frend Cerceelya, whu noe lots about langwudj and why it happn, an how she’s helping me figger out hoomin peeple Inglish and also kittee peeple Inglish. Is not so eezee as yu migt thingk.

Cerceelya sed, “As you mentioned, Musashi, when you write, you are spelling by sound and not by history. So, you are actually experimenting with a kind of spelling reform. If you want, you can tell Sue and her friends that this is your academic experiment with phonetically accurate spelling and that if they can't hack it, then maybe they need to take another class.”

Huh. I am eksperimentin. So ther.

“And now the history: Each and every attempt at language-wide spelling reform in English has failed miserably, beginning with the profusion of recommended rules and new alphabets in the 16th century and continuing to some rather harebrained modern schemes like NuSpel, ALC Fonetic, and Simplified Spelling. What all those failed reformers forget is that any one of these schemes renders hundreds of years of literature and other information irretrievable in less that a generation. They also seem to forget that English has repeatedly proven itself to be flexible, robust, innovative, and tolerant of oddball spelling. … Of all of the potential reformers, Webster can be considered fairly successful because he got us to drop the ‘u’ in words like ‘color"’ and the ‘k’ in words like ‘magic’--but even he only managed to affect a few words.”

Huh. I lik this ideer of hoomin peeples tryin ovr an ovr agen to get somthin rigt. I lik the wurd “profyoozhun.” That’s a srsly cool wurd. An them reformrs, whu ar jus lik thoz hoomin peeples whu ar maykin mai lif mor diffikult cuz of theyr weerd, old-fashon ideers, is gud that mai frend Cerceelya calls them “faild an forgetful,” cuz if mai mom is rigt (an somtims she is) that mayks them annoyin peeples look bad, an us look gud.

Mos speshullee, I liks her sentins-thin wher she sez: “English has repeatedly proven itself to be flexible, robust, innovative, and tolerant of oddball spelling.” If kittees aren’t flexibul an innovaytiv an robuts, I don’t noe whu ar.

I’m not shur what this “oddball” wurd meen. Cleerlee, it not about me, or othr tipikul kittees. Mebbe it’s fer doggees, whu do count somtims, when we’r talking about lernin thins, speshullee them Germin Shepperds, cuz they lerns stuff reellee fast. Espeshul about ballz they need to find fast, uzhool bai smellin. Not nesasarilee faster than kittees, but still perty fast.

Werk Cytd

Musselman, Cecelia. Email. 22 Feb. 2009. Huh.