"Fed up with his students' complete inability to spell common English correctly, a British academic has suggested it may be time to accept 'variant spellings' as legitimate. ...
"To kickstart his proposal, Smith suggested 10 common misspellings that should immediately be accepted into the pantheon of variants, including 'ignor,' 'occured,' 'thier,' 'truely,' 'speach' and 'twelth' (it should be 'twelfth').
"Then, of course, there are words like 'misspelt' (often spelled 'mispelt'), not to mention 'varient,' a commonly used variant of 'variant.'"
**********************
Okay.
Call the guys in the white suits. I am officially going nuts.
*OFFICIAL RANT ALERT*
Language is the medium of COMMUNICATION. It is SHARED. Therefore it must operate by RULES everyone can UNDERSTAND.
When you misspell something -- or use improper punctuation -- YOU REVEAL YOURSELF TO BE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL MORON. Correct yourself, in public, and you escape this label. Otherwise, YOU'RE A MORON.
The SECOND you dumb down the rules of speech, you dumb down all pursuit of excellence in ANYTHING IN LIFE.
!!!!!ANYONE WHO ADVOCATES THIS IS A MURDERER OF CULTURE.
//breathing heavily ... getting control of self ...
(many thanks to The Blog of Walker)
By the way -- if you haven't taken a look at Walker's blog, you're missing a lot.
(NOT!!!!! "alot" or "allot")
He has a quite wonderful take on current events -- able to see both sides, and give his opinion, without invective. Very rare, nowadays, and very refreshing.
Check him out.
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12 comments:
Thank you very much.
I'll try not to dissapoint :)
I find sometimes that I'll run across something that raises my blood pressure too. In a way, it's kind of a nice feeling, isn't it?
Oh, yeah, :o)
And nice one: "dissapoint" -- ;)
I sea nuthing rong wiht aloweng vurient speling ov werds. Espeshully for Engush teechers.
;-)
Actlly, fnny thng. Y cn tk th vwls t f wrds nd stll bsclly rd jst fn. y cnt d th ppst thgh. Lngstcs r cl.
Ya no wut, neo? I think Goggle shud kumm up with a translatter for inglish now!
This is what I've been saying all along. If the world simply did as I told it, it wouldn't be in this horrible mess.
(P.S. With the advent of Firefox's browser-embedded spell check, one can't even excuse 'innocent' internet typos.)
You're right, Honey.
What seems to be worse, though, is the fact that many people who run roughshod over the English language not only don't care, but often brag about their lack of skills.
Now the Brits are institutionalizing that. Lord help us all.
Dear Shooting Star, I'm glad you enjoyed the Derek and Clive bit. Thanks.
Old Peter Cook could always smell the rat of stupidity and mediocrity, as he valued language and what it meant to both thought and action. Ah, words. Shakespeare said words are for men to hide behind. I do enjoy pulling down the hidey hides.
Thus the fearless and profound satire of Peter and Dudley.
Idiot student: "Oh Sir, if I read a book, do I have to think about it too? It's so unfair!"
ALl the best from Colonel Neville.
http://colonelrobertneville.blogspot.com/2008/08/derek-and-clive-misunderstand-fucking.html
"I do enjoy pulling down the hidey hides."
And you're so good at it!
Cheers!
Dredged this up from somewhere or other. I think it was a comment at Red Tory.
But anywho:
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language.
"Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes."
Natural growth? To be sure, language is a living and evolving being, much like ourselves.
But it does not grow in a vacuum. We tweak it, and use it, to convey ever more specific meanings. But it is, in fact, an instrument communicating our own evolving communication.
Good one, Walk-Man :)
Thanks! I thought it was appropriate. ;)
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