Problem is we have generations coming up the ranks who have been brought up on speed text lingo such as "WUU2" (what you up to), so will more than likely adopt this as the norm. Can't find the article, but businesses are already seeing job applicants using this. If enough of the populous use it, it will become the norm. If it affects peoples ability to gain employment, hopefully this will be enough of a deterrent at school level.Hopefully.
The thing that really annoyed me about this women is she assumes every one a) reads out loud (ffs can you imagine a long haul flight with her and her mates!) and b) every one has the same accent. A speech therapist mate of mine used to make fun of the way i said sure (shurley not) i said shure, my kiwi misses says shore and speech therapist mate from the peaks said shoore. Strikes me as we would end up with totaly differnt written languages in each part of the country. Can you imagine trying to read Glaswegian Just thought of billy connely joke which sums this up nicely, "glasgow guy tries and fails to make a phone call in a phone box so calls the operator. The edinburgh based operator asks the glasgow guy 'is there money in the box' to which he replys "nah i'm just here m' self!"... Read it out loud with your best weegie accent!
My God, people should spend less time stupefying the language, and more time smartefying the people. Or something.
I guess she's applying for prime minister?? J/K Seriously though.. Where do i find that utter bestiality of a woman and clobber her to death using a pint sized Oxford Dictionary?? English isnt even my "home" lingo, but there needs to be a certain flow of words. And any asshat saying the opposite shall be smitten the allmighty hammer of rhino feces. We actually have a far worse problem getting english people to learn danish, the vocabulary is a dead end for some, and they never learn it.. Prince Henrik, married to the danish queen, cant speak proper danish, and he has been here for over 25 years. And yes, my spelling is sometimes off, but hey.. im not native. and not rectum (?) retentive either.
I think the word you're looking for is "anal", Spaceraver. Same meaning, just slightly different tense. Written English is at least relatively standard (except for you Brits with all your extra 'u's thrown in... I think you've lived too close to the French for too long), and needs to stay that way. If I write things the way I say them, and everybody else on here did the same, communicating would be a lot more difficult.
I have never and never will use any form of IM (except for some abbreviations like that) or simplified language because dumbing stuff down for people also dumbs people down, and there are enough dumb people already.
I'm not so strict anymore with terminology and grammar with instant messengers. Otherwise, I keep a formal prose. I guess the same goes for most of us.
Lolz, imagine this course of affairs 1) We wrote like we speak 2) JK rowling was a cockney 3) JK rowling writes harry potter... "Harry sat down to breakfast, he poured himself some everton toffee and started pilin' jackie chan onto his plate."
a lot of those proposed changes actually change the phonetic pronunciation of the word (in most accents) - the change for beautiful (to butiful) would end up being pronounced buttyful. or bootyful. both wrong! it's byootiful!!
interestingly, I had a post deleted the other day (with no word, btw) commenting on a user's deliberate misspelling of almost every word in his post. Talk about double-standards.
If you did learn to "spell" like that, how would you ever manage to read something written before the switch over? Everything that wasn't translated would be a complete mystery.
Makes me laugh this does. Not only the suggestion but the replies on here Standard English is Standard English for a reason. Written standard are set and we should leave them be. You're not going to be able to faithfully represent the spoken form of English so I see no point in bothering, as totally strange, crazy and nonsensical as English spelling is
I physically felt scared when I read that article. That is a harassment of people that can spell and of the English language. Death Penalty!
I think this is an awful idea, it takes more effort to type in that trollop than typing normally. At the same time though, I think people should be less anal retentive about spelling and grammar, yeah in a formal essay you should use proper english, but otherwise I'm gonna talk proper like.
To be honest, I think that a more hardline stance needs to be taken on the English language, our School at Uni (Computing and Maths) has a forum, but despite a lot of people using proper English and treating it as a professional forum, there are still large amounts of people trying to get help with problems but failing miserably because a) people ignore posts they can't read or b) people don't understand the question.
I see David Crystal is adding his more sensible (IMO) thoughts to the argument in his latest book, The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left The call for these "simplified spellings" is nothing new, Noah Webster introduced many of the American versions of English words back in 1806 by simply putting them in his dictionary; some caught on (center, jeweler, aluminum), some fell by the wayside (groop, croud, fantom, wimmen, soop, bred, tuf, thum, hed, tung, bilt) and with him safely dead were 'corrected' in the later Merriam-Webster edition of 1847. In 1876 the American Philological Association called for some new spellings - liv, tho, thru, wisht, catalog, definit, gard, giv, hav, infinit, ar - of which catalog remains in use. Vast amounts of money have been ploughed into promoting change (Andrew Carnegie gave $250,000 back in 1906 to establish the Simplified Spelling Board) but they only gained acceptance for a handful of words (catalog, program, ax) then got carried away with demands for change to more common words (def, yu, filosofy) and lost all credibility. Change does happen, but it's a slow road, one word at a time, and the new spellings (like program) often coincide with new uses for the old word. Gettin laffed at is not a gud start. You mean like whole torsos, full legs?
I've read her book "Talk to the Hand" in which she deplores the foul language that is so prevalent now. H.B.
