"Benjamin Franklin suggested changing the alphabet, and Andrew Carnegie provided money for people to study the problem. President Theodore Roosevelt issued an edict in 1906 that gave the Government Printing Office a list of 300 words with new spellings: problem cases like artisan, kissed and woe were to be changed to artizan, kist and wo. Roosevelt was largely ignored by the G.P.O., and the matter was soon dropped."
Response:
I feel like this idea would have been completely worthless. Even today when teenagers use text language, I feel like it is the worst idea to change the spelling of the words to make it shorter or make it look "cool". Eventually kids are going to have to bring up Word on their computer and use spell check to figure out how to spell a word if those different spellings are used everyday and multiple times a day in text messages. The words that Roosevelt wanted to change did not even sound like the actual word. A z sounds different than a s. It would completely change the rules of the English Language. I am glad that they did not change those words.
Resource:
SHEA, AMMON. "On Language - The Keypad Solution - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. N.p., 22 Jan. 2010. Web. 10 Sept. 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/magazine/24FOB-onlanguage-t.html.
Related Resource:
This article goes through the reasons as to why Roosevelt wanted to change the spelling of certain words in the English language. His reasoning was that the English Language was too hard to read and write. So he wanted to try and dumb down the English language to make our society seem smarter. Somehow, that doesn't sound like a genius idea to me. I understand that some words can be confusing but that also seperates intelligent people from the people who really need help in spelling.
http://history1900s.about.com/od/1900s/qt/trspelling.htm
Resource:
Rosenberg, � (n.d.). Teddy Roosevelt Simplifies Spelling. 20th Century History. Retrieved September 11, 2011, from http://history1900s.about.com/od
Resource:
Rosenberg, � (n.d.). Teddy Roosevelt Simplifies Spelling. 20th Century History. Retrieved September 11, 2011, from http://history1900s.about.com/od
I agree completely with you! I believe words should just be spelled out completely. Whats the use of shorthanding everything. When most of the time things are hard to even understand the shorthand.
ReplyDeleteEverybody wants to use "a" for the word "absolutely", this is, to some extant, abbreviation. However, as what you are thinking now, it does not make any sense. We need complete words no matter how civilized we are.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and the comments made by peers. Maybe we should teach students the beauty of language by not focusing on just rote memorization of spelling, but by exploring root words and word origins so that we appreciate the heritages the words of our language represents.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kimberly's comment, memorization is not always the best. I'd like to add that we cannot assume that someone is not intelligent if they are not great at spelling. I've had students with very high IQ's and had great difficulty spelling, but could understand extremely complex math and science problems.
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