INTERMINABLE RANT WARNING !!

Now that opportunity has been given, and taken by some, to have a whack at this subject, I'll weigh in with my 2 cents worth.

It's interesting that no one, so far, has expressed more than luke-warm approval for any of Mr. Wade's proposals, and some comments have been unequivocally negative. This from people who are passionately interested in languages in general, particularly English. What does that tell Mr. Wade and his sympathizers, I ask? I answer, we know a hell of a lot more about the English language than they do.

Here are some of my observations:

1. According to the reformers, English orthography has so many and such great problems that reform is urgently needed, at whatever cost. (More on the cost to follow.)
But, I ask myself, is it so urgent? Are the problems really that great? Fact: for centuries, at least, children have been taught to read English by some form of the phonics method, which involves sounding out words from the way they are spelled. If English spelling were so illogical and impossible, would children learn to read in this manner? Yet they do. Fact #2: With the possible exception of Chinese, and if all dialects are counted in the total of Chinese, English is the most widely spoken language in the world. Without question, it is the most widely used second, or acquired, language. Why is Chinese used by relatively few non-native speakers? Because, in addition to its intrinsic difficulty, its method of writing is a truly formidable challenge which few people will even attempt. If the method of writing English were so arcane and difficult as is suggested, few people would try to learn it; yet millions not only try, but they succeed. My conclusion: the supposed problem is grossly overstated. English orthography may indeed have a lot of silly, illogical kinks, and it may cause a certain amount of headscratching and frustration, we all know that. But none of these are real impediments to anyone's learning and using the language if they are willing to make some effort to attain a reasonable degree of mastery of it. Yes, there are people who claim they can't write because they can't learn to spell, but these are likely to be the people who can't speak the standard language either, and aren't interested in learning how to speak differently.

2. Just what is the nature of written English? We see that there certainly are a lot of words which are spelled pretty much in phonetic fashion according to recognizable standards. And there are a lot of words that are not. Those that are not, although consisting of the usual letters of the alphabet, partake of the nature of arbitrary symbols much like Chinese ideographs, since they can not be deciphered or written by phonetic rules. It is these words which constitute the problem which the reformers propose to address; he object of spelling reform is to eliminate these arbitrary words and make all English words phonetic. Simply to make up new spellings for the sake of brevity, or economy of space, or some other object other than phonetics, would be to substitute a Chinese writing method for what we have, using arbitrary strings of alphabetic characters instead of pictographs. Hence, reform has to consist of phonetics.

3. So then, can we replace arbitrarily- or eccentrically-spelled words with a phonetic spelling? Yes, of course, but this brings a problem with it. Phonetics is intended to represent the way a word sounds. But English has dozens of pronunciations, not to say dialects. Northeastern Americans, Middle Americans, Southern Americans, Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, Kiwis, Aussies, Islanders, Indians, South Africans, and others all have distinctive pronunciations and there are numerous sub-groups within all of the major groupings. So if you are going to use a phonetic spelling, what sound are you going to try to show? And if you show, for example, the NE American pronunciation, will this convey meaning to a reader in Lancashire? Or if you write something to sound like it does in Strine, will Miss Effie in Oshkosh know what you are saying? I had in mind to write the first sentence or so of Lincoln's Gettysburg address in Oxford RP, by way of illustration, but I don't think I need to. You get the point. (Unless some of you would like to try it in your own accents, just as an amusement. Just make a new thread of it.)

4. This brings me to the expectation that if such reforms were actually made, they would have unintended consequences, mainly in abolishing the nearly-universal utility of the language for all its speakers of whatever nationality or background. Once again, Chinese provides an instructive example. I believe that if we were to spell phonetically, we would in time end up with a number of dialects not readily mutually understandable, and we would not even have the Chinese advantage of a written system which is independent of the spoken languages/dialects and therefore used by all speakers of Chinese.

5. Lastly, as promised, there is the issue of cost. Firstly the cost of reprinting everything anybody wants to read in the new spelling. Secondly, (actually first chronologically) the cost in time and aggravation of all the studies and debates over exactly what the reforms would be. Think of all the oxen gored, all the turf to be defended, all the sacred cows in peril, all the other mismatched metaphors to be dealt with!!

As it happens, as a result of these last considerations mentioned, what with the legions of scholars, committees, commissions, faculties etc. having interminable meetings, studies, interim reports, studies on the reports, etc., I am absolutely confident that there will be no spelling reform agreed upon or put in use before the last trumpet rouses from their graves Bill S., Kit M., Jack D., John M., Jane A., Chas D., and all the rest of those who managed to produce works of great and lasting worth with this much derided system.