This statement jumped out at me mainly because it is a foreign concept to me. I remember reading split page books in high school--one page with Old English, the other in Contemporary English. I would find while reading that some words were spelled two or three different ways on the same page, but they meant the exact same thing.
Today, this would be an editor's nightnmare, and very very quickly corrected. We seem to have found ourselves trying to become more unified in our spelling for a greater literate community to understand--in doing so, however, we have yet to realize that we confuse some people to no end with the way certain words are spelled (Example from the article above: through, tough, dough, etc.)
The link below gives a funny insight on some of the confusing words that the English language uses, and its rules, or lack thereof. Enjoy!
DUMB English!
References:
Shea, Ammon. "The Keypad Solution." The New York Times. N.p., 22 Jan. 2010. Web. 8 Sept. 2011. <www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/magazine/24FOB-onlanguage-t.html>.
I would agree that some vocabulary is hard to understand and read because certain words sound a like and maybe those should be changed. Words like witch and which. Well they sound almost the same but the words mean two different things.
ReplyDeleteBut certain words do not need to be changed like prove. Their is no reason to change the spelling of the word, so why mess with things that are not causing problems. Like the old saying goes "If it ain't broken, don't fix it".
I completely agree. Statistic's say English is one of the hardest languages to learn because of all the words the sound a like but have different spellings and meanings such as .... to , too, two .
ReplyDeleteIt is such a weird concept to think that just now words are much more concrete. The weirdest thing to think about is a lot of English words in Britain are spelled slightly different. That's another than Always slips my mind, but then pops right out at me.
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