In Social Inventions No. 25, page 28, Nicholas Albery argued that computer spelling checkers would rigidify the spelling of English and render obsolete the campaigns for simplified spelling. This is Valerie Yule's response.
The challenge. In proportion to what is spent and invested in education, English-speaking countries have the greatest problems of illiteracy and semiliteracy in the world. Many multilingual third world countries have attempted to use English as the medium of education and government; English is the language of books and international contacts, and was often their colonial heritage. But these countries have been driven to using pidgin (with simplified English spelling) or the major indigenous language more because of English spelling than because of nationalism. English has to be learnt as two languages - the spoken and the written - while most foreign languages can be learnt with books to help learn the spoken language, and speech to help with the written language.
Most of the 700 million people using English today are not English-speakers born - and could not care less about Norman-French etymologies. They want a writing system that is user-friendly. For English to remain the international language of the world, an internationally usable English spelling is essential.
Less than 5% of Britains and Americans (and Australians) can spell in English without mistakes, or without dictionaries or computer spell-checkers - but the big and serious problem is not their inability to write - it is the high proportion of the population who cannot learn to read properly.
Thousands of spelling reform proposals have been put forward. Even Samuel Johnson tried to improve spelling according to his own ideas. The big bugbears have been:
(1) People who have been through the process of learning to read and write already, often with such trouble because the spelling is such a barrier to learning to read as well as to write, fear they would have to go through the whole awful process again. This is not so.
(2) Reform campaigns have been conducted on the assumption that 'spelling as you speak' would solve everything, and without research to observe what the abilities and needs of users and learners really are.
Today principles of human engineering are applied to make our technology 'user-friendly' - except for spelling. Yet spelling is technology, not culture, not the English language itself. (The rare occasions you want to know etymology or the history of words, it is risky to guess from the spelling - look up a dictionary.)
Unless there is some breakthrough to a writing system that can cross language barriers like Chinese, but without its difficulties, English spelling must continue with the international roman alphabet, and be sufficiently like present spelling for those who are literate to adapt without training, and for our heritage of print to remain accessible.
Ninety per cent of what we read today has been printed or reprinted within the past ten years, and computers make it possible to completely retool house rules for spelling with no difficulty, so change is not impossible.
The conseqences of this rigidity woud be that th 'havs' who can lern to read and who hav computers (who ar not 'almost everyone' as N.A. has imagind) wil retain their advantajge over th great mass of 'hav nots' who find it hard to lern to read and who wil not hav convenient access to computers for all their writing needs. As these outnumbr th 'havs' to an ordr of milions, it wil turn out to be to th disadvantage of the 'havs' too. English is alredy losing ground as the intrnationl language of th world.
Let evryone who thinks that computer spelling chekrs ar going to solv th problem of English spelling try to use a computer spelling chekr to chek everything they write for a week and imagin everyone els they see doing th same. I am reminded of a sene from Gulliver's Travels which involvd the constant application of pig's bladrs on stiks to facilitate everyday comunication.
Supose computers do become crisp-cheap, environmentaly frendly in manufacture and operation, able to transliterate any text into speech (relativly esy) and anyone's speech into ASCII (stil not feasibl). Computers and video ar betr than BOOKS in comunicating information and How to Do It - but B.O.O.K.S. (Bodies of Organised Knoledg) wil remain superior for th getting of wisdom and knoledg, for substantial reading in sience, history, literature, filosofy. A paperbak of 40,000 words is much esier, qikr and mor plesant reading than 40,000 words scroled. And it is much esier and mor plesant to read computer screen than to lisn to a human reading 40,000 words if yu can't read. To lisn to 40,000 words red by a computer woud be worse stil. On my desert iland I want books, rather than a mor vulnerabl computer and disks.
We alredy kno th difrence between what can be lernt from books and what can be lernt from television. With print literacy th posibility of civilised behavior is greatr. Rathr than be prepared to plunge our culture into iliteracy, it woud be betr to improve th tecnology of spelling to be mor user-frendly, now.
One posibl initial solution is to discard surplus letrs in English spelling. These ar a major sorce of dificulty for lernrs and writers.
Letrs surplus to representation of meaning and pronunciation of words make up mor than 5% of text, wasting forests, time and money. Work out how much extra typing is involvd per day, how much extra paper is reqired in newsprint and a print run of books. It was estimated that Russia saved 90 tons of paper per annum when they spelt Komunist with one
This may seem too simpl a Gordian solution. It does not solv all stupid spellings. But it woud solv enough to greatly benefit those currently disadvantaged, children, forinrs, and the less able in th population. Since it only drops surplus letrs, literat reders woud reqire no retraining, soon adapt, and coud becom mor eficient becaus so much clutr was removed. For riters, 'when in dout, leve it out', solvs problems of dubld letrs, useless silent letrs, and how to spell unstressd vowels. Silent letrs ar not dropd if they woud altr meaning or pronunciation - including in some words that reqire actual change of inconsistent letrs in spelling. (e.g. greatly, language, once, photograph, disadvantaged, coud be improved by consistent letr change.)
Implementation. No proposals shoud be put into practice without extensiv reserch and pilot trials. Some of this reserch is now being carried out, but mor is needed to establish clearly which letrs ar realy unnecessary in words and how cutting them benefits lernrs, writers, lerning English as a second language, and reders as they became acustomd to it. Pilot trials which also familiarise the concept and th respellings can be made by:
1. Publicising th idea, so that peple can experiment with deleting surplus letrs in their personal writing.
2. Testing how it can help lernrs and failed lernrs to read present spelling.
3. Experiments with subtitling in television, for fastr reding, saving space, and extending th reding audience to poorer reders.
4. Comercial respellings (70% of these ar shortnings alredy).
5. Practice paragrafs in newspapers and magazines, e.g. in the puzl sections.
6. Experiments in comic strips and comic books, which hav many poor reders.
7. Acceptance by dictionaries as alternativ spellings, just as dictionaries alredy accept hundreds of alternativ spellings. In this way th mor complex spellings gradualy die out -e.g. develope t develop, and lacquey to lackey.
8. 'Dubl-dekr' books, with most of a dubl paje in current spelling and part of a paje reriting it in shortr spelling (or in Cut Spelling, a mor radicl version).
* For furthr information, contact the Simplified Spelling Society, ssecretary Bob Brown, 39 Chepstow Rise, Croydon CRO 5LX, England, or
Valerie Yule, 57 Waimarie Drive, Mount Waverley, Vic. Australia. 3159 (tel 03 807 4315).
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