Oh my God....

[VickoRano]

BlindingTwilight

Wow, it took me forever to read that article. I had to say some of the weird spellings outloud to try and understand what the word was. That's pretty sad, especially at this point of my life.

Well, first off, I'd like to say that I, personally, wouldn't call that a simplified version of spelling. I think it's just another way of spelling certain words. I think if they started putting that into action, illiteracy rates would rise because of the majority of people in the country who are over 10 years old that learned to spell the way we currently spell. I don't think "simpler spellings" are worth reteaching the whole nation.
Besides, I think the way we spell now is just fine the way it is.

They may as well tell us all to learn Japanese. Them and their phonetic alphabet. stare Ha ha, just kidding. I love Japanese. heart

For a long time I've been wishing for schools to teach Japanese because English is an official language in Japan. I say, why not?

Also, from semi-reading that (I couldn't get all the way through) the only thing I learned was something about myself: I spell it doughnut. I only started spelling it donut because I saw too many others spelling it that way and I thought I was spelling it wrong.

That's about all I got from that horrendous article. stare  

[[ EVA Kiss ]]

My eyes...oh my. I can't exactly understand this article.

What ever happened to literature online and in articles nowadays?

;_;  

[The Jesus Bot]

All it would do is confuse every literate person.  

[SteakGrowsOnDimitri]

Like the article (which I could manage to read) gets at, simplified spelling is not a new idea. Even Noah Webster (yes, the dictionary guy) pushed for simplified spellings and even used some of them in his dictionaries. Granted, to our eyes, such simple writing looks like the work of a 5 year-old, but that's because we've grown up learning it the way it is right now. Still, I don't like the idea of changing English, but I wouldn't mind the idea of a simplified, but separate, language developed for the world at large; you know, another of those international tounges like Esperanto.  

[Fatal Hilarity]

This is stupid and impossible. If we all spelt words just like they sounded, that would mean English speakers who speak different dialects would write differently, making the communication between them very ineffective. In addition, the speech changes quite rapidly, and they'd have to change the way they spell quite often (once a year maybe). Not only can you not cause so much trouble to people without making them hate you, that would mean you'd have trouble reading something written even 40 years ago, because it'd look so different.
There are many stupid ideas that I've heard, and this must be one of the stupidest.  

[Fatal Hilarity]

wikkedwitch

BlindingTwilight

Wow, it took me forever to read that article. I had to say some of the weird spellings outloud to try and understand what the word was. That's pretty sad, especially at this point of my life.

Well, first off, I'd like to say that I, personally, wouldn't call that a simplified version of spelling. I think it's just another way of spelling certain words. I think if they started putting that into action, illiteracy rates would rise because of the majority of people in the country who are over 10 years old that learned to spell the way we currently spell. I don't think "simpler spellings" are worth reteaching the whole nation.
Besides, I think the way we spell now is just fine the way it is.

They may as well tell us all to learn Japanese. Them and their phonetic alphabet. stare Ha ha, just kidding. I love Japanese. heart

For a long time I've been wishing for schools to teach Japanese because English is an official language in Japan. I say, why not?

Also, from semi-reading that (I couldn't get all the way through) the only thing I learned was something about myself: I spell it doughnut. I only started spelling it donut because I saw too many others spelling it that way and I thought I was spelling it wrong.

That's about all I got from that horrendous article. stare

English is not an official language in Japan, only Japanese is. It's just taught in schools like in dozens of other countries. If they should teach you Japanese, perhaps they should also teach you German, Polish, Italian, French, Spanish, Arabic... The list is much longer than that.
Kana may be exceptionally phonetic (beside for random は that are written like わ), but Kanji is as far from phonetic as possible.  

[[shazz]]

This reminds me of how the Chinese simplified their characters. Those are alright because they actually do look simpler than the traditional characters. But what I saw just now looks more complicated. Maybe it'd be easier to read, but I think people would have a hard time spelling those words. Would kids really learn faster through this? I doubt it.

Oh and if they did start simplifying English like that, then we'd probably have to re-translate every piece of important literature in English.  

[Red-Chocolate]

We would be the only smart people left! mrgreen  

[DarkElf27]

[ EVA Kiss ]

My eyes...oh my. I can't exactly understand this article.

What ever happened to literature online and in articles nowadays?

;_;

That's what we here are trying to uphold.  

[ch4nel]

The article wont show for me, but im sure its not very good, according to all the horrible comments people made.  

[Dead Twisted Romance]

*Restrains self from screaming offencive language* *ahem* No wonder Europe is laughing behind our backs. We Candaians and Americans are pathetic.* Smashes head against keyboard* nhjnmhjdfmhdfj!!!!!!!
Before you know it, when we are old people and want a good book or magazine to read it will look like this:
"So I wuz lyke yo! And she was lyke omg sup ppl!"
I swear to God, I would slit my neck before ever typing honestly like that.  

[1234gone1234]

eek what ?  

[Transiberian Orchestra]

Perhaps the article was deleted because of embarassment- I received 'No Article Found' when I clicked that link.

 

[Keakealani]

Forgive my lack of backreading, but I just wanted to add a probably already mentioned point - China's literacy rate increased immensely when simplified characters were introduced, and personally I'm much more comfortable writing simplified than traditional (although I can do both to some extent)

I really think that people are being a bit too elitist and traditionalist with language. For example, the quote Dead Twisted Romance provided was actually a change of language usage/diction but had nothing to do with simplified spelling. Personally, I would love to see a wider usage of IPA. However, I disagree with the idea of simplying English as a language, and I especially disagree with the combination of homophones. It has always been my personal pet peeve that people don't know the difference between sound-alike words, and I would rather the language become less confusing, not more.

Regardless, I really wish so-called literates would stop over-reacting because of this and similar proposals. Assuming the grammar patterns of the language remained the same, making literacy easier to come by actually can bring a lot of good. I go back to my example of China and its introduction of a simplified character system. Tell me that the traditional is so much better/more educated/sophisticated. It's not. The only real difference is that traditional is prettier.  

[[Riyuu]]

People need to learn what a dictionary is.
...Or at least encarta.com.

3nodding