If the English language had a rational and consistent phonetic orthography there would be no Spelling Bees (or Spell Checkers). The only reason why bravura performances in spelling are done is because we have a crazy way of representing sounds. The Phonecians (Fohneesians?) gave us version 1.0 of a sensible way of writing down what we say. The Hebrews, the Greeks and the Arabs picked up on it quickly. Later came the Latins. It is the very antithesis of Chinese orthography which is virtually impossible for a human being to master in completeness. There are over 60,000 Chinese ideograms of which the average Chinese reader knows maybe 5000. It take a Chinese speaker nearly to adolescence to become acceptably literate (the same is true for Japanese youngsters as well). It requires an extended ascii code to represent Chinese ideograms in computer systems. English speaking kids have only 26 letter and some punctuation to master. But we still have to prove our spelling skills in contests. All we need for computerized English is 8 bits.

This is ridiculous. In a perfect world we would not have Spelling Bees or Spell Checkers.

Ba'al Chatzaf

This place is the only board I've gone to which has a two drink minimum.

Scotch? Whiskey?

Bob, in a perfect world we wouldn't have you and everybody would agree with me.

People were a lot more free with their English spelling before dictionaries came along.

We should give up the visual beauty of the English language and all the mysteries encoded in the spelling so we can read and write words that look like shit?

--Brant

Did anyone else watch the National Spelling Bee?

I could not but note that winner and the runner-up were the children of immagrants. Some years the winner has been home schooled.

I disagree. Chinese and Japanese orthography is beautiful. It is drawn with a brush, and not scrawled with a pen or pencil. The only writer I ever read who made English -look- good was Alfred Bester in -The Illustrated Man-. Arabic is a better looking script than blocky Latin. Greek looks pretty good two, but Cyrillic is dreadful. The Ugliest Orthography (IMO) is the German Buchstaben and the old English Gothic. Yuccch!

Perhaps we can borrow of trick from the Japanese. They have multiple orthographies. Kenjii, borrowed from the Chinese -- strictly ideograph. And two phonetic modes katakana and hirogana. So we could have an orthography for sounding out stuff and an orthography that is more rigid and structured.

In any case, we are lacking a mode to accurately represent -spoken sound- as opposed to words, which are in effect, ideographs.

As to free wheeling, gone are the days when Shakespeare could spell anyway he damn well pleased. So you are right on that count. Shakespeare in his freedom of spirit (so to speak) doubled the English vocabulary in the space of a few years and he did it artfully. Where is our modern day Shakespeare? He is nowhere to be found.

inglish iz inn despirat nede ov rashinuhlizaeshin.

Oscar Wilde said you can spell 'fish' 'goti', and you can. Take the g from 'tough' the o in 'transportation' and the ti from the previous word.

As for Chinese, I love the grammar of Mandarin. It straight forward, make no room for confusion.

EuroEnglish
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish": --

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil sevants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"'s in the language is disgraceful, and they should go away.

By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaning "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!

Printing solidified orthography.
Abaham Lincoln spelled "show" as "shew." The spelling changed because the pronunciation had changed, or so we believe. As with The Cantebury Tales, you might try pronouncing English as it is written, in order to hear the orthography.