George Bernard Shaw is said to have expressed his frustration with spelling by writing FISH as GHOTI.

GH as in enough = F, O as in women = I, TI as in station = SH

Therefore,

GHOTI = FISH.

Chinese has pinyin as a phonetic spelling system. English could have the same.

This is stupid, english is becoming the only international language. I personaly live the idea but it is missguided. English is spoken in 5.61% (3 place) of the world, with Mandarin Chinese 14.37%(1 place). With america in recesion (and not to mention the language gaps in English speeking countries, where spanish and other languages are becoming commonplace) and the rise of China as a global superpower it could be considerd that next global language could be Mandarin.

In these days of information overload, it is silly that our children spend so much of their prime learning years learning spelling that appears to be derived as some kind of sick acedemic/esoteric joke, or an attempt to rarify writing and keep it out of the hands of the masses. As a native English speeker I hope it continues to be the lingua franca. To beet off chalengers (ie. mandarin) it must be easy to learn.

Spelling in English is an idiot-savant skill unrelated, as far as I know, to any important or useful mental capacity. (I say this, somewhat sadly, as a champion speller :-( )In many languages, whose written form is strictly phonetic, a spelling bee would be absurd (Spanish, Hungarian, etc.), in others (Chinese) it would be surreal...and yet Latin America, Hungary, China are full of smart people who have happy and productive lives.

Until the 18th century, it was not important in English, and printers were happy to fill out lines by spelling 'dog' as dogg or doggue when useful. I guess Shakespeare could have written some really good stuff if only he had been forced to spell correctly, huh?

The idea of substituting a phonetic system is absurd, as there exists no human institution that could accomplish it, and as Stephen Pinker points out, English orthography actually carries useful linguistic content. But it wouldn't hurt at all to exile spelling from the school curriculum (the task is now automated--though not perfectly owing to homonyms--by spell-checking software) and save lots of time for teaching important stuff, like writing. And while we're at it, let's get rid of arithmetic (hand computation algorithms) so kids can spend time on real mathematics.

It does not matter how many people speak a certain language, the fact is that English is already the International Language of Business and always will be. The reason for this is not a mere matter of the size of a countries population, it is because the rest of the world wants to - or even HAS TO - do business with the USA. Economic slowdowns and recoveries won't have an effect on this fact. Accept it, or not, but you will have to live with it. Why do you suppose Japanese students all learn English?

The basic premise of the idea presented is sound, simply put: “to make the English language easier to learn and read by standardizing the archaic spelling of words”. I submit this is too difficult and we are better off eliminating spelling and writing altogether. Yes, I know, as much as I loved books, I am ready to give them up. Blasphemy!??

The Egyptians used pictographs and Oriental languages still use graphic representations to express themselves in writing. Books and scrolls were a form of recording information for later generations to use. This was the PAST. The FUTURE will be a world where communications will have to be at a much higher speed, fully automated, and more precise. We must eliminate letters and word-symbols altogether.

The fastest way to interface the human being to the physical world is through speech. It’s faster to say, “Give me the pencil” than it would be to write it down and have someone read it, and then hand you the pencil. Agreed? Computers, being the ultimate tool, are here to stay and because they are getting faster and more powerful by the minute, they will soon speak and understand English perfectly. You can read a Harry Potter book yourself or you can listen to the words read to you by a computer, because it is faster and more efficient. The best way to experience the book, though, would be to listen to it read out loud as a digital recording, perhaps even by the author? You could hear, in the words themselves, the excitement, the terror and the joy of the story complete with sound effects, where needed.

A simple book cannot do this. It can only be read by one person at a time. The person must be schooled to understand, not just the language, but the written language symbols. People read at wildly different rates of speed, but most can listen quickly! Books are expensive to print, heavy, bulky and are damaged relatively easily. Electronic spoken books are more cost effective to produce, can be copied a gazillion times and sent around the planet in seconds.

You read this whole diatribe (sorry it’s so long), but you could have had it read to you, more quickly and efficiently, without hurting your eyes, while you exercised, cooked or admired some pornography at the same time. Down with (written) words!

It's a little faster to speak than to write. But:-- it's MUCH faster to read than to hear speech, even electronically accelerated speech. --if your English isn't perfect, being able to read at your own speed (and back up, and look at the dictionary)is likely to make communication possible where you would be completely lost in a stream of speech.--Maybe most important, speech can't be scanned. Imagine if you had to have your emails read aloud to you rather than browsing down a page.

Would the varieties of spoken English accents be more or less daunting than the spelling variety one comes across now? I bet not.

I'm voting against, though my reason is somewhat selfish.

I read a perfectly logical plan to reduce the number of required letters in the alphabet while making written English a spelling matter. It talked in depth about what would be replaced with what (c wouldn't exist...you'd either use s or k), and at the end of it all, gave an example paragraph.

And I couldn't read it. I've got the current spelling system ingrained, though I can spell pretty much equally well using either American or British spelling. Learning a new way of spelling would be like learning Gregg shorthand. Possible, but very difficult.

One solution... LEARN!!!!! There's going to be spelling variations no matter where you go... The worst (in my opinion) being French, because NOTHING is spelled the way it sounds, especially if the last letter is not really involved in pronounciation; like "I walked down the street" could be "I walke dow th stree" if you pronounce it. But, as an Asian that speaks fluent Mandarin, Mandarin is even worse too!

For example, I could say "da-jia". Since there are 4 phonetic varieties for each sound, it could be interpreted as "everybody" if you say the da part fast and the jia part in a normal tone. However, change the phonetic length other way around and you got the word "fist-fight".

Also due to limited phonetic creativity (I think that's the reason?), there is an average of about 30 (yes, 30) different characters linked to each sound, like a fast "fu" could be linked to the words: 付pay (fu chian), 副secondary, 婦woman, 腹stomach, and 父father. They are all written differently, yet sound EXACTLY the same, so when you talk, you HAVE to use contextual clues. Also, try asking ANYBODY that speaks fluent Chinese how to pronounce "Fish", and try to pronounce that ;p .

Therefore, it is ALSO not too practical to internationalize Mandarin, and changing spelling to be THAT way is very confusing and makes yourself look uneducated... I'm surprised that one girl in my office hans't been fired because nobody could read the memos she makes through all the spelling "errors"! "Tonite at 6, pleese remember too emptie the lockers for cleening"

there is already an active group dedicated to phonetic spelling. it's called the simplified spelling societyand they have a handbook (2nd edition; 1996) called "cut spelling", complete with a dictionary. I tried writing email to my friends using cut spelling, but they all told me it was annoying to read, so I gave it up.

Phonetic English doesn't work. There are too many homophones (words that sound alike). Just accept that English is the way it is and learn proper spelling. There was the same discussion here in Germany and phonetic German doesn't work either. Even though written and spoken German are much closer than their English counterparts.

Anyway, if you want to learn a language where written and spoken come from two different planets try Japanese.

Comment test.

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I like the general idea, but I believe that moderate reforms would provide most of the benefit with much less effort. I think that Cut Spelling is a pretty good, moderate reform. <A href="http://www.spellingsociety.org/index.php">The Siplified Spelling Society exists to promote these reforms.

Sounds like a Dumbing Down of America plan to me.

dam strate

Interesting in theory. Won't work in practice. There is more to spelling than random trickery. Once you gain an understanding of the language you gain an ability to spell words you don't know. There is an actual phonetic alphabet, and I still find it tricky.

English is not the most widely spoken first language but combining first and second languages it is the most widely spoken. 80% of the internet is in English. English, like all living languages does adapt and change, but a sudden drastic change will simply confuse everyone.

For me, reading Shafi's example took longer than the rest of his/her post. It obviously confused her/him too as (veri) and (tym) have a similar vowel sound, but (s)he spelt them differently.

English spelling needs fixing, but it won't happen.

English spelling is an anarchy. Dr. Johnston wrote the first dictionary over 200 years ago and fixed spellings somewhat illogically and they have never been changed since.

English has become the international language not because of the US and not because of the British empire, but because of a collection of reasons. And it now has an inertia which is nothing to do with any of the countries where it is the majority language.
E.g. I recently witnessed two italian girls in a German shoe shop trying to communicate with the sales assistant in school English.

English spelling needs reform but it won't happen until we have a world body to decide, which will never happen.
"You say tomatoe and I say tomatoe", but do we spell it "tomahtoh" or "tomaytoh"?

Languages with only one countries often do have such bodies, some times universities. But even relativly simple spelling can also cause arguments, witness the German "Rechtschriebreform".

Tomato, tomato...

exactly, phonetic English makes no sense, because pronounciations differ widely. This would just bring us to where English was before consistent spelling was instituted.

Fink abut sumbuddi wit an akksint. Ho wudd dae spill? Wut abut cheranskrepts*?

(think about somebody with an accent. How would they spell? What about transcripts?)

Which of these was easier to understand?

There is ALWAYS someone who wants to change a working system - "because it's there" - like a mountain to be climbed. - (Generally these advocates of change for change's sake are left-wingers. English is just fine as it is. For people who don't like it, I have a message for them: - F off and leave our traditions alone. English is the most expressive language on earth. Even hobbled with all these so-called hurdles, it's become totally dominant - Why hasn't that load of &^%$ - Esperanto - become our international language? - Answer is that English is the best language on earth. It's fine, it's ours, it works and we don't need twits with too much time on their hands to tell us the spelling needs changing.

Good day sir!

Our American English language is a mutt, I'll grant you that. It's made up of imported words from as many languages and cultures as we have living in our country right now. Our words are spelled the way they are because they were incorporated into our culture as immigrants brought them to our land. If you took the time to study our language - instead of griping about it because it's too difficult for you - then you would learn that some of our words have roots in Latin, some are of French descent, some have Spanish heritage, and others come from German, Japanese, Canadian, Puerto Rican, Italian, and many other languages. Our language is fluidly versatile and should be respected as is, not contorted into some phonetic gibberish just because someone can't spell very well. If you like phonetic spelling so much, then you can hang out in chat rooms, wear your thumbs to nubs sending text messages on your cell phone, or play cute little code games with your own little clique. However, if you want to communicate with someone like me on a professional level, do not send me a document fraught with misspelled words unless you want me to clutter my trash can. Instead, do yourself a favor and go back to school.

From an old Joke of the Day posting:

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 "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the"k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

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

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted 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 disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, 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 kontaining "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 trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen ve vil tak over ze world!

Then we should just adopt Spanish since it is a phonetic written language.

Hi! It's a bit funny to see that someone who -as seen in the text of the idea- doesn't have problems with the spelling, suggests that it should be changed. I'm Hungarian, and don't really see the difficulties what you are speaking about... English has it's grammar/spelling rules like any other language, i think if someone want's to learn it (s)he can bear it's difficulties. Or, maybe not. But trust me, it's not harder to write in english without spelling mistakes, than in (for example) Hungarian. If someone can't spell, don't blame the language, blame the person (or the grammar teacher ;)). P.S I LOVE your language, spelling included :)

Think of all the time kids could spend studying math, science, history, geography instead of spelling!