Words that should be respelt

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by DanaC

I like to able to see a word's origins.....even when the origins have been played with (like with debt), they tell a story.

In the word debt, the b was inserted erroneously by the hypercorrectionists. It has no business being there because the word was derived from Norman French dette. If the spelling of this word reflected its origins accurately, it would be spelt dett like it used to be before the hypercorrectionists did their damage.

A similar case can be made for island as discussed above.

The only story that words should tell is pronunciation. I would rather put the origins of a word in the dictionary and correct pronunciation on the page, rather than the illogical current practice of putting the origins of words on the page and correct pronunciation in a dictionary.

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

Words are words are words, made up of letters in assorted combinations. "Simplifying" spelling would be another instance of the dumbing down of America.

Words are art...leave them alone!

If English words were art, they would be classified as belonging to the Rococo period. This is apt because the first dictionaries for English were written during the Rococo period.

This has nothing to do with the alleged "dumbing down" of America. English is spoken in many countries all over the world.

English-speaking students who learn Spanish, Italian, Finnish or several other languages can achieve a greater spelling proficiency in those languages after a year of instruction than they had in English after six years or more. Native speakers of such languages can spell any word reliably after less than two years of instruction. Does that mean their languages have been "dumbed down"? Or is that because such languages have an orthography that is easy to learn?