The sort of nonsense up with which I will not put

[nineveh_uk]

While there may be disadvantages to the lack of any central body with responsibility for English As She Is Spoke*, there is a decided plus side, which is that no-one can come along and say "We've decided that [word] is spelt differently now" or "we've re-written all the rules about commas."** There is something to be said for the free and easy approach of owning a copy of Fowler in order to argue why you choose to ignore it against the alternative approach, which might be epitomised**** by the following extract from Wikipedia, brought to you by looking up further my German teacher's comments on whether to write du or Du:

In der Schriftsprache werden das Pronomen „Sie“ und die davon abgeleiteten Formen großgeschrieben. Bis zur Rechtschreibreform 1996 gab es auch eine Höflichkeitsform für „Du“ in der Schriftsprache, in der dieses Wort großgeschrieben wurde. Von 1996 bis 2006 wurde „du“ in neuer Rechtschreibung ausschließlich kleingeschrieben. Seit der neuesten, inzwischen vierten Revision der Rechtschreibreform kann „Du“ bei persönlicher Anrede wieder großgeschrieben werden.

Google translate does it for us. Only the culture that produced Nietzsche could produce a sentence like 'Since the latest, now the fourth revision of the spelling reform'. One can just hear the existential despair that rolls off it.

*Would that there had been a committee in 1400 or so to consider whether the Great Vowel Shift should be allowed. Also, I would vote for re-introducing "æ".

**Danish, which I see has since managed to change the comma rules that were new when I learnt*** them.

***Or should that be learned? I think I can choose.

**** The English version is epitomised by the fact that I can choose not to write epitomized. Of course, English is nothing in comparison to Norwegian, in which it would probably be entirely correct to write epyttomised as long as you came from the particular valley in which that was correct and all your other spelling matched it.

Comments

[azdak]

English spelling is well on its way to becoming Chinese in its total detachment from the way words are pronounced. I know nobody who can already read will agree with me, but I spend so much time trying to cheer up little people in the depths of desapir about trying to learn English spelling that I would actually vote for a spelling reform.

[antisoppist]

What have they done to the comma rules? All I've ever been taught (in "how to read Danish when you know Swedish" classes") was to treat Danish commas as random decorative effects, which does make sense when your instinct is to read them as denoting different types of relative clause when they do nothing of the sort.

[fallingtowers]

Of course, English is nothing in comparison to Norwegian, in which it would probably be entirely correct to write epyttomised as long as you came from the particular valley in which that was correct and all your other spelling matched it.

Well, as a non-native speaker, you can also try to get away with your mistakes by claiming that your teacher must have spoken a particular, rare dialect and maybe that rubbed off on you... As in, "I'm sure there's a tiny mountain village with five senior citizens and ten sheep somwhere where this is totally a word. Honestly!"

Also, I've always refused to use du cause I thought it rude so the fourth reform of the reform made me feel vindicated... :)

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

While appreciating the benefits of (mostly) standardized spelling, one thing I have enjoyed while occasionally puzzling out sixteenth-century documents is getting a taste of the accent of the person who wrote them. The upper-class accent sounds, to my ear, distinctly Irish -- an idea which would doubtless have horrified them :).