A lament

As usual.

On the state of the English language.

Rather than grammarians getting in a huff about "argument" being spelled "arguement" or "opportunity" as "opertunity," why not accept anything that's phonetically (fonetickly anyone?) correct as long as it can be understood?

"Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea," Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement. "University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell."

To kickstart his proposal, Smith suggested 10 common misspellings that should immediately be accepted into the pantheon of variants, including "ignor," "occured," "thier," "truely," "speach" and "twelth" (it should be "twelfth").....

..... Of course, such proposals have been made in the past. The advent of text messaging turned many students into spelling neanderthals as phrases such as "wot r u doin 2nite?" became socially, if not academically, acceptable.

Heh, spelling neanderthals. I totally agree! I only learnt to send regular SMSs about 6 years ago. And that was out of necessity because I worked in a marketing firm and had taken on youth as part time help. And I got sucked right in. And I STILL prefer to place a call then send a message. Today I can text, but it'll never be in the bastardised forms.


The day I type "wot r u doin 2nite?" is the day you can shoot me in my left buttock.