Pebbles From Paradise

A Wonderful Book For A Lad!

As a small boy I knew nothing of language reform, I just knew that I couldn’t spell, that adults told me that this was a bad thing, and I discovered at school that sometimes my inability could be painful.

Imagine my surprise one Christmas when my eldest brother Nick gifted me a copy of ‘The Reader’s Digest Junior Treasury’. This was a wonderful book packed with stories such as ‘How I Rode With Wyatt Earp’, ‘Cochise’, and ‘The Day I Drove To Market With Grosvenor Cleveland.’ The latter may have had a different title but it was the story of a small child accepting a lift on a buggy with an ex-president of the USA. Clearly times were different then, but I digress.

Within the book my eyes feasted upon a short article by Dolton Edwards titled: ‘Kaos in ce Klasrum.’ I reproduce it here:

“You must have often thought English spelling is harder than need be. Just look at words like cough, plough, rough, through, and thorough. The great writer Bernard Shaw wanted us to change our alphabet. Here’s one way of doing it.

In the first year, for example, we would suggest using “s” instead of soft “c”. Sertainly all students in all sities of the land would reseive this news with joy.

Then the hard “c” would be replased by “k,”, sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up the konfusion in the minds of the spellers, but typewriters kould all be built with one less letter.

There would be great exsitement when it was at last announsed that the troublesome “ph” would henseforth be written “f”. This would make words like “fotograf” twenty persent shorter in print.

In the third year publik interest in a new alfabet kan be expekted to have reatshed a point where more komplikated tshanges are nesessary. We would urge removing double leters whitsh have always ben a nuisanse and made speling more difikult.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent “e’s” in our language is disgrasful. Therfor, we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ merily along as though we wer in an atomik ag of edukation. Sins by this tim it would be four years sins anywun had used the leter “c,” we would then urg substituting “c” for “th.”

Kontinuing cis proses year after year, we would eventuali hav a reali sensibl writen languag. After twenti years wi ventyur tu sa cer wud bi no mor uv ces teribl trublsum difikultis. Even Mr. Yaw wi beliv wud be hapi in ce noleg cat his drims finali kam tru.”

At the time news of Mr. Shaw’s wish to modify the English language came as a welcome relief, but unfortunately my teachers couldn’t agree and so George-Bernard’s wisdom came to naught. As I grew older I too forgot about reform of English and I started to spell correctly, the British way.

In Turkey, however, English language reform is alive and well. Frequently I see the word ‘Fotograf’ posted across the frontages of photo-processors. Indeed all manner of English words have been reformed by Turks for the benefit of tourists visiting here. The main source of language reform, however, hasn’t come from Turkey but at the insistence of technology.

When was the last time you inserted punctuation into a mobile phone text message?

“@TEOTD U CN C WT IM SAYN TIC CUA”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Language, Recommended Books and Journals, Technology, This Wonderful World, Turkish Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.