In DC, even the Spelling Bee draws protesters

[Chris_]

Four peaceful protesters, some dressed in full-length black and yellow bee costumes, represented the American Literacy Council and the London-based Spelling Society and stood outside the Grand Hyatt on Thursday, where the Scripps National Spelling Bee is being held. Their message was short: Simplify the way we spell words.

Roberta Mahoney, 81, a former Fairfax County, Va. elementary school principal, said the current language obstructs 40 percent of the population from learning how to read, write and spell.

"Our alphabet has 425-plus ways of putting words together in illogical ways," Mahoney said.

According to literature distributed by the group, it makes more sense for "fruit" to be spelled as "froot," "slow" should be "slo," and "heifer" — a word spelled correctly during the first oral round of the bee Thursday by Texas competitor Ramesh Ghanta — should be "hefer."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h1bmf2tG4WxyUwMd4tmmmxpVTW6gD9G40H601

This has got to be satire.

[Celtic Rose]

So, Britain will spell Schedule as Shedjool, and Americans will spell it Skedjool and  we'll have Basil and Baysil.  Heaven forbid we get the Scottish and Irish spelling in there 

The English language has so many spelling rules because it is an amalgamation of all the cultures that lived in the British Isles, and now all the other English speaking countries.  Words like school, light, and house show their germanic roots, and at one point, all the letters were pronounced.  We have many, many words derived from French, specifically the French spoken by the Norman conquerors.  Few of our words are Celtic in origin, but it has been proposed that our pronunciation of word may have been deeply influenced by Celtic languages. 

As far as I'm concerned, people can learn how to spell English words.  I do not believe for a moment that 40% of Americans are illiterate due to our spelling rules. 

[NHSparky]

Nope--just people who have way too much time on their hands, who should use it in more productive pursuits, like playing in traffic.

[Thor]

People have already bastardized (simplified) the way we spell words. Until the airlines had their schedules posted on the TV Monitors, "Cancelled" was the proper way to spell it. The word, "canceled" was used because they didn't have enough characters in their database to spell it properly. I can distinctly remember that for some words, the last letter was doubled before adding the suffix.

[The Village Idiot]

Is there anything that people won't protest?

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

We need more superfluous vowels like in "colour."

[DumbAss Tanker]

So, Britain will spell Schedule as Shedjool, and Americans will spell it Skedjool and  we'll have Basil and Baysil.  Heaven forbid we get the Scottish and Irish spelling in there 

Or even worse, the Welsh.  That would probably result in the Fall of the West.

[Celtic Rose]

We need more superfluous vowels like in "colour."

My brother and I both spell gray as grey.  I don't know where we learned it, because neither of my parents spell it that way, but there you go. 

[Chris_]

No dey din't.

[DixieBelle]

yeah they did! Teh Stoopid is strong.....Sigh.

[Chris_]

[DixieBelle]

^lolz. I love that movie.

[AllosaursRus]

Nope--just people who have way too much time on their hands, who should use it in more productive pursuits, like playing in traffic.

...........on an LA freeway, during rush hour, in the carpool lane!

[soleil]

People have already bastardized (simplified) the way we spell words. Until the airlines had their schedules posted on the TV Monitors, "Cancelled" was the proper way to spell it. The word, "canceled" was used because they didn't have enough characters in their database to spell it properly. I can distinctly remember that for some words, the last letter was doubled before adding the suffix.

Judgment is another one of those words. Judgement is now accepted. I still spell it "cancelled" and "judgment".

[Chris_]

One that I see a lot is moustache/mustache and fourty/forty.  My spell check says the second set of words is right, but I don't care.

[soleil]

One that I see a lot is moustache/mustache and fourty/forty.  My spell check says the second set of words is right, but I don't care.

"fourty"? Although it does make sense to spell it that way, it just looks wrong. I always spell it "mustache". Not sure which is correct, but the former seems like it would say "moostache".

[Chris_]

According to Wikipedia, it's "forty", but they do have "moustache" spelled with a U.

Moustache is almost universal in British English while mustache predominates in American English, except for the third edition of Webster (1961), which gives moustache as the principal headword spelling. Later editions of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (from the 1973 eighth edition) give mustache.

[soleil]

According to Wikipedia, it's "forty", but they do have "moustache" spelled with a U.

I have seen it that way too. I refuse to spell it that way. So I may be incorrect with some of my spelling. I am a spelling nerd, or at least I used to be. Words are a changing.