Sunday, July 8, 2007

Spelling sucks

"English is a very phunny language" - dat was a famous dialogue of Amitabh Bachchan.But for me english is indeed a funny language.
The spelling is archaic, confusing, needlessly complicated and if you have a sense of humour its downright comical.You can literally group any letters nd say it ny way u like.Usually alphabets represnt sounds and sounds r combined to form words.But in english u ll find no such thing.
for eg- c can hve the sound 'see' ,nd can also b used for 'ke'
G can becom 'jay','guh' nd smetimes 'gee'
and then u have two letters for the same sound- V and W , both reresent same sound and can b used interchangingly.(W has four sounds and it stands for none of dem.)
Really no discipline at all !!!
The most frustrating of them all is the silent letters(psychology,school).I just dont understand dat why we hve to put letters wen we r not goin to say dat.
how can 'NO' and 'KNOW' both can be NO?
There have been many critics of dis spelling system.
George Bernard Shaw, who invented the non-word ghoti as an alternative spelling for fish (the word is pronounced with the "gh" sound of "rough", the "o" sound of "women", and the "ti" sound of "motion").
Its a scientific law of language dat if enough people make a mistake, the mistake becomes acceptable usage.The law applies to pronounciation, grammar,usage but not to spelling COZ the written things never change.
Bernard Shaw once offered a dramatic proposal for reducing England's taxes.Just eliminate unnecessary letters from our unwieldy spelling and u ll save enough money in paper and printing to cut everyones tax rate in half.May be dat was right, but we ll never be able to find that.

2 comments:

Sajeesh Nair said...

as thoughtful as it could be!!!

raregenome said...

hahahaha...god ds s phunny!u actually brought in bernard shaw here..hahahahaha