Bull-tiot

I saw recently where a Dr. Ken Smith, a criminology professor at Bucks New University in the UK, is tired of seeing rampant misspellings in his students’ coursework. Rather than insist the University raise its standards for admission, or generally decry the poor educational methods used to teach these students before they reached University, Dr. Smith (who has a ridiculously easy name to spell) has proposed that his fellow professors just ignore the misspellings, and classify them not as wrong, but as acceptable variants.

I’ve actually seen two separate articles about this idiot, and surprisingly, the second one didn’t relate the tale of the English professors at the same university attempting to give him a semi-colon with a letter opener.

Dr. Smythe provided a list of some of his students most commonly-misspelled words. Among them are February and Wednesday. How the fuck do you make it to college without knowing how to spell these? Smeth suggests that we accept ‘Febuary’ and ‘Wensday’ as perfectly fine alternatives. Never mind that February takes its name from a Roman rite of purification called februum, which was held at that time of year. Similarly, Wednesday is Woden’s day, not the day of the cebaceous cyst.

I think Dr. Smiff is just being lazy. He gives an example of a question he gets from his moronic students: “Why is there no ‘e’ in ‘truly’?” His answer? “Well, I don't know. ... You've just got to drop it because people do.” Thanks, asshole. I’m wondering if you would accept “just because” as a legitimate answer on your quizzes.

Here are the rules for appending endings to words with a final “e”, as a three-second Google search could have found for the good Docter:

When adding an ending to a word that ends with a silent e, drop the final e if the ending begins with a vowel – A E I O U:
• advance/advancing judge/judging distribute/distribution

However, if the ending begins with a consonant, keep the final e:
• advance/advancement involve/involvement

If the silent e is preceded by another vowel, drop the e when adding any ending.
• argue/argument argue/argued true/truly

Speaking to Smittttth’s comments, Jack Bovill, chairman of the British-based Spelling Society said “People who have trouble with spelling are punished when it comes to applying for jobs or even filling out forms.” Oh boo-fuckin’-hoo. Sorry, Jack, I just can’t work up a whole lot of sympathy. Next you’ll be telling us that the whole written form of communication is harsh to the illiterate, so all applications should be given orally, with a stenographer on hand to transcribe the answers onto the appropriate line. Or maybe we should dispense with the written word altogether. I’ll meet you in Alexandria; you bring the gas can, and I’ll bring the matches.

I tend to agree with Barbara Wallraff, who writes the Wordcourt column for the Atlantic and King Features Syndicate. "People who spell a lot of words incorrectly either aren't paying attention or don't care. Why change our language to accommodate them?"

And of course, Doktore Tsmithe trots out the new standard cop-out for the intellectually lazy: "In the 21st century, why learn by heart rote spelling when you can just type it into a computer and spell-check?" To which I offer the standard rejoinder: “Because spell-check will knot catch homophones.” God! Can you imagine the bleating this fucker would give out over the bad grammar he’d encounter when all of his students only used spell-check? (And apparently, they’re too lazy to use it even now, since he’s finding so many mistakes.)

Every time there’s an article like this, spelling reformists crawl out of the bookshelves to propose unnecessary schemes and plans to “make English easier.” English is the international business language, and most ‘furriners’ speak it. If it were so difficult, why isn’t Esperanto the international business language? Why not Chinese? Or Basque?

And what scheme should we use? Phonetic? Whose phonemes should take precedence? Is that famous highway Root 66 or Rout 66? Did the three wise men travel a great distance, or were they fighting a conflagration? Because my family in the mountains pronounce them both the same way – afar.

I know that someone who thinks they’re clever will post that fucking ‘ghoti’ crap again. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s supposedly an alternative spelling of “fish,” using the “gh” from “enough,” the “o” from “women,” and the “ti” from “nation.” Let me address this now.

There is no word in English beginning with “gh” where “gh” is pronounced as an “f;” it is always a hard “g.”

Vowels are pronounced long before an intervocalic consonant – that is, a consonant between two vowels. The fact that the “o” in “women” is pronounced as a short “i” is a leftover from Old English, when the word was actually spelled “wimmen.”

Pronouncing “ti” as “sh” only happens when the “ti” is followed by a vowel, as in “action.”

Therefore, “ghoti” can only be pronounced as “goatee.”

I notice that the same proponents of “ghoti” never mention that, by their logic, we could also have "ghoughpteighbteau," where:

P hiccough
O though
T ptomaine
A neigh
T debt
O bureau

Makes English seem a little more elegant when you follow the damn rules, now, doesn’t it?