Wud U Spel Dat, Plees?

I heard something interesting on the news this morning while I was getting ready for work. Did you hear this? Someone claims that the English language is “too hard” for children to learn, so they want to change the way a couple hundred words are spelled. Words like “friend” and “soldier.” And they said that there are too many spellings of “to.” I guess that more than two is too many to understand. (There, I just used all of them in one sentence correctly; what’s to understand?) So they want to make it “less confusing.”

I guess the point is to advance literacy. I think the point is that we haven’t thought up enough ways to coddle these kids, so let’s think up one more. Personally, if I’m a kid and they say that I’m too stupid to learn the language, I’m offended. I mean, my parents and grandparents had enough brain cells to figure it out, right? And if we change the spelling of all these words, the older generation will have to adjust and relearn all the words. Does that mean the kids are just stupid? I don’t think so. There are several reasons why the kids can’t figure out how to spell, and most of them are our fault. Here’s a few of the major reasons:

1. Spell check – Yes, Bill Gates, it’s all your fault. You and Melissa can stop hiding behind your charitable foundation and own up. Until this generation, we used a different spell checker called our brain. We wrote things down instead of typing everything out on the computer, running it through the spell check, dictionary, and thesaurus, and then we read it again to make sure it was right. Kids today are lazy because they haven’t ever had to actually do the work. Everything is a template for them, with a wizard to help them make a coherent thought. And they still ask for help!
   
2. Texting and IM – You want to talk about the downfall of the English language? Here it is right here. Everything has a shortcut. You can forget about using three different spellings of the words to, too, and two. Now we just use one, with no letters! The number 2 works for all three when you’re texting or chatting online. We’ve saved some keystrokes with the words “you” and “are” as well. Now they’re down to just one letter. There’s an acronym for laughing out loud (LOL) or rolling on the floor laughing (ROFL). Nobody cares about proper spelling or grammar anymore. I’m pretty pissed off about it; R U 2?
   
3. Schools – Yeah, go ahead and comment about how those poor teachers are overworked and underpaid, but I know better. Where I live, they average over $80K and get three months of vacation and at least twice the holidays I get. Yeah, really tough. But it’s not all their fault either. The curriculum they are given is worthless. Everything has to be all touchy-feely, nobody’s-ever-wrong, give-them-a-trophy-for-trying PC crap. Nobody asked me how I felt about my answer. Was it right or was it wrong? If it was wrong, it wasn’t, “Oh, nice try,” it was “Wrong! Do it again!” Even the teachers themselves have gone through that system and are functionally illiterate now. Now the teacher, the one who’s supposed to know better, is the one using an apostrophe-s to make a word plural. (Just in case you’re under 25 and didn’t get that, the correct plural for “idiot” is “idiots,” not “idiot’s.”)
   
4. The Media – I’m not letting you off the hook either. You know who you are. In order to look “cool” to the young consumers, the mass media is adopting these stupid shortcuts too (“2 Fast, 2 Furious”; yeah, we get it, it’s a sequel). Rappers have names that look like they threw a bunch of Scrabble tiles on the table, and even TV newscasts put graphics up with the wrong spelling. I swear, one of these days I’m going to call up CNN or Fox News or ESPN and ask them how much they’re paying the idiot typing the ticker, because if it’s more than a dollar, it’s way too much.
   
5. The Parents – You didn’t think I was going to forget the lazy parents, did you? These are the spoiled brats from the ‘70s and ’80s who started the whole thing, and now they don’t know the English language enough to tell their children that they’re doing it wrong. But then again, most of them don’t realize it, because a nanny is raising their kids anyway. Way too many young parents are more interested in working all the time than in paying attention to their children. I understand that many households need two incomes; mine does. But do you really need to work 60 hours a week and sell your soul to a corporation that doesn’t even know who you are? They need to get their priorities in order and realize what’s really important. (Hint: it’s not your stupid job, because the company doesn’t care about you at all. You can and will be replaced when they feel like it.)
   

The main point of changing English is because “many of the words don’t look like they sound.” Yeah? Big deal. English doesn’t have a patent on that either. Have you checked out other languages? If we’re going to change all the English words so that they are phonetically correct, then we’ll need to “fix” the other languages too. We can start by spelling the name of our southern neighbor to “May-He-Ko.”